When the Hive Queen woke up, she quickly climbed out of her bed and checked for Elise, which was now freed from her previous work. Sylvia is already very much looking forward to the lessons. After the morning chores the family eats breakfast together. Then Elise starts her first lesson for the children at the big table in the dining room. She chooses this room because the living room with the sofa is too comfortable for learning. After all she needs the attention of the kids to conduct her lessons properly.
Elise decides to start with teaching reading and writing. She gets the bestiary and opens the first page to start reading single words from the book and explaining which word means what. Elise is not a professional teacher and notices quite fast that especially Erik has problems following her. After some thought she decides to start with letters instead of whole words. This proves to be the right choice, allowing her son to better follow the lessons.
Time flies by and it is soon time for lunch, where the rest of the Zarax meat is prepared. Mark works as usual in his smithy and Elise decides to prepare the meals for today. The family eats together as usual and talk about their respective day. After lunch, the children help with the dishes again, which makes Elise smile. Sylvia is eager to learn more and wants to continue their lessons. Erik lets himself be guided by the Hive Queen and agrees to continue the lessons, which is fine with Elise.
At the end of the day Erik has made some progress, while Sylvia on the other hand is way to fast. Sylvia soaks up knowledge like a sponge, she hardly needs repetition to learn the letters. Like last time the Sylv Queen tries to hide her true learning speed in front of Erik in an attempt to not discourage him. On the other hand, she does not hide her progress from Elise by giving her subtle hints. The mother notices right away and can guess Sylvias reasoning, with which she agrees herself. In fact, Elise is quite happy to notice that Sylvia is considerate and that she pays attention to the feelings of others around her.
Dinner time arrives and Elise stops her lessons in order to cook a soup in the kitchen. Erik now looks pretty exhausted from the long lessons today, while Sylvia is still full of energy. This is probably connected to Sylvia's high mental maturity, her interest in new knowledge and her faster metabolism compared to humans. The Hive Queen still eats about the same portions as Mark and Elise together, who are human adults. This is not even the maximum amount of biomass, which the Hive Queen could consume. In order not to burden the family too much she is actually still reserved …
The family prepares to go to bed as usual. Elise takes Sylvia with her to the bathroom to help her clean herself. While Elise washes her hair, careful to take care of her antennae, the Hive Queen asks, “I noticed that Erik is … exhausted from the lessons, I think we should take small breaks.”, she pauses for a moment and turns her head to see Elise directly into her eyes before continuing, “I really want to get extra lessons without Erik noticing ….. If possible”
Elise pulls her hands back to the edge of the bathtub as Sylvia turns her head towards her. She already expected that Sylvia would address her on this subject, based on the observations she has made so far. With a proud look Elise replies, “I am overjoyed that you have such consideration for Erik, which shows your inner strength. As a reward for your thoughtfulness, I will give you the extra lessons!”, after a moment of consideration she asks, “Do you have anything specific planned yet?”
“Yes! I thought we could have my extra lessons at night. As a Sylv, I am usually more active at night and Erik usually goes to bed early.”, replies Sylvia enthusiastically. Elise agrees to the proposal and consents to tutor her each day after dinner. They continue with their washing activity where they stopped earlier and then proceed to their bedroom. Sylvia is still sleeping in Mark’s and Elise’s room. Mark can easily find something to do after dinner, until Elise is done with her evening lessons. These additional lessons are limited to about one hour to stay within reason. The topics quickly become very complex, as the Sylv Queen quickly understands complex things and asks many questions.
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When the next day dawns, Sylvia has already acquired some useful knowledge that will later help her learn magic. For example, Elise has already taught her the basics of fire. The demonstration with a candle was very impressive, on which Elise showed that fire needs both fuel, here in the form of the wax and air in order to prosper. To demonstrate the second point, she cuts off the air supply to the candle by placing an upturned cup over the candle. After a minute she removed the cup and the candle was out, even with enough wax remaining.
In this manner Elise continued her lesson, teaching Sylvia some basics she needs for the use of magic later. After all a good understanding behind the processes of a spell is one of the keys to casting it successfully. Without an understanding of how fire works, it is not possible to learn fire-based spells. When Elise learned magic, she already had a very good education as a necessary foundation. Elise Sternensucher is of noble descent, which allowed her to get said education in the first place. Her noble house had a ‘violent clash’ with the church when she was still a teenager. As a result, house Sternensucher has fallen from grace and Elise became an adventurer soon after. In her adventurer career she met Mark the smith, who is her husband now. They moved together to Everglade Forest where they started a family. She is now a proud mother and happy with her current situation.
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Erik is a rather quiet boy. He has always lived with his parents in the middle of the Everglade Forest. The forest is very dangerous, so he can hardly play outside. He likes to spend a lot of time in his room, where he keeps his two picture books in addition to various wooden toys. He knows he is different from the other kids in town, he thinks it might have something to do with his house being the only one not in Westerville.
Since Mom brought Sylvia back to their home, everything changed. Suddenly he had a new playmate, who spends time with him. He is still a little overwhelmed that he sees Sylvia every day and she keeps doing interesting things too. She looks different than the other kids he knows from Westerville, but Mom said its fine, so he doesn’t think too much about it. In fact, she is really nice and makes his days much more lively. He needs some time to adjust, but he likes it already.
They also got new pets, like Spinny the drone. Erik noticed that it seems somehow connected to Sylvia, but he doesn’t fully understand. Mom called it a Sylv, just like Sylvia, but they can’t be from the same species. Sylvia is clearly humanoid, while Spinny is like a big spider thing. They are clearly different and therefore can’t have the same origin, even he knows that! He has a hunch that he is missing some important information and that he might be wrong, so he prefers to keep quiet about it and continues to observe.
Sylvia is still learning a lot and likes to ask him questions. He finds it great to answer her questions like a big brother. The amazed look in her eyes when she looks at him in admiration and then praises him with her cute voice. Simply wonderful! He has to maintain this image, this position at any cost. When Sylvia started to learn about things he didn’t know himself, he felt the need to catch up in order to remain as the big brother. In the end this sounded easier said than done. It is hard to match Sylvias pace, but until now he managed to do so. He likes the approving look from Mom, after he learned something new, which keeps him going.
He didn't used to get as much attention from Mom as he gets now, because she was busy with her job as adventurer. He wants to savour this time, as it was much rarer in the past. He never complained about her absence, but deep down he missed her. To sum it all up, he is quite happy how everything developed. Since Sylvia arrived everything is much more active, more things are happening and he likes the small adventurer it represents!