Cutting hair is pretty fun.

I mean, I thought I’d be a zombie on my legs by now, but it seems that whatever pact with the devil I made in my sleep is still working.

Looking around the place, I now see more clean clothes and cool haircuts. And most of all, everyone is clean. As in, there’s been a washing craze since I started bringing soap around.

“Is it true that soap had to be rationed?” I ask the guy under my scissors.

“Molded brains even tried eating the damn soap,” the guy fiddles with his hands as he replies, “Stan came over and said his dog was going to eat them if they didn’t stop the nonsense. A couple of them thought that soap would clean their bodies from the inside if they ate it.”

I mean, it isn’t the most preposterous thing I have heard around the homeless, I suppose.

“Heh, careful. Also, don’t actually use this soap too much. The way it’s made, it might ruin your skin in the long run. Use a minimal amount on your face, at least. Spread the word, please.”

“Sure thing,” the man almost nods before catching himself. “Thank you for this, by the way. Tiberius started saying he wanted to learn how to give haircuts, but the unfortunate few who accepted ain’t satisfied at all.”

“You know, Quintus is better at decorating cakes than him, too. You’d think it was Tiberius missing an eye or something.”

The guy almost jams his head back on the pointed scissors as he laughs his heart out.

“Yo, yo, calm down, man. I don’t want to put these scissors through your skull.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he coughs, “this damn Human. It’s like going back to the barracks with you but in a good way.”

Not sure what that means, but it sounds like a compliment. I’ll take it.

“Done and done, anyway,” I say, removing some of the cut air from his neck with a towel. “We need a proper barber, you know? Is there anyone I can teach to do this?”

“Rotten roots, I’ll ask around. No one does much anyway. We’ll find someone with all their fingers, if possible.”

“Good,” I say and pat him on the shoulder.

I watch carefully as the man, whose name I really do not remember, and goes up to the bronze mirror to look at himself. I might have done this a few hundred times by now, but looking at a person finding again their identity is a unique experience. It’s kind of like seeing someone being born again. I don’t think you can get tired of the feeling—there must be some bundle of chemicals in the brain that make it a never-ending loop of dopamine and serotonin.

For but a moment, when I look around, with the warm sun rays of Amorium’s gentle climate illuminating everyone, things look good. I see people chatting with each other, looking around and shouting jokes, or fighting over who’s going to get the next haircut, who’s gotten the best loaf of bread. But there are also those who are now sharing some meat they got with the charity money—they are making sandwiches, and, while some scarf them down with ravenous egoism, a few others take barely a few bites since they are sharing the rest of their bites with others.

The duality of man. One shares their sandwiches, and one hoards it all; the latter, however, doesn’t have many people around him.

“Joey?”

I turn around to find my favorite blond.

“What’s up, Trufflebag?”

He looks blankly at me.

“T-dog? T-bone? Goldilocks?”

Truffles keeps staring and scratches his nose under the huge wooden peg.

“No? Nothing?”

“How are you?” He asks, completely ignoring everything I just said.

“That’s annoying,” I sigh. “Anyway, I’m fairly good. Somehow got some super crazy good sleep tonight, even though I barely slept at all. Which is weird. But again, I am around Elves and magic, so.”

“So?” Truffles asks.

“So… some weirdness should be expected?” I reply.

“Because of Elves? Are Elves usually weird?”

“I—whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

“Why doesn’t it matter?” Truffles frowns. “Didn’t you just say it’s weird? Doesn’t that matter?”

Oh my God.

“It’s weird because I used to live among Humans. There were no Elves where I come from. Also, no magic, classes, or levels.”

“Where do you come from?” Truffles asks directly.

“Far from here.”

“How far? What’s the name of the place? Can I ask the [Mage]’s guild about it? Also, do you know that you can ask the [Mage]’s guild for information because they have a library, and people read from there? And when do we have our reading lessons today? By the way, I tried asking the [Mages] at the Mages’ Guild, but they can’t share alchemy and trade secrets. They don’t even sell them, for some reason. Also, when are we making soap?”

I’ll admit that, even though I like the blondie, he just gave me a headache.

“Trufflebag, one question at a time. My brain can’t keep up.”

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

“Your brain?” Truffles asks.

“The thing inside my head that makes thoughts?”

“Oh, how does that work?”

I look at the man in front of me, a thin, strikingly beautiful blond guy who’d be all the rage back on Earth if you just put a second-hand military green parka over him.

“How about this,” I say, taking a deep breath, “reading lessons. Now. Soap, after you can read.”

“Ok,” Truffles nods as we get away from the barber chair set close to the water source. “Oh, by the way, I think we should poison all the [Soldiers],” the blond says in a low voice.

I think I might buy you a chihuahua if I find one, and a pink beret, too.

“I think not getting arrested for treason, mass murder, and, if it exists, terrorism, is an equally appealing option.”

“Being arrested…” Truffles muses as we get under the shade of a big tree.

“Tell you what, let’s start with our practice, alright? Oh, wait!”

My shout startles Truffles.

“I got an invitation from a [Knight] this morning. Is this the chick you were telling me about when you got the truffle? Can you explain what happened?”

“She—” Truffles goes silent.

“She… what?”

“We talked,” Truffles nods to himself. “We had a… discussion. I told her about you. She was interested.”

“Why are you being evasive?” I ask with a frown.

This guy was just roasting me with questions a second ago, and now he goes all omertà on me?

“The reading?” Truffles asks.

“Ok, whatever. I guess I’ll meet the girl when I go to this party.”

“We go,” Truffles blinked.

“What?”

…

Yeah, it appears Truffles got himself an invitation as well. Well, different yeasts for different beasts—it didn’t work, dammit. I thought it was going to be a better joke.

Whatever.

“So, what you have is called dyslexia. It means somehow, your brain, the thing in your head, makes it harder for you to read. I’ve dated a girl that taught people to read for a living. Learned some tricks from her, but still not an expert. So, I’ll throw some of my own creativity into the mix. You ready?”

Truffles raises his bent arms to his body, slightly nervous.

[Light]

[Light Shaping]

I make a big ‘C’ in front of us.

“There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet. But we are not learning how each letter can be read individually because of how Eng—language works. There are twenty-six letters but forty-something unique sounds. If people struggled to teach you how to read, it might also be because of that. So, we are going to learn all these sounds, and you are going to practice in your free time. It will take some time.”

Truffles shrugs.

“Ok.”

“The letter ‘c’ has… uh… wait, let me see if I remember.”

I’m trying to remember the IPA charts I read on some websites for dyslexics that my ex showed me. But they are all fuzzy. My once-prodigious memory isn’t there anymore.

Dammit, stupid memory! Start working! This is important! Dammit! I promised!

I stare at the ground harshly—this is probably the first time I have actually been frustrated about losing the gift I had.

Please. Please, work. It’s important. Please.

As if God heard my prayers, after blinking, I can suddenly visualize the phonetic chart in my head.

Oh?

“What are you doing with your eyes?” Truffles asks curiously.

“What? Sorry, I was staring at the ground.”

“Why did they shine blue?”

“What do you mean? My eyes have always been blue,” I look at the guy with a confused expression.

“It looked like you had a [Light] in them,” Truffles explains.

“Truffles, focus on the letter. Anyway, the letter c, the one you are looking at, has two phonemes. We are going to start with the phonemes, though, not the letters. It’s going to become a bit confusing, my man. Don’t get discouraged.”

I make a ‘k’ now with another [Light].

“This looks like the letter ‘k,’ but it’s actually the phoneme you would use to write ‘cat.’”

I cast several [Lights] in quick succession to write both ‘cat’ and ‘kæt,’ its IPA equivalent.

“Up there is the word the ‘cat,’ below how you would write it in phonetic spelling. We’ll learn to associate those consciously until you can do it on your own.”

Truffles nods.

“Now, ‘k’ sound. Let’s try it together. First of all,” I manipulate the phonetic ‘k’ and bring it in front of Truffles. “Start feeling the shape and repeat with me. k.”

“k,” Truffles says as he feels up the phoneme.

“Alright. Look at the phoneme very closely. Put it in front of you. I’ve poured quite a bit of mana in it, and it shouldn’t break.”

Truffles keeps repeating ‘k’ for a minute as he touches the phoneme and puts it in front of him to stare at it.

I look around and see several people looking amusedly at us.

“Alright,” I say, “now we are going to associate the phoneme with the letter. Remember, though, there are several ways you can pronounce the letter, ok?”

I move the big ‘C’ in front of him, and he grabs it with the other hand.

“Now, start repeating the sound again. This time juggle the letters together.”

This time, Truffles gets stumped a couple times, stammering.

“It’s fine. We need to go slow because these things need to be relearned. Imagine there were a bunch of scribbles on a piece of paper. We are canceling the scribbles one by one and putting the right letters and phonemes over them. Eventually, it will become second nature. It’s important that you always say them out loud and have sensory feedback. Touch and sound are the easiest things.”

I let him familiarize himself with the process as he keeps repeating the k with some uncertainty as he switches back and forth between the letter and the phoneme.

After a couple of minutes, he looks up.

“I think I’ve got it.”

“Alright, let’s move on to the next. Vowels are a big pain in the ass because there are many ways you can pronounce each of them. But don’t worry. You can already speak. At some point, you’ll put them together by instinct. So, cat,” I say and take the letters back from him to recompose the word.

“The letter ‘a’ in ‘cat’ is the æ phoneme. It’s one of the most common phonemes.”

I move the phoneme-shaped [Light] to Truffles.

“So, let’s pronounce it as you familiarize yourself with the phoneme, alright? It’s æ. Keep repeating.”

He does so as he repeats the process he went through with the ‘k’ phoneme.

I give him the letter ‘a’ after a few minutes, and he starts switching back and forth between them.

We go through the ‘t’ phoneme, too.

“So, let’s read up, alright? Now, tap each phoneme. You read the letters individually. I’m going to space them apart and then write them on paper progressively smaller. All good? We can even use different handwriting. If it’s too much, we’ll make more [Light] shapes, too. So, like this, follow my lead.”

“C,” I say while clapping softly.

“C,” Truffles repeats my gesture.

“a,” another clap.

“a,” he claps.

“t,” last clap.

“t.”

“Read it all together,” I say.

“C-a-t,” he says, clapping three times.

“Alright, pretty good, pretty good.”

“C-a-t. C-a-t. C-a-t.”

Trufflebag gets stuck in a loop as he focuses on the word and starts repeating it. Honestly? This isn’t much. I know that longer words pose an exponentially more difficult challenge to dyslexic people. But it’s also to build confidence with him.

I remember a story from a female cousin of mine. She told me that her driving instructor drove her around the first time, letting her believe she was almost doing everything on her own even though he was actually steering the car through the most difficult parts. Sure, you have to be careful that your student doesn’t drive anyone over, but at the same time, you are pretty much assured they won’t be scared out of their mind as you start letting go.

That’s what I’m doing here, pretty much.

“Alright, let’s do a few more words…” I trail off as I see a guy missing an eye and several fingers getting close.

“A filthy Worm teaching a retarded child?” Arminius looks at me with disdain.

Truffles fidgets as I move between him and the Elf. My anger flares a little, but I grit my teeth and push it down.

“What’s up to you, Arminius? Didn’t know you were also in the business of disparaging Elves. Been expanding the business? What’s next, getting angry at rocks?”

“Do you want to go for another sparring lesson, Worm? Think you need to learn some more? I’d be glad to teach you.”

I look back at Truffles, who’s now fidgeting with his hair, and then at Arminius.

Sometimes, you gotta get rough to help someone, I suppose.

“Sure thing, pal. Sure thing.”