One day after another, Hyraj relentlessly taught me. Not that I tried to run away or anything, but, whenever I thought we were having a break, she would come up with some word or phrase for me to memorise. The only peace I had around her was eating our meals.

Oh, we were both so stubborn over cooking. Like it was a game. She wouldn’t let me help prepare when she cooked, so I didn’t let her help me, childish how I leant over the cutting board like she wasn’t even allowed to look.

How fun being childish was—no wonder children did it so much.

I wished I could say the first dinner was a one-off, but she had, um, a pragmatic view of cooking? Or rather, a fear of germs that seemed like OCD to me. I wasn’t a doctor, though, so probably not, and someone travelling alone in deserted forests probably should have been afraid of getting sick.

That said, vegetables didn’t need to be boiled into mush or burnt into charcoal over the fire to make them safe to eat. I tried to teach her that, but she seemed to have no issue eating her own cooking. Well, she at least ate the stuff I cooked, so I only had to suffer her dinners every other day.

A week passed, more and more words sticking in my head and the basic grammar she taught me easy to follow. Close enough to English grammar for most things. The only part that kept tripping me up was how “double negatives” didn’t become positives, like: “I don’t not eat meat,” which meant, “I really don’t eat meat.” Anyway, she liked to use them a lot and I often misunderstood.

Other than that, I could kind of talk with her, basic things. Ask, “How are you?” and answer, “I’m hungry,” or, “I’m tired.” Stuff about our life here. At least, that was the stuff that stuck in my head.

It was hard, but it was easy, silly as that sounds. There weren’t tests or homework or detentions, I just had to remember. However long it took, however many times I forgot the same word, I just had to memorise it again and again until I didn’t forget it.

For some people, that would probably be like torture. For me, well, it was perfect.

Idle thoughts while I washed my clothes, Hyraj taking some time to read. I had asked her if she wanted to wash clothes together, but apparently not, walking off as soon as I’d finished speaking.

Just that—looking up at the sky—there probably wouldn’t be time afterwards for her. Dark clouds loomed, wind picking up. I scrubbed my legs as fast as I could, eager to dry off by the fire before the rain started, snug inside my home.

That left me feeling guilty, gaze drifting over to Hyraj. She had a straw duvet thing she used for a mattress and a woolly blanket to keep her warm, but that could only do so much. A light rain had passed over a few days ago and she had stuck under her tree. I worried that she’d do the same, even if there was lightning. Even if there wasn’t, none of the trees around here were big enough to keep her dry, wind might even steal her blanket while she slept.

For now, all I could do was rush. Worry about myself.

I sat by the fire with my underwear, trousers, and vest, drying those first. My trousers took longer, but the rest dried fairly quick, thin as they were. So I was half-dressed when the first drops fell. While it was only spitting, I stayed by the fire, trying not to flinch every time a cold drop fell on my legs or head. Eventually, it grew to a drizzle; that was when I put on my trousers and covered the fire and headed into my home.

Before I closed the door, I took a last look at Hyraj. She still sat beneath the tree, back to its trunk, backpack next to her, book in hand. I hoped the rain would stay gentle.

It did not.

Curled up on my jumper, I listened to the wind howl, thatched roof rustling, fortunately well strapped down from my previous experiences with stormy weather. Rain pounded down, drumming so loud, bleeding through my door when the wind blew it that way. I thought I would probably need to build up the outside wall again after this, no doubt being eroded right now.

Those kinds of thoughts could only distract me from thinking about Hyraj for so long.

She hated help, I knew. She hated me trying to help her cook, she had hated me trying to fix the braiding she tried, had refused to let me touch her reed weaving. I couldn’t even stoke the fire while she was busy preparing the ingredients without her glancing at me with a scowl.

That didn’t mean it was easy for me to ignore my desire to help her. I wanted to so badly, so used to fussing over the younger girls, while the older girls acted just like her and hated being treated like children.

Right now, I just wanted her to be safe. Not that the rain would kill her, but there was more to being safe than whether or not you died, and she wasn’t safe. Tense, no sleep, cold, all until the wind died down and rain stopped.

It ate at me. I couldn’t relax, constantly fidgeting like my body was trying to go help her. Heart pounding, aching, not used to watching people suffer and doing nothing.

Finally, I gave in. Just a peek, I thought, crawling to the door. Weaving pushed down, I squinted out the gap. The wind blew, rain like a waterfall, so thick I could barely see a thing. But the things I could see were enough: her under the tree, curled up, corner of her blanket flapping, ponytail whipping around.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Thump, thump, heart so tight every heartbeat was a struggle. I began to feel sick, stomach clenching too. Every single part of my body beyond upset at seeing her like that while I was safe inside.

It hurt.

I couldn’t take it, I couldn’t, and I couldn’t go back and close my eyes and pretend I hadn’t seen anything. Fumbling the knots, I untied part of the door—not my first experience with storms. Not even a whole side, just enough for me to squeeze out.

The rain hit me immediately, icy cold, stinging, a constant stream of pain across my arms. As I shuffled the rest of me out, it only hurt more, eyes clenched shut in a constant wince, the drumming on my head making it nearly impossible to open them.

But I had to, so I did. Blinking all the way, moving as much by memory as sight, I staggered across my camp to her tree.

For once, she didn’t notice me. I knew because she jumped when I touched her, her eyes shooting open, even wider than usual, watery. Who knew if there were tears on her face, damp with bits of rain.

None of that mattered. I grabbed her hand and pulled. An ice-cold hand. She didn’t move, so I pulled harder, pulled with all my strength, all my weight, shifted her, and my pulling dragged her over onto her hands and knees, yet she still fought me, clutching her backpack and blanket, stuck there.

So damn stubborn.

There were tears on my face, tears I’d started crying before even leaving my home and tears I was crying right this second. She stared at me and I stared at her. Every word I wanted to scream at her were English words, mind a mess, but a word from her language soon came to me. Not the perfect word, maybe not even a good one.

I pointed at her, then at my heart, and I said, “Pain.” Shouted it, loud enough for her to hear over the bellowing wind.

Maybe she understood, maybe it was the pain in my voice she heard, but she gave up, stood up. Holding her hand, I dragged her through the rain, practically shoved her through the hole I’d opened up into my home before wriggling in myself.

Just from my short adventure, the straw had been blown around inside, I was soaked, so cold I shivered. But one look at her and I didn’t feel so cold any more, poor thing white as a sheet. Probably. It was hard to tell in the room’s gloom, I just knew how cold her hand felt when I’d grabbed it.

My heart still raced, breaths too, but looking after someone was natural for me, my mind clear as it pulled together the stray words I knew.

“Hyraj no water clothes,” I said, pointing at her backpack.

“What?” she said, voice strained as it fought against the noise outside.

Pointing at her this time, I said, “Water clothes up, no water clothes.”

It took her longer than usual to catch on. Opening her backpack, she took out some clothes, but didn’t start changing.

“Louise look at the door,” she said—I guessed she said, only recognising: “Louse look door”.

I wondered why until I realised she was shy. Nothing new to me, most of the girls at the orphanage getting like that as they grew older. So I turned to the door and listened to the howling wind and drumming rain and the muffled rustling of clothes.

Eventually, she said, “Louise look me.”

So I turned to her, smiling.

“Louise pain where?” she asked, face scrunched up and lips pursed.

I was confused, then it clicked: she thought I was hurt? That was why I went to get her, that was why she came with me?

It almost made me laugh, but I didn’t, trying to find the words to express the complicated way I had felt. Something I could barely put into words for myself in my native language.

“Louise see cold Hyraj, Louise pain here,” I said, pointing at my heart. Had to say it fairly loud, our voices easily lost to the noise coming from outside. And my hand trembled as much from emotion as from the cold. So recent, my body still remembered the ache.

She went to speak only to stop herself. After a few seconds of silence, she pointed at the floor next to her and said, “Louise here.”

I thought she was asking me if I lived here or something, but that sounded so stupid.

Only when she added to it, saying, “Louise here now,” did I understand.

Still confused, but I shuffled over and sat next to her. Before I could ask why, she answered, draping her blanket around the both of us, pulling me closer as she pulled it tight.

For a while, we said nothing, wind howling and rain drumming and my heart thumping in my chest. Even though the excitement was over, I couldn’t calm down.

Then she spoke and my whole body stilled to listen. “Hyraj no cold now, Louise no pain, okay?”

As if listening to her, my heartbeats softened. “Okay.”

Although the wind eventually died down, the rain never did, both of us nestled in my room as we ate fruit—she still wouldn’t try the sprouts—and some of her rations, a dry, dirt-like bread how it crumbled in my mouth.

And we talked. Rather than teach me words to do with our everyday life, she struggled and sighed and came up with creative ways to teach me words like “mother” and “magic” and even “childish”. However, the story she told with those words wasn’t a pleasant one, if only for the tone of her voice, fragile. I had never heard her sound fragile before.

I still couldn’t follow everything she said. What I gathered was that her parents were unhappy with her for some reason and called it childish, maybe meaning something she would grow out of? Anyway, because of that, she left. Months ago it seemed.

I had shown her my calendar and she had drawn up theirs, something like five seasons of three months of twenty-four days? It almost came up to the same number of days in a year that I was used to, but I hadn’t checked the total, not every month the same length.

Well, in her story, she had left and apparently camped in forests and sometimes bought more rations. Whatever else she said she had done, I couldn’t understand, by now her teaching side lost to her monologue.

As for me, all I could really get across to her was that I had no parents. “Parents… die?” she asked, sounding so sincere.

“No.”

“Parents… far?” she asked.

Fighting back the smile, I said, “No.”

It took a while for her to exhaust all the other possibilities and come to a conclusion that she said with the deepest sadness to her voice: “Parents no want Louise?”

I could finally say, “Yes. Parents no not-want Louise,” using that double-negative quirk to really make sure she understood.

Silence followed, her face stuck with a pout and a wrinkle on her brow. Eventually, she asked, “Louise sad?”

“Louise no sad. Louise small small, Louise seed,” I said, thinking seed was a good substitute for baby.

“That is it,” she muttered. A phrase that was in her book a lot, apparently something people often said.

The rain drummed and we talked, wrapped in her blanket, warmer than I had ever felt since coming here. Perhaps since ever.