The Zs floating above Itra’s head popped out of existence, as she rose her head to have her eyes meet mine. She woke up from the nap she took earlier, which I spent twenty minutes waiting through. Usually that wouldn’t be much time, but since I wasn’t doing much to take up the time, it went by slowly.

“Ugh, I fell asleep,” Itra grumbled and caught sight of me, “oh, hey Illate. How long was I out?”

“Just twenty minutes,” I answered, “not too long.”

“Twenty whole minutes!?” Itra stiffened, “Why didn’t you wake me up sooner?!”

Itra scrambled through her stack of papers, grabbing the resources she gathered for me. Not waking her up seemed an even worse decision, the more I watched her furiously skim through her materials.

Her stack of books gradually shifted over to different stacks, as Itra went through them. I previously thumbed through a few of those books myself, but they only achieved in making my head spin. It pointed out so many wrongs I did that I couldn’t make sense of it all.

Feeling uneasy about just staring at her, I decided that I would help her out with whatever she was trying to do. If I didn’t feel any awkwardness about waking her up, she wouldn’t have to be shuffling through her papers in a rush.

“Erm,” I sounded out, “is there any way I can help…?”

Pausing for a bit, book in hand, Itra came back with, “Yeah, sure. Wake me up next time.”

She resumed sorting the books, sending the thought of me to the back of her mind. Or, well, she was sorting the books for my benefit, so the thought of me probably sat a little further than the back.

Finally, Itra finished with her sorting, and grabbed one final stack of papers. She took the two sheets and set them on the table, facing me.

“Okay, I’ve narrowed down the items we’ll work through for today,” Itra sighed, “the rest will have to be covered tomorrow.”

“Sorry,” I apologized again, “that must have put a mess on your schedule.”

“It’s okay,” comforted Itra, “I’ll just take out some time from your lunch time later.”

“Oh…” I averted my gaze. “Sounds wonderful…”

Itra brought up her wrist to her smirking mouth, and did a poor job at stifling a giggle. Clearly, she found amusement in taking away my lunch time. Though, I supposed her lunch time would be shorter as well, so we’d be even with that action.

“Hey,” Itra snapped, “focus, look at the first paper, the one on your left.”

Groaning, I leaned forward and attempted to make sense of the paper given by Itra. I expected it to be alien to me, just like the textbooks I flipped through, but the contents surprised me. Instead of being a jumble of professional words, I found the paper to be easy to understand.

“Huh,” I mumbled, “this is so easy for my brain to chew on.”

“That’s a good use of figurative speech,” Itra complimented, “you should use it in a story of yours.”

“Oh, trust me,” I responded, “I will…”

I could already see the page I would write about our latest session. Once I gathered enough of these papers, I would show them to Itra as we neared our graduation. The look on her face once I do that...it’s bound to be amusing. Of course, I was also doing this to practice the new things she taught me about.

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“Ahem,” Itra cleared her throat, “As you can see, we’re here to work on those description skills of yours.”

Remaining silent, I waited for her next words to come. Along with that, I began filling out my name on the paper.

“You do know that when I clear my throat, that means you’re supposed to stop what you’re doing and look at me, right?” Itra asked, “Put your pencil down.”

Shooting up and quickly releasing my mechanical pencil from my grip, I went, “S-sorry!”

She sighed, putting her focus back on the paper, “Now pay attention to these sentences,” Itra pointed at a line of words on the paper, “you would say these are decent descriptions, right?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“No,” Itra corrected, “they’re not.”

A trick question!

“Oh, uhh,” I couldn’t come up with a comeback.

“Well, don’t worry, they’ll be decent in a bit,” Itra consoled, “because you’ll be working on them.”

“Huh?” I questioned, “What will I be doing with them?”

“Well, since you didn’t wake me, you’ll be heading straight into today’s activity,” Itra answered, “I want you to rewrite them.”

“Rewrite them?” I looked back at the paper, eying the odd prompts, “But how would I? They’re already complete.”

“Use your imagination,” Itra replied, “you have a lot of that, right?”

“I guess you’re right…” I looked back at the prompts, “these do look kind of incomplete, now that you point it out…”

Thus, I began scribbling out new sentences, adding a few more details into the prompts. For an idea of what I did, I turned “I ate the apple,” to “I ate the rotten apple,” and “the school bus passed by,” to “the yellow school bus passed by.”

“There we go!” I celebrated, at a slightly loud tone, “I did it.”

Itra grabbed the paper, looked over it, and passed it back, “No you didn’t, try again.”

“Huh?” I exclaimed, “How can that be?”

“You can do better than ‘ate the rotten apple’ and ‘yellow school bus passed by,’” Itra responded, “give me more detail on the action being done.”

“Uhh,” I took the paper and slid it in front of me, “Okay…”

Now, I stared at the paper for a little while, before deciding on adding a few adverbs to add more detail to the actions being done, just like Itra told me to do. The sentences went from “I ate the rotten apple,” to “I ate the rotten apple quickly,” and “the yellow school bus passed by,” to “the yellow school bus passed by really fast.”

I slid the paper to her, asking, “Is this better?”

Her eyes narrowed at the sight of the paper, and she responded with a, “seriously?”

Tendrils of fear took hold of me, as I gulped down the nervous anticipation rising past my throat. All this sentence making threatened to take up the rest of my day, and the once-easy-looking paper started to become more and more of a menace.

“Hey, calm down,” Itra said, shifting her demeanor in response to my tense reaction, “it’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with not doing it right on the first try.”

Itra scribbled patiently on the paper, then passed it back.

“I made a change to the apple one,” Itra informed, “use it as an example for the other.”

Looking at the paper, Itra changed “I ate the rotten apple quickly,” to “Having run out of time, I hastily bit into the putrid apple, which released its acrid juices into my mouth.”

My brain finally processed the activity’s goal, and I exclaimed, “Oh!”

“You get it? Try the bus one,” Itra told me, “add whatever backstory in your head, and slyly steer a little attention to some simple details.”

She didn’t even have to tell me, my hand was already sliding down the paper, pencil in hand, as she said what she did. Once she finished her sentence, I finished mine as well. Sliding the paper over once more, I held more confidence in my response than the last two times.

“As I waited at the busy intersection, a school bus sped by, with a dozing driver at the wheel,” Itra read aloud, then smiled, “that’s better.”

I did an inner-fist pump, celebrating my new success. Itra’s smile deepend, noticing my expression conveying my pride. Then, she pointed on the paper again, at the other prompts on the page.

“Now do the rest.”