Making Friends

Naka entered the library with a look of consternation on his face. He had decided, albeit stupidly, to take a college literature this year and to make matter worse, every book on the list was in English. His lessons with Sorcha were going to make things a lot easier, but he still didn't speak it well enough to read an entire book comprised of words written in it, and then write a paper about said book. For the first book project he had chosen "Journey to the West." "Why" one might ask, would someone from Japan choose to do a report about that particular book? Put simply, because there was a copy on 'Amazon.jp' that just so happened to have a copy of the book written in japanese which he promptly downloaded onto his kindle. Still, he needed to have a place to read it and with the new Yosei (Fairy) that had moved into his dorm and his roommate Nilo, who had been tolerable given some back and for banter, but she made it very difficult to study.

As he walked into the library he noted someone else who would make it difficult to study but for different reasons, and he couldn't help but welcome said distraction as he made his way to the third level of the library and aptly decided to take his seat with Sorcha.

Tien was bored. Her miniature house still intrigued her, but she was starting to enjoy the company of having two room-mates, and little by little, she was losing the ability to entertain herself for hours at a time. Living inside Starlight Academy wasn't like anything Tien had ever experienced, or imagined experiencing, and she was starting to love its surprises, possibly even crave them. The adventurous spirit she possessed had always been stifled in the forests she loved so dearly, and now it was finally getting a chance to shine. In addition to adapting to a life indoors, and a life with humans, Naka was from a different country. The concept had been hard for her to understand at first, but now she was completely hooked. It was, as best she could comprehend, an infinitely huge place, infinitely far away, where everything was totally different - they didn't even use the same words that the humans here did. This opened up whole new vistas of ignorance for Tien, and she had at least double the amount of questions she'd had before. But the two boys she lived with had a very annoying habit; they would leave for long periods. Classes - a word she didn't understand - and meals, which she did understand, and things called 'studying'. She suspected Naka had done studying right in front of her; he opened books and stared at them.

Tien was very proud that she could read the alphabet, and associated words like 'ball', 'cat' and 'xylophone', but the books everybody at Starlight looked at all day were bizarre. They had the alphabet letters all jumbled up, and no pictures of balls or cats or dogs or xylophones. So far, the fairy had nobly refrained from telling her new friends (as she persisted in calling them) that they clearly did not know how to read, but this nobility was wearing thin. They kept abandoning her, leaving her all alone to stare at these gibberish books, and after sulking in her bedroom for a while, Tien decided that she was finished being a good fairy, and went after Naka.

It was easy to find him; the little fairy could follow scents as well as a bee could find flowers. She was getting more used to the cavernous hallways, though she still felt nervous and dwarfed by them. The library was much more comforting, with cramped aisles and, she was less pleased to see, an awful lot of those gibberish books. Wrinkling her tiny nose, Tien swiftly flew on, spotting a distant table - she knew the names of furniture now, thanks to her little house - where Naka was seated with a redheaded girl. Having been saved by a redheaded girl, Tien had formed a sort of prejudice that redheaded girls were Good People, who could nonetheless Be Slightly Mean For No Apparent Reason. After hovering above their heads for a while, she approached cautiously, stalling around shoulder-height.

"Naka," she said, her voice the volume of an average human's, albeit slightly softer and higher. "Are you here to do studying again? I've seen those books. They aren't real books. There aren't any alphabets in them at all! Come back home, okay?"

Naka shook his head when Tien showed up. Normally he got along with her to an extent and he'd developed a rather interesting way of getting her to change moods using western culture as the catalyst.
"Are you here to do studying again? I've seen those books. They aren't real books. There aren't any alphabets in them at all! Come back home, okay?" Sometimes he forgot her forest minded simplicity and of course, the fact that she couldn't really read. He was going to have to teach her... or Sorcha was because he still didn't speak english well enough to read and write it effectively. Still, he was happy when Sorcha introduced herself first, making it much much easier to deal with and saving a nature debate. He did, however, begin to plot ways to get the yosei (japanese word for yokai [spirits/demons] resembling western fairies) to start learning and such. A survival competition? That would certainly be the easiest way to go about this.
"I'm not ready to return yet. You know you should consider learning how to read these." He would say to her after Sorcha and Tien were done with their introduction.

Having spent her entire existence alone, Tien was beginning to crave the company of humans. They could talk with her properly - the bees and birds were too simple-minded, which may have sounded hypocritical to someone who knew Tien - and they could answer her many, many questions. There was a whole world outside of a San Francisco, or a forest, or even a big building like a Starlight Academy, and she was desperate to learn about it. Humans didn't walk around gathering food, seeking a mate, or building a nest - they talked and laughed and danced and cried. Tien wanted to see all of it, and her friend Naka was a good teacher. Well, he answered most of her questions and he hadn't threatened to squish her, and that made him a great teacher in Tien's eyes.

When the redheaded girl spoke, Tien's body turned, wings beating the air leisurely. "I'm Tien," she said, and attempted a bow that nearly unbalanced her. She straightened, and held her small head high. "I live with Naka. Sort of. I mean, I have my own house." It was clear that this was the most amazing and awe-inspiring thing that had ever happened on the planet.

Her posture drooped a little, though, when Naka said he wasn't coming home. But when he alleged that she couldn't read - how rude! - the fairy put her hands on her hips, lips pursed. "I can too read," she argued, mortally offended. "I know all the letters and pictures! You humans just pretend that those are proper books."

But Tien had found herself corrected on more than one occasion, and at last a flicker of doubt crossed her face. "...Right?"

Tien watched Sorcha speak, her lower lip stuck out mutinously. It hadn't been easy, learning how to read, and she was very proud of this skill. She'd had to teach herself, as she had with every skill and ability. Being told that, in fact, she didn't know how to read was deeply wounding. As ignorant and childlike as she was, however, the fairy was shrewd enough to know that this redhead could read, at least in the way Sorcha and Naka thought of it, and was trying to sound less clever to make Tien feel better. It didn't fool her one bit, and was quite insulting in and of itself - but that was redheads for you. They did good things, but they didn't know what to say while doing them, so they said mean things.

She, however, was magnanimous and forgiving enough to let it go. "I could be your partner," she said generously, as though she were doing Sorcha a great favour. "If you need one, I mean."

Her wings blurred as Tien descended sharply and landed lightly on the table. She walked over an open book, looked down at the assembled letters, and pointed a small hand at the page. "How do I read this, then?"

There was probably a trick to it, like with picking berries that weighed half of one's body weight.

Naka shook his head at Tien's behavior. It was a western expression that he had picked up since being here, but it applied nevertheless.
"Tien, be nice to new friends. she wirr teach you how to read but you must respect your teachers." He explained to her. He could already tell, with Sorcha's temper and Tien's pride there were going to be quite a few spats. He hoped at the very least he could keep the blood from flowing in the library.
"Remember, just because you have rearned to survive in the forest, doesn't mean that rearning human things is not bad either."