We had accorded an hour per day that I could visit Orphela and ask for a class on reading. From three to four in the afternoon, she would be at home, with a children’s book opened over the table, looking out the window and waiting for my arrival. I hated to think she did that every day, even when I was nowhere on this world.

“I am sorry for being a nuisance.” Was the greeting I always uttered.

“None of that, Terus. Now that you are there, let’s read some farm tales, shall we?” She used to say in response. Sure, sometimes it was some other book, but the spirit of her response was the same.

It took me less than a session to learn the alphabet from memory. The names of every letter. That put a smile on my face, the fact that even letters were sure of their name. It made me feel that maybe there was a sense behind my insistence on differentiating myself from Cirruin. An A was not a B and would never be. Sometimes an S was a Z but I considered that to be absurd.

In our second lesson I learn to spell the name of my dreamer, and immediately after asked Orphela to teach me how to spell mine. Cirruin. Terus. Like a child learning to spell his family name before his own. Cirruin. Terus. Not Cirruin and Terus, or Cirruin or Terus: I spelt them separate, as discrete entities. Maybe Cirruin, then Terus would be the most appropriate interpretation.

In an occasion, while I tried to decipher the text under a hastily drawn picture of a bovine, a butterfly fluttered into the room and landed over the mantelpiece, spreading her wings of blue waves and golden sea foam, of auric clouds cluttering a noon sky.

Orphela stopped chewing on her buttered piece of bread and ran to the kitchen room, probably to stash it away, into a place sealed away from the purloining little legs of insects.

She extended her wings, moved them up and down, the butterfly. Scales, she had scales on them, much like dragons, like only dragons I had thought until then, do.

“Orphela, if I learn to read, would there be books that let me see more of these,” I said when she came back. I was careful enough to not move and scare the little insect away.

“Of course, Terus, the library has books about most things men know. If you can understand them, well… that’s a whole other matter. Some are so cryptic even scholars have a hard time learning from them.”

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“I see. Reading isn’t enough, then?” I asked with a sour expression. I thought about eating the butterfly. How did it taste? Would books answer that question?

“The words may be similar to any other set of them, but the concept they represent can get unfathomably complex.”

I sat up and snatched the bug from the table. Those tantalizing wings had to be delicious. After getting the damn thing into my mouth, my eyes began watering. The taste was… interesting. Probably what you’d call bitter. It was not the taste of charred flesh, that I can say.

I clumsily walked up to the window and spat the half-chewed insect.

“I am sorry, your life was not worth the sensory stimulation you provided,” I apologized to the remains of the butterfly.

Orphela observed while giggling. She seemed to be half perplexed, half delighted by my behavior.

“That’s one way of keeping the butter safe.”

“They taste awful.” I informed her. Looking to the garden, I noticed the bugs were gathering around a particular plant. “Do those white flowers taste like butter?”

“No, those are kasmines. I have no idea how they taste: we don’t eat them.”

I knew humans farmed. I had thought, so far, that most of the plants in the city provided some sort of useful product to the populace. Even dragons knew certain herbs and barks could be used to diminish the impact of, or even cure, some illnesses.

“What are they for? Covering wounds? Making… dirty… hot… water… the thing done with leaves in hot water.”

“Tea, Terus, it’s called tea. And no. Jasmines are for people to admire and smell and… for something else.” She concluded, her face devolving into a sad frown with each passing moment.

“Terus, can we cut today’s class short? I want to go somewhere, and I think you coming with me will aid you greatly in your understanding of people.”

“Wouldn’t people mind if they see us together in public?” I asked, remembering what she had told me a week prior, that rumors spread amongst the mouths of her fellow men and women like wildfires over a wilted forest.

“I don’t care what they say so much, after thinking about it. They see you hang out with Dariel, and he knows you are not a man, so let them talk.”

“Would there be an issue if I were a man?”

She nodded subtly, telling me to not ask anymore with her eyes. Because I had learned to read them, to interpret the subtle gestures she and Dariel made to say that for which words failed them.

Naturally, I didn’t comply. My curiosity was greater than my disposition to obey her.

“Why?”

“I’d need to explain to you so many things about human couples for you to understand, Terus. This truth not for you to know. Not today, not here, valiant Terus,” she said, winking, and in that moment I didn’t realize she was mocking one of our first conversations.

“Fine, I may have a tomorrow where it may be. And where would we be going next, Orphela?”

“To visit my mother, I don’t pay her a visit since last year.” She pointed out the window, to the potted plant where butterflies gathered “I was waiting for the jasmines to grow.”

And after she gathered a bouquet of the aforementioned flowers, we parted.