Swing right, swing left, step back and parry. Maneuver the pole into a thrusting stance, step back and thrust, have my pole parried in turn and spin it in between my fingers in compensation, dodging a thrust aimed at my torso, and thrust once again in retribution. Almost a formula, a rehearsed dance with moves that only change in sequence. I had memorized the basics of the martial art, and Ard had been instilling within me the moves until even in my sleep I could fight against her.

 But these were the basics. Spiritually dead without a bit of ingenuity and quick wit to compensate for their monotone existence. In order to remind me that the exercise wasn't to condition me into a mindless practitioner of her art, but an active contributor and master who could change moves to fit the situation as required, she would throw in more advanced movements into her attacks. Those mostly involved dropping the spear altogether and move into hand to hand combat, something that despite Ard's small size she was deadly proficient in.

 I thought those were unfair, but Ard never accepted any of my complaints. But my complaints include me moping on the ground after getting kicked in the face, an impressive feat considering Ard's height. I didn't know hand to hand combat beyond an occasional wrestle and a couple of punches and kicks, how could I reliably defend and include an attack I didn't know or understand? And the odd, almost supernatural movements Ard would use against me aren't what I'm used to.

 Ard dodged the thrust, almost twirling around the pole as she jumped into the stab, dropping her spear and landing on her hands. Before I could react she burst into a flying kick aimed straight at my stomach. Her weight wasn't great, but the speed of her propulsion was enough to end the fight then and there. She jumped off of my stomach and landed gracefully on the ground in front of me, and I crudely slumped to the ground, clutching my stomach in pain.

 Unlike months prior Ard no longer healed the wounds she inflicted on me, and since she never broke anymore of my bones she had no reason to. I had developed enough proficiency within the art of healing to tend to my own wounds, given that they're no larger than a good sized cut. But my method of healing wasn't the same as Ard's, as it became obviously apparent that her method required too fine of a control over mana. I couldn't construct the spell she had taught me, as I couldn't see deep enough with my sight to understand what it was.

 Within the first month, after a literal month of trying to see deep enough to grasp the spell, I had figured out by accident a usage of the light webs growing within me. They were an extraordinarily dense form of my natural magic output, in retrospect it makes too much sense why I had exploded in the way I had when I broke the light strand, the amount of magic I was releasing was more than I had seen anywhere else. Why it had manifested as a white flame, I didn't know. There are still too many things I don't know about the webs.

 By gently influencing one of the strands of light, something I didn't know was possible, I could let out tiny bits of white magic and from there spread it on any wound I had. At first it would only increase my natural regenerative ability, something Ard has immediately scolded me on once she saw that scar tissue was forming where I would cut myself. But after more trials, and more experimentation over what it means to heal something without having it scar, I had managed to perfect a new spell that doesn't use the faery's spell structure.

 When I had tried to show the spell to Ard, and Ard being delighted by the prospect of me learning a magical spell that she thought would've taken me years to learn in only a month, she couldn't understand it. Perplexed and judging from her ears, annoyed, she would sit next to me and have me do the spell over and over until exhaustion took me. But no matter how long she tried to understand the spell, and how many times I replicated it, she couldn't understand. She decided to leave it to the Móráns, but they showed only slight interest to the prospect of a new spell. They were more concerned over the curse over my throat than they were in anything else, and have been throughout all this time.

 Of course, I hadn't forgotten that their estimated date for when they could remove the curse. Any day now, I hoped.

 I continued to clutch my stomach, rolling on the ground and laying my back flat on it, while Ard picked up her pole and started to playfully spin it around within her hand. She would do this whenever I began to heal myself, it wouldn't surprise me to know she was bored waiting. But she wouldn't have to wait long. I wasn't nearly as proficient in healing as her, where it would take her roughly eight minutes to fully heal me, and much less than that to have me up and standing, it would take me twenty minutes to heal the bruises she had just given me.

 But the more practice the better. It was a significant improvement to the hour she had waited the first time, my rate of improvement shows a great gift rather than a slow and cumbersome crawl towards proficiency.

 From the corner of my eye I caught the sight of a brown mass moving rapidly towards us. Green eyes, dressed in trousers and a close fitting green and yellow tunic, the sight of Aoibheann moving faster than I had ever seen her before move. She took great bounds of leaps in her sprint, and within a moment she had arrived near enough to Ard to justify slowing herself. But she wasn't fast enough in her braking, and instead almost collided with Ard if it wasn't for Ard's ability to dodge the small and fast mass looking to accidentally tackle her.

 Aoibheann collided into a tree, thankfully her hands stretched out so as to break most of the impact, and then rapidly turned around and jogged towards Ard. Ard's ears was etched into the sign of confusion, her ears pointed down but still moving every so slightly up and down. "Aoibheann, did something happen? Why did you try to tackle me?"

 "We've figured it out! We know how to undo the spell now, can we do it immediately!? Saraid! Hurry up, I need you for this!"

 Aoibheann's literal shouting broke away into a slightly too loud voice, and although I've spent a long time with these sisters I still haven't gotten over the juxtaposition between their expressionless face and the amount of expression they're able to emit from their voice. Her shouting I felt belonged to someone overly excited, and I expected her face to bear that sign, but it didn't. Instead her ears moved so fast they barely moved at all, a very rapid jiggling in place that I've never seen before was its presentation.

 But ignoring all that, undo the spell? Did she mean what I think she meant? I rolled on the ground and sat back up, having healed myself enough to do that much, and looked at Aoibheann and Ard in quick succession. Ard did something similar, her ears starting to move in excitement. But Aoibheann wasn't looking at either of us, instead gesturing in the air as if telling someone to come closer. I looked where she was staring and saw Saraid, with her majestically blue eyes, jogging tentatively closer and closer.

 She of the two had been the only one to maintain a serious level of fear over my presence. Whereas Aoibheann would tolerate my presence enough not to look visibly scared, although still twitchy, Saraid would keep her eyes constantly on me whenever I was nearby. I guess that played a part over why she didn't try to run over Ard in a mad dash, but instead played it safe by jogging over. But Aoibheann lost her patience and ran to her, grabbing her arms once she got close enough, and dragged her over as fast as she could.

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 Both of them stood in front of Ard, Aoibheann looking at me and then at Ard before finally settling on Ard. "It's finished. Can we take Attie for a while?"

 Ard's ears didn't betray her own emotions, the wiggling that I associate with excitement still ongoing. "Both of you would be lurking around in wait if I were to refuse, so I give permission. As long as I can join and watched, however."

 Aoibheann nodded enthusiastically, turning to me and almost jumping on me in excitement. I tried to stay still, looking at Aoibheann and at Saraid. Aoibheannn sat beside me and grabbed my hand, closing her eyes and as if the entire excitement were a dream her ears stopped their unsettling jittering and her body became as still as the trees surroundings us. Saraid joined in a few moments later, her eyes trained on me until the moment she closed them.

 Within my excitement, the idea of being able to speak as everyone else could, I couldn't help but move ever so slightly in anticipation. In turn this earned me a bone bending squeeze from both of the faeries next to me, until I no longer moved and my excitement found a better outlet than the one I had tried to give it.

 And a moment of excitement turned into two, and then three, and then into minutes. After ten minutes both faeries opened up their eyes, turning to me as if I had the solution to what they were doing. They both moved simultaneously towards my throat, each touching the side closest to them respectively. Both nodded, and then Saraid got up and moved towards Ard. Aoibheann got up as well, but only moved to the side, still staring at me. I looked at her, and then at Ard. What?

 "Is that it?" Ard asked in my place. Aoibheann nodded.

 "The rest is up to him. I doubt he knows how to speak, he'll be like a newborn bláth, unknowing of anything related to his own movement. Try to make a noise, Attie."

 A noise? I opened my mouth and breathed. How do you make a noise? How does that work? Was all this waiting just the preamble to the quest of trying to make a sound, any sound? Ard nodded in understanding and walked up to me. "Just to be clear, he doesn't know how to make a noise himself, correct? Can't he do one involuntarily, then?"

 "Possibly. Try hitting him to see."

 "We're one in heart, Aoibheann. Sorry, Attie. Grit through it."

 I nodded, I didn't know any other method of forcing someone to make sound than to beat them. Ironic considering I never made a noise from it myself. But a little pain would be a welcome sacrifice if it served as the first step to my future progress. I grit my teeth, straightened out my posture, and watched as Ard made a gentle spin of her pole, and then made a quick whip of it as she slammed it against my shoulder.

 "Uhk."

 Through the deep and bruising pain of Ard's strike I had managed to make a single sound from out of my mouth, the voice boyish but still distinctly masculine. Was that my voice? Was it? I ignored the pain of the strike and looked up to Ard, her ear wiggling in excitement as they had done before. As if proud of the strange guttural utterance she stood tall, her chest slightly puffed out, and she hit the floor with the butt of her pole on the ground once, as if trying to show her pride through the strike.

 "So you've two had done it. Congratulations, Attie. And thank you to you, Aoibheann, Saraid. Is there more either of you want to speak to me or Attie about, or can I begin my teaching of Attie?"

 Both of them looked at each other, taking a moment to grasp and understand the question. Both shook their head no. Neither of their ears wiggled anymore, as if they were bored of the entire situation they wordlessly left. Saraid no longer stared at me, perhaps she forgot I was supposed to be a source of fear.

 Forget all that. I had made a noise! I got up, clutching my shoulder as it still hurt, and moved closer to Ard. She looked up to me, her ears wiggling. She nodded, as if understanding the thoughts I had wanted to convey.

 "Now comes the more challenging part, for you. You understand my speech, correct? But that is only through a spell, and it requires constant magic in order to maintain. But besides this, you will not be able to speak it without literally understanding the words as they are naturally, literally instead of subjectively through the spell. I will be spending more time with you until you're proficient enough in speaking and understanding our language."

 A new language, huh? I nodded, enthusiasm still dripping from my gestures. Ard gestured for me to crouch, which I did. She touched my head, and then moved away. Then she started to speak gibberish, a strange melodic pattern that ebbed and flowed from her mouth. Is she speaking words or is she just trying to sing to me? She gestured for me to follow, she moving towards a tree as she continued to gesture. She sat next to it, and then began to pat the ground next to it.

 I followed and did as she gestured. She nodded, and then began to speak again. While in the middle of a speech, she casually tapped the center of my forehead again, and within the next moment I heard Ard's usual tone of voice and words.

 "-And that's why the spell is and has still been in effect. You've caught absolutely none of that, I know. I wanted to give you a taste of the sort of gift I've been bestowing you this entire time. But now it's time for me to take it away, but I don't expect you to learn the language over night. It had taken me a couple of months to figure out what your kind spoke, and I expect roughly the same amount of time until you've learned your own proficiency. But for now, let's begin the lesson."

 Ard began to speak, taking a stick from the ground and drawing pictures of the objects she wanted to talk about. The pictures weren't perfect and sometimes it took me a moment to figure out what she wanted to draw, but they certainly had an appeal all of their own. I could catch a glimpse of the sort of mind Ard had in her drawings, the taste of her thinking and what she considered prominent and worthy of making distinct clear in her images. For the trees she'd focus a lot of her energy on making sure the leaves are right, and when she drew a picture of a person, she would focus on the ears and then on the rest of the body. The face was nothing more than two dots, the dots meant to show the eyes.

 She was still a much better artist than I. Given that she seemingly had an infinite amount of free time I would think she spent more time than a person should on drawing and painting, but today that served her well.

 She taught me the basics, words that represented basic and common concepts. Things like the common names of plants, she had no direct translation for the concept of a plant except for a word that literally meant all life, the name of clothes, the cardinal directions, the list goes on. By the time the sun had set, I had thoroughly forgotten nearly all of it except for the word for trees and the cardinal directions. I had learned more, probably. Hopefully. Hopefully she won't be mad if she ever tests me on it.

 But I'm starting to think she's putting the cart before the man here, I didn't know how to utter a single word. And as fascinating as learning her language is, it's pointless if I couldn't use it.

 Was Ard already aware of that? She tapped my forehead one final time and began to speak in a language I understood.

 "This is all a premier. First we must get you to figure out how to make sounds. Would you prefer to try now, or tomorrow? We'll figure these things out while the days progress, don't worry about rushing things. You have a decent amount of time to figure this all out."

 If she meant either the entirety of my natural lifetime or until next fall, I didn't know. I'm leaning on the former. I nodded. But how do I make sounds? I had made a sound when she whacked me with her pole, but that wasn't voluntary. And I don't fully understand the sensation I felt when the sound did come. Almost like I had just exhaled. Why could I exhale but not make a sound that wasn't the sound of my breathing?

 These things don't make sense, if Aoibheann had bothered to explain to me the spell perhaps I would understand the exact mechanisms of what the curse had limited and what to do now that I've been made capable of using the previously locked features of my body. But that, for now, wasn't a major issue. I looked at Ard and tried to make a noise, but nothing came out. I tried to breath, and sound of breathing did come out. What's the difference here?