After the beast fled, Hyraj stood there for a good minute before she let down her guard, keeping her wand in hand the whole time. Not even glancing at me, she walked over to the fire pit and sat on the stone bench there.

I didn’t know what to think. There wasn’t relief that the creature had been scared off, no fear of Hyraj, just a numbness. Things had happened and I knew too little to even try to understand.

So I walked over and sat next to her, saying nothing. Out the corner of my eye, I saw she still held the wand tightly, tense.

Silence, stream trickling, and that was all. No whistling wind or rustling leaves, birds silent if there at all. No, the birds had probably fled as well, scared off by that beast or by the magic.

One minute, two, who knew how long had passed before she finally spoke, her voice soft. Not fragile, but soft.

“Carrots, onions, they are plants. Plants eat magic. Animals eat plants. Animals full of magic. We eat plants. We full of magic. Magic eats plants, but we too full of magic. Big fire to eat a tree. Big magic to eat animals. Bigger magic to eat us.”

She wasn’t rambling, but the simple way she spoke and the pauses between sentences made me think she was coming up with it as she went. Not her usual way to explain things.

Raising the wand, she kept the tip pointed down, but held it for me to see.

“This is wand. Made of special metal. I make ring, wand makes magic go. That animal… very magic. Can make lots of pain. I feel it.”

I listened, following along as best I could. Didn’t know if the word she used before metal meant “special” or if it was the name for a kind of metal, though, these kinds of words the worst for me. Something I couldn’t stick to other words already stuck in my head.

Her lesson stopped there, but the magic didn’t. Reaching out with the wand, she pointed it at the pot and then a burst of cerulean light shot out, over in an instant, yet so bright I still saw it when I blinked. Belatedly, I thought to stand up and look in the pot.

Full of water.

It didn’t take her long to fill it up by “hand”, the stream of water she made bigger than what came out of a tap, but this had been instant. Not to mention, she only filled it up a little for cooking and it was completely full now.

I had no reason to think she had taken longer on purpose before. No, the wand let her do more. So much more.

Plants ate magic, then we ate plants. It reminded me of food chains in biology, especially biomass, how one fox ate ten rabbits who grazed on a hundred grass—how a small amount of pesticide on the grass ended up being concentrated in a single fox.

Like a huge fire was needed to burn a tree, a huge magic was needed to “eat” us. Never mind the ball of magic, even Hyraj’s bolt of fire only seemed to burn that creature’s fur. But it was still enough to scare it off. Probably not used to its prey fighting back like that, so it went to find something easier.

Something she hadn’t said… animals eat plants, then we eat animals. I knew nothing about all this. Maybe it was like “poison” and eating animals meant you had even more magic inside, maybe you could only have so much, any extra wasted.

Guessing did me no good. If only I learned her language faster, had the words to ask, knew the words so she could tell me.

So I went back to what she had said to think about that—and something stuck out to me. “Hyraj feel animal very magic?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, then swapped the wand to her other hand and held out her now empty hand. “Louise feel magic?”

I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to do, but there was a hand being held out, so I put my hand on top. The moment we touched, I felt a tingling, her hand so warm, almost hot.

“This is magic?” I asked.

She said nothing, held my hand, her touch almost prickling, every movement like little shocks on my palm. I thought it should have felt ticklish, but it didn’t. Such an unusual sensation that I focused on it more and more as everything else faded away.

Then she let go and it felt so sudden, not that she yanked her hand away or anything. I was just so focused. Used to that heat, it also felt cold….

The real reason: it had just been so long since I’d held someone’s hand or given them a hug. Almost three months? Well, if I didn’t count when there wasn’t something else going on—like a storm or a wild beast.

Anyway, I missed that. Holding the girls’ hands as we walked to school, giving them a cuddle when they felt sad, braiding their hair in the morning. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed it until now, almost overwhelmed by the urge to reach out and grab her hand again.

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But I didn’t.

That didn’t meant I was going to forget my feelings, though. I thought and thought and cobbled together bits and pieces.

“Hyraj, I can braid your head thread?” I asked, hoping I had the grammar right—and that “head thread” made sense for hair.

After a moment, she said a word while touching her hair. Never missing the chance to teach me another word.

“I can braid your hair?” I asked, softly smiling.

Her hand lingered up by her head and she silently clapped with it before saying, “Yes.”

Standing behind her, the first step was to undo her hair clip. I had seen her put the “bow” in before, but not close up, so I sort of assumed it worked like I expected. With my right hand, I picked at the string until I had a grip on it, then pushed with my thumb, opening it up; my left hand held her hair in place as I pulled the bow off, hopefully not pulling on her hair. She didn’t flinch or say anything, a sigh of relief slipping out of me.

I idly combed her hair with my fingers, admiring it. For how long she had been in the wild, it was well-kept. Thick, blonde hair, smooth to the touch, flowing past her shoulders, but not down to the middle of her back. No knots, I guessed she also brushed it at night or in the morning when I wasn’t around.

As much as I would have liked to play with it all day, I didn’t want to test her patience. So I gathered it into a ponytail, fiddling to get the starting position right, then split it into three bunches, ready to braid.

A simple braid. From the outside, over into the middle, left, then right, then left, then right. I felt clumsy doing it, used to doing young girls’ hair and then the reed thread, her hair much thicker than both. But it was an easy task as long as I focused and didn’t rush.

And I hummed as I braided, that silly lullaby she found so beautiful.

Neither a long nor a short time later, I finished, again fiddling with the “bow”, this time securing the end of the braid. I liked to put a hair clip at the base of braids as well, but that was mostly so the little ones still had a ponytail if the braid came loose. Life involved a lot of running about at that age.

Her bow on, my hands lingered a moment longer. I felt so much better. Something familiar, something intimate, something to drive away the loneliness for a while longer.

Then I forced myself to step back and, sensing that, she reached out to touch the braid, pulling it over her shoulder to inspect it. “Louise is good at braiding,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said, unsure what else to say. New to receiving compliments.

From there, we drifted back into our routine. However, I noticed that, for the rest of the day, she kept her wand in her hand. The next day, we stayed near the camp, same for the day after.

Over those days, I made no progress despite how much I needed to. It hadn’t sunk in until I was all alone in my room that I had almost died again. That, this time, my death would have had no meaning.

Without magic, I couldn’t stay out here alone. The stupid little axe I’d made wasn’t going to do anything if that “horse” came back or something else like it came along. I was just like the jelly creature, a snack.

Even if I did learn, though, I had no wand. There was a reason Hyraj had kept it in her backpack until now, probably expensive or rare or both. Something she didn’t want other people to know about—including me. Now that I did, she used it for filling the pot and lighting the fire, very skilled.

At least, I guessed she was. Despite how powerful her magic could be with the wand, she only filled the pot as much as needed, only started small fires, not burning up all the reeds at once. Thin threads of magic.

Wand or no wand, however skilled or not she was, I was definitely far away from being anywhere as good as her. Sitting naked by the stream while lathered up in ash paste, I idly made a ring with my hands. Only now did I realise I couldn’t even summon the magic. She always put her hands over mine, summoning it for me.

Oh well. Letting out a long breath, deflating, I folded in half, dejectedly scooping up water and pouring it over my legs. Little by little, I washed off the ash. Another thing I hadn’t thought of before, the water she made for me to drink was warm, would be nice for bathing. Well, if I could do it myself, I could have just sat in front of the fire, summoning water as I needed it.

But I still wouldn’t be able to protect myself.

Like an ache, that thought kept coming back. It honestly should have upset me. I loved my life here so much and I now knew I had to leave it behind, so why was I fine? I had no answer, so I just kept going. Finished washing and then went to sit in front of the fire that still burned from cooking breakfast.

One way or another, my life was going to change again, go back to something like it was before, yet very different. I didn’t know if there were orphanages in this world I could go work at. Maybe I needed to be able to do magic for jobs here.

Once I was dressed, Hyraj walked over. I had guessed by now that she wasn’t comfortable with nudity. Not everyone grew up with such little privacy, too few bathrooms.

“I think Louise will learn magic soon. You’re a good girl,” she said, patting my hand.

“Hyraj good girl too. Hyraj is a very good girl,” I said, sandwiching her hand with my other one.

She let out a breath of laughter, not really trying to pull away her hand.

However, my mood went the other way, that little praise I gave her opening the way to the thanks I owed her. “Louise is—I am very thanks for Hyraj. You give me lots of… words and magic, and I am very thanks. Very, very, very thanks,” I said, tearing up.

I wished I had all the words to tell her how much what she had done meant to me, but I only had “very” and “thanks”.

Squeezing her hand between mine, I whispered, “Very thanks,” one last time, then let go of her.

Too embarrassed to look her in the eye, I turned to the dying fire. Filled my head with the sight of it and the sound and the smell and the warmth.

Then her hand came, touching my chin. Just touching, asking, not demanding. And I gave in, turning back to look at her. She showed me a smile that touched her lips and her eyes with unshed tears really did look like tropical seas.

After a few seconds, though, those tears receded, mouth flat, leaving me wondering if I really had seen them at all.

She said something to me then, words I didn’t know. They weren’t explained either. So I memorised them, this secret she wanted me to keep. As if giving me time to do so, she spoke only again after a minute, using words I understood this time.

“Louise go with me?”