After a rare relaxing day, we set off at dawn. I had a lot on my mind as we walked at Hyraj’s brisk pace. While she had taken the time to read, I had sat with the old lady for a good chunk of the afternoon, listening to her waffle on.

It was hard to tell if it was because they were getting, well, senile, or if they just didn’t care any more, but old people really liked to say the most outrageous things with a nostalgic smile. She told me how her father would beat her mother until one day when her brother broke her father’s nose and almost strangled him to death; she was seven, watching through the cupboard doors where her mother had her hide to keep safe from her father’s temper.

That story was followed by how her own husband had proposed, a lanky young lad with a bouquet of frinchnef—lavender—as she was a few months pregnant and it was the only fragrant flower that didn’t make her nauseous. It wasn’t exactly subtle how she only spoke of her mother’s and siblings’ reaction to him asking for permission to marry.

There were many other stories not quite so extreme, meandering, filled with words I didn’t know, but that was fine. She just wanted to say them, I didn’t need to understand or even listen. That said, I tried. I wanted to know more about what living in this world was like and I wanted her to not be forgotten.

It was… a sad thing, I thought, how people didn’t like their children talking to old people. Of course, children didn’t need to know the outrageous stories, but there was something good in knowing that no family was perfect or normal or even ordinary. There was an unmarried uncle who lived with his lifelong friend, an older sister who was actually a mother and no one knew who the father was, a cousin who was in jail and would hopefully stay there for good.

Maybe I was wrong, though. Of course someone without a family would think any family was better than nothing. At the least, all that listening had helped me understand the local accent much better.

After mulling over everything through the morning, midday approaching, we stopped for a water break and I had one thing on my mind.

Reaching back, I idly stroked the “bonnet” the old lady had given me. Not much different to the muslin-like hand towel Hyraj had made me wear, just with some stitching to make it hat-shaped and two strips to tie under my chin. Underneath it, I had twisted my hair into a bun, but left loose inside the hat since Hyraj’s hair pins were too big to fit.

“Drink,” Hyraj said, offering me a cup.

“Thanks,” I said. Not felsinneo, but just sinneo, something I had picked up from the old lady. Well, she said it with a slight slur. Paying more attention to this sort of thing, I noticed that, if anything, Hyraj said felsinneo with a slight lisp; not all words, just a few of the polite terms she’d taught me. It made me think there was maybe an etiquette thing going on.

Finishing the cup of water, I pushed the pointless thoughts away and focused up.

“Hyraj, is it… usual to wear your hair in a certain way?” I asked, the word for “normal” escaping me.

“Is it that? Well, I suppose for most it is the butterfly braid,” she said, taking a detour to explain the word for butterfly (or what sounded like a butterfly to me). “It is a braid that is folded up, then held in place with a bow, the ribbon making a loop on both sides.” She loosely gestured as she spoke as if drawing in the air.

I resisted the urge to nod along, tapping my forefinger and thumb to help, then fell into thought. We sat for a while, cooling off in the shade.

Once she felt like we’d rested enough, she stood up, saying, “Carry on.”

“Can I—no, do you want me to… wear your hair in a butterfly braid?” I asked.

She paused in the middle of picking up her backpack, almost funny how she stayed like that with her knees bent and leaning over. After a few seconds, she finished the motion and said, “There is no need.”

But I felt like there was. “I think the people look at you, so I want to help,” I said, struggling for the words I knew so intimately, but had never had to explain before. The feeling of being looked at like you weren’t really a person. Whether because of my skin colour or because of being a woman—or because of being so young while leading around a child. The tension, hoping they wouldn’t make a scene, relief once their gaze was gone.

Another pause, one second passing, two—

“Very well, then,” she whispered and slipped her backpack off again. Before she sat down in front of me, she took off her hat and undid the ribbon on it. “Use this.”

“Okay,” I said.

For the second time, I braided her hair, admired how nice it still was. I tied her ponytail with the ribbon, then braided it, then used her strange clip to secure the end and redid the ribbon, trying to make it into the perfect “butterfly” bow. A little tug here, a little pull here, getting the wings even.

Pretty. With her hat back on, it reminded me of the hair buns I saw horse riders wear—the posh ones. But this looked more childish. Well, not childish, kind of girly. Feminine.

It didn’t really matter what I thought, so I shuffled back. “Done.”

Her hand came up, feeling it. Unlike last time, she couldn’t pull the braid over her shoulder to glimpse at it, so this was the best she could do. Facing away from me, I couldn’t see her reaction either. Could only hope she liked it.

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“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.” Well, it was more like: “I’m thanked.” Telling the person you heard them.

Nothing else to say, we carried on walking.

It was a more exciting walk today. There were people, mostly men, in the fields. Not only men, maybe three-quarters? Hard to tell. Small plants with bushy leaves grew, like wheat in colour, but they were definitely an underground vegetable, looking like ginger with thick, twisting roots. Covered in dirt, I wasn’t sure on their colour, but I saw glimpses of like beet? A reddish-purple shade.

“Do you know those vegetables?” I asked Hyraj, tugging by her elbow.

She turned to look, her steps slowing a moment before carrying on as they were. “Those are yorang. They are like hichjalt, but more bitter. That said, I have always had them served sweet,” she said.

Well, I thought of the hichjalt as sweet potatoes, so that made yorang not-sweet potatoes? Joking aside, I wondered if these were maybe the big carby food people ate here. After all, if it was bitter, why did they grow it? Not enough other crops for this time of year?

While I idly thought, I kept watching. Women and some of the men pulled up the plants and tossed them into a barrel, then a man with something like a forklift-wheelbarrow (no motor or anything) came along to pick the barrel up and wheel it away. Some of them tied the barrel before wheeling it, some of them didn’t—and one of them spilled it. I tried not to laugh, especially at the chorus of groans that drifted over.

The next field had something similar going on, but there were rows and rows of trellises with vines, I guessed berries growing on them. Again I asked her, lucky that this was another crop she knew about.

“They are for tea. This is the dry harvest, usually making for an almost sweet drink, but they will be dried in a bake-room first, so it should be a month or so before this particular batch is ready. There will be some batches from earlier in the season, but this last one is most treasured.”

She had told me about tea before, something that most people drank—why I thought of it as tea. I hadn’t known it was a dried berry, though. Kind of assumed it was a stewed leaf.

So I asked, “Could you tell me more about tea’s flavour?”

“That is it,” she said, lingering on the last word a moment before continuing. “A mild and soothing taste, with a…. Forgive me, my experiences with it are what we are unlikely to encounter, so I should say less on the matter.”

Although I was only more curious for hearing that, I didn’t want to pry. “Okay.”

The end of this field brought us to an even larger village made up of a few roads, even passing a stable on the way in—I didn’t see any animals inside, wondering what this world’s “horses” looked like. Not only that, the main road was paved. Cobblestone, but it looked flat enough, much more impressive than the dirt paths we’d followed so far.

For once, our arrival wasn’t enough to summon the remaining villagers. The people out and about gave us a look or two, but left us alone, maybe because Hyraj walked so confidently despite having never been here before. Still, her confidence was warranted as she took us straight to a bakery.

Her confidence didn’t end there, going up to the counter, putting down a couple coins, and saying, “Four slices of something fresh.”

The lady behind the counter looked fairly young to me, but she didn’t hesitate at all, taking it in stride. “Four slices it is. Soup? Sandwich?”

“Sandwich,” Hyraj said.

“That is it,” the lady said, amusing me to hear someone else say the phrase.

She asked a few polite questions while cutting slices for us, Hyraj giving polite answers that didn’t really say anything. I had noticed that at the other villages. Hyraj liked to ask what she wanted to ask and get the answers, but little else. Even with me, it felt like all our talking was lessons, hardly anything else.

I didn’t mind any of that. If she was a man, no doubt people would praise her for being serious and focused and driven. As a woman, they would criticise her for being cold, curt, and self-centred. I had seen it happen enough times.

Well, we had our bread and we found a spot on the outskirts to eat. Despite what Hyraj had said, we had nothing to put on our breads; the little forage we had left was stuff we needed to cook and making a fire right by a village or on a path was apparently rude. Not like I knew the etiquette for this sort of thing, so I trusted Hyraj’s word.

I didn’t mind. Water and bread was something I had even had for the odd meal in my old world, sometimes having no appetite.

So we slowly ate and drank and watched the people come and go, some wheeling in barrels, some wheeling barrels out, and there were some travellers too. Maybe they were merchants, trading things from their large backpacks, maybe people on their way home after working away for a while.

Eventually, Hyraj decided the worst of the midday heat had passed. We set off on the cobblestone path.

Unlike the empty roads before, we shared this with the odd person, her pace making sure we overtook those going the same way and we passed some going to the village we’d left. After an hour or so, we encountered our first wagon. A cart pulled by a “horse”.

I had been curious and my curiosity was certainly entertained, the horse somewhat like a skinny rhino, legs thick and short, a stubby horn between its eyes. It also didn’t have fur, leathery skin a dirty brown that, for all I knew, might have been from dirt.

While it walked with a delicate gait, there was something very obvious about how dangerous it was, tugging along a cart like it weighed nothing, every step deceptively quiet for its size. Even if Hyraj didn’t guide us to the side of the road, I wasn’t going to get close.

The fields we passed were more tea, all the way until we arrived at the next village in the late afternoon. It was about as large as the last and, after asking a local, Hyraj found us a room at the tavern. As curious as I was about what it would be like at night, I didn’t ask to go down, staying with Hyraj in our small room.

Another day, another breakfast of “porridge”, and we set off. Despite what Hyraj had said before about the large village we were heading to being called Hichdrej because of underground vegetables, it seemed like this was very much a tea-farming area. The only time it wasn’t a field of tea was because it was a bunch of barns that were probably the “bake-rooms” she’d mentioned, smoke trailing out their chimneys.

Over the afternoon, clouds gathered on the horizon and a wind started to blow, cold, especially since I had taken to not wearing my vest. While putting on my jumper helped keep away the chill, it didn’t help my worry, hoping that rain wasn’t for today.

Hyraj didn’t mention it, but it felt like her pace quickened.

So we strode, my poor legs burning, road soon busy with farmers heading home, wheelbarrows pushing past us to go back up to the bake-house, very distant rumbles of thunder.

Funnily enough, it began to feel familiar, reminding me of pushing through the chattering mums hanging outside the junior school, of being swamped in the hallway after a school assembly or between classes in the busier parts of my high school. Something soothing about being surrounded by people after so long alone.

Then the village came into view, more like a town. Mostly cottages, but there were some more brick-ish buildings, nothing too tall, thatch roofs, lampposts. I had to take another look at those when we reached them, for a moment thinking they might have electricity, but they were probably oil lamps, no bulbs inside.

Still, looking around at the buildings that would have been right at home in an old English village, it felt almost familiar.

Almost, but not quite.