Varus traced the quill over the paper, his hand moving with the practiced ease that came with untold thousands of hours putting dreams to paper, but this time he had an audience, which was itself a first for him. ‘Even when I was alive, nobody really did much but laugh at my daydream of one day writing novels. To think, I had to die to live out my fondest dreams?’ He snorted, and two little faces stared up at him with questioning eyes, but he brushed it off with a shake of his head. “Focus.” He said as they stood on tiptoes by his desk, their tiny hands holding on so they could look up, he held it up the paper again and again after each letter was written.

But it was Tuesday who first brought up a problem after the fourth letter. “I don’t understand.” She pouted, “How do you remember all those letters?”

“Yeah!” Hannah answered and stomped her tiny foot. It seems impawssible!”

That gave Varus pause. His quill stopped dead in mid-flow, his red eyes went dark, and his memories were dredged up from the deep time of his youngest years when he had to learn the letters for himself for the first time.

‘Kah is for Killing, Kan you do it well? Beh is for bell, that rings a death knell…’ He hummed the little tune over again as his red orbs glowed again to life, his head nodding along as the lyrics returned to him as if he’d learned them yesterday.

“There’s a song…” Varus said and paused, he rubbed his thumb and forefinger against his white jaw as he reconsidered it. ‘The song they used for me was meant for young would-be knights, it’s not exactly right for a couple of gentle peasant girls…’ He thought, and then snapped his fingers, prompting fresh wide eyed stares up at him.

“I have it!” He quipped and began to sing a modified version of the music. “Kah is for kitten, and I’m not kitt’n you. Teh is for the tree that you climb up with me…” He kept the rhythm he was taught, but changed each letter to something that was lacking in the violence that characterized his youth.

It didn’t take long. Their tails were bouncing around behind them as they bounced up and down on their toes, their voices got louder with every lyric, and Varus took up the role of ‘conductor’, bouncing left and right in a U pattern while they sang the alphabet song he’d come up with.

“Zeh is for Zehnna, with its patchy fur! Geh is for the girl who loves to dance and twirl!” And with that line, they twirled on their tiptoes before picking up the next line. “Deh is for Dada, looking after us so well!” And on and on it went.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“There you go! Now you’re getting it!” Varus said and went back to scribbling letters in the flowing script while they kept repeating the bouncy, cheerful lyrics while the midnight hour came and went outside, and when he was done, he held the paper out where they could easily see it.

“Make the lines like this and this and this and then you’re done with deh.” Varus explained, moving his hand up and around in the shape of the familiar letters of the alphabet.

“Here, why don’t you try?” He asked, and when their feet went flat on the floor, he handed them a pair of white feather quills of their own, and then taking his bottle of dark ink, he handed it to Tuesday before handing a sheaf of papers to Hannah.

“But… don’t you have some writing to do?” Tuesday asked as she received the little black glass bottle into her left hand while she clutched the quill in her right as if it were some precious, sacred relic.

Varus felt a faint pang in the place where his heart should have been, but brushed it aside with a shrug. “It’s fine, what’s one more interruption? You’re obviously not tired, so I’ll get to work when you are.” He reassured her, and the little kitsune girl’s face lit up, she practically flopped down onto her bedroll and set the ink down between her space and Hannah’s.

Hannah paused, staring down at the paper with wide, disbelieving eyes, “Thank you, Varus!” She said and gave a series of rapid, stiff bows at the waist before her child’s smile returned and she dove after Tuesday and landed on her own bedroll, slapping down the paper next to the ink.

With nothing better in mind to do in that moment, Varus got up from where he sat and approached the place where the two lay with dancing tails and bouncy, kicking feet rising and falling as their busy little hands got to work holding quills and scratching out the patterns he showed them while they sang his newly renovated alphabet song in bouncy, child voices.

‘I suppose… I can take a few days off writing that novel just to make sure they get the hang of it. After all, who knows how widespread literacy is in the world today? It must be around or my library books wouldn’t be taken by passersby, but it might be rare at least. If so, being able to read and write is an unparalleled advantage for them both, guaranteed to give them good lives when I find someone to take them. And if literacy is common, but they can’t do it, they’ll be crippled from the start. Yes, Varus, you should definitely help them with this, it’s too important not to.’ He reasoned, and recalled their earlier surprise when he wasn’t angry over the broken glass.

‘Whatever way they lived before, I’ll give them a good way going forward.’ Varus decided, and standing directly between the two, he bent forward to see that they were doing letters, but also…doodling.

“Deh is for dada…” They hummed, and their quick little hands darted away from the marking of letters, to draw the crude outline of a black robed lich standing between two little crude doodles that, based on the tails, could only be each other.

Varus had no idea how long he’d been without his heart, but the bigger mystery by far as he looked down over their ‘work’, was, ‘If I have no heart… how can it ache?’