Chapter 4: Arc 1.03

Year 2

Two weeks later

While sleeping I feel a soft fist hitting me constantly; I try to ignore it and go back to sleep, but then it starts hitting me more, and I hear, “Capti” repeatedly.

Still, I don’t feel like getting up yet, so I will ignore it, but then I feel a hard impact on my head.

Did that brat just headbutt me; “LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE,” I say as I jump from the bed.

Then in the corner of my eye, I see the boy trembling with tears in his eyes. Crap, it seems I scared him, but it’s his fault for messing with me in my sleep again.

I guess he won’t learn anytime soon. Oh no, his hair is starting to turn yellow, so I should still apologise. Now in my most soothing voice, I say, “Sorry”, he seems to cheer up after that, so I guess I should start my day.

Ever since that day when he asked my name, the boy and I have been talking much more. Well, talking might be a stretch since he goes silent whenever I ask a question or looks bewildered, so it’s usually me just answering his questions; which aren’t hard because he has a very minimal vocabulary.

He usually goes, “Whut is dis”; from constantly doing that I have learned that even though it seems he lives here, he doesn’t know anything about the house. We have gone through most of the house with me identifying objects in it for him.

He didn’t even know what a bed was. I was also surprised he had a concept of a name even though he doesn’t have one. When he responded to me asking, he just pointed to himself.

All his questions posed a problem for me, because the boy’s literacy level was utter crap. He can’t read or write; so I can’t even question him even if he wanted to respond, because he literally cannot understand most of my words.

Though I have learned he likes to draw, but refuses to show me what he drew, and he sleeps while tightly hugging his drawings, so I can’t even see them without waking him.

The impertinence of him even though I supplied the paper and pencils that I found in the storeroom. Also just like the spices and seasonings their was a ridiculous amount of paper.

Even so, because of the drawing, he could pick up the names of colours at least, but he must have learned all the words he knows via conversations with another person. All these questions without answers hurts my head.

Though at least I have my solace, which is the almost never-ending supply of books, I have started a new game, so to say. I take all the books with languages I don’t know and try to pair them up with each to try and decipher them.

All languages in the world derive from one of the trinity languages. Hence, even these different vernaculars share some similarities to one of the trinity, so little by little, I find common words between the books and based on the flow of the story, I try to translate them. However, it has been very hit or miss.

I am pretty sure I have translated some books entirely, while for others, there aren’t enough books to double-check if the words are used in the same way in different texts.

So just like always, I continue with my game while the boy is colouring beside me, but while reading, I can feel him staring at my book intently with brown hair, which I have assumed is nervousness if he won’t say anything it is best to ignore him, I think to myself as I try to get back into reading.

But he is staring so intently that I can’t focus, so I sigh and say, “ Do you want to read with me” with an enticing smile. So he comes up to me and stares at the book I’m reading with his hair green, which is what I have presumed is excitement.

He starts to look confused as he stares at the words on the page, so I decided to read it out loud as clear and precise as I can, while doing this I turn to look at the boy.

His hair is a dull grey with a befuddled expression. Then I remember this is written in a different language than what he speaks. He only seems to know a broken version of the saviour’s song; all this is going over his head.

I start to auto-translating from the book to the saviour song in my head and say it to him so he can understand, which brings back the green hair of excitement.

I continued to read, but while reading, he asked me, “Whut duht meuhn” I think he meant: what does that mean, but regardless of his horrible pronunciation, I said, “It means rain,” but he started staring at me in confusion then he said, “whut duht.”

Which confirmed something for me. He has never seen rain; he must have been raised in a region where you can’t see or learn about the rain, which means he was raised here in Fimbulwinter. So, I reply, “Tiny drops of water like that fall upon the planet.”

“whuhtz wuhter uhnd pluhnet”, he says excitedly. I think he asked: what water and the planet is. I almost didn’t get that one. He looks at me excitedly for the answer to his questions, so I say, “Water is the liquid in the fruits we eat. It keeps us alive; the planet is the place all people and animals live, even us”

Then he asks, “Whutz liquid und animal”. Huh I now see a pattern forming.

3 hours later

“Whuhtz duht meuhn” he asked again. In all the time we had been reading, we barely progressed 20 words since we started, and I can’t keep describing the meaning of every word in the book. But as I was lamenting, an idea popped into my head.

“Hey, do you want to learn how to read?” I said to the boy.

His hair turns green, and his face looked delighted. “eez,” replied. He got up and started saying “reuhd” repeatedly, running around energetically, but the only thoughts going through my mind were, yes, I don’t have to listen to his horrible pronunciation anymore.

So I got up and said, “We will have class tomorrow morning, so we should go to bed and rest,” his hair turned white as he looked tremendously sad, but he still decided to head to bed, so I decided to get started on preparing the materials for tomorrow; where to start is all I can think to myself.

Profile of the boy

Name: None

Age: 7 (approximately)

Hair: white (normal?) Red (anger), Green (excitement), Yellow (fear)

Brown (nervousness) Grey(confusion) Cream(hunger) Lime(lying)

Eyes: Blue(left) Gold(Right)

Likes: Drawing, Food, Captivant?

Dislikes: Unknown

“OK, time for class to commence, get excited!”

 The lone student in front of me looks as if he is about to jump out of the bed in excitement.

So, to start with, I chose the saviour song to teach him since it’s by far the oldest language with all other languages having parts of it in them, even the other two of the trinity, it also being the one he is most similar with was also a factor.

So, I taught him the syllabary to start with. I created a few worksheets yesterday to help with this. So, we went through all the letters and worked hard on the pronunciations of each. It took a few months, but he could get it down rather quickly, given that he seems to have never seen any of them before.

But not without some issues. First, he is terrible at articulating why he is stuck, so when we run into a problem, he can’t tell me what is wrong, but to counteract this, I try to figure out what is wrong through trial and error.

I do something and check for his reaction to it by the colour his hair changes. By doing this, I can usually get past the problem. The second issue is motivation.

It seems this whole learning process is taking longer than he expected, so he has grown impatient and keeps saying he wants to read, but by giving him compliments like: good job, amazing, wonderful, etc, he cheers up with his hair bright pink. So, through all of this, we could completely conquer the syllabary.

Lately, we have been moving on to whole words, and he seems to be getting worked up more and more with his hair being red more often. It seems he really can’t get these words down.

The usual methods haven’t been working. I believe he has trouble memorising the terms; since it’s hard for a child with no concept of a forest to understand it from just words alone. I didn’t want to resort to this plan, but I had no choice. It is time to

“PLAY IN THE SNOW!” I say to the boy beside me. I’m in my full cold-resistant gear, and the boy seems resistant to the cold anyway, so we should be able to play in the snow.

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I’m risking my life by doing this, but I think some playing would help relax the boy. I can tell he already agrees with me because his hair is green, so we both start rushing toward the snow.

But as I cross the threshold of the snow, I’m immediately reminded why it’s called the storm of the apocalypse. “It’s cold, it’s cold, it’s cold”, is all I could say, but as I say this, I can feel my throat being frozen by the cold air, so I immediately shut my mouth.

But the kid Is running around utterly unaffected by it. He seems to be more in his element here.

I committed to this; I should do this to the best of my ability, so I run over to him and say, “Do you want to see something cool.”

He energetically replies, “Yes.”

Ahh, his saviour song is no longer unintelligible. I can’t believe I get to feel the satisfaction of raising kids at this age. So, I go on to start building objects and animals.

“What’s that.”

“A boat is what people use to travel the ocean, the big mass of water.”

“What about that.”

“It’s a Spercera, one of many animals you can find at the base of Fimbulwinter.”

After this, he starts gathering snow to make a snow sculpture like me, but he is really bad at it. Still, he seems happy while playing with the snow.

Though lucky, it seems my plan worked as he is sculpting the things I showed; he is repeating their names which he was stuck on. It seems he is a visual learner. I should use this method and more pictures to help him memorise better.

So, we continue sculpting, but then he starts shaping all the snow into a wolf.

So, I ask, “What’s that” but upon asking about it, he immediately starts covering the snow sculpture, and then his hair instantly turns Orange. He looks uncomfortable, so I change the subject to “Do you want to go eat”, then he starts perking up with a smile on his face.

So, I begin to crush the snow sculptures, but while doing this, the boy screams “NO”, as he runs headfirst into my leg. “Stop killing them,” he says.

Bewildered by his statement, I tell him, “You know they are not alive.”

But the boy replies, “Yes, they are, and if they get crushed, they’ll be gone forever like wol” he suddenly stops midsentence and gets sad with tears in his eyes.

So, I say, “Sorry, I won’t kill them anymore, so let’s go get something to eat”, so we both head inside to eat.

Now over the next few months, we continued studying. Using pictures and sculpting, I increased his vocabulary quite a bit. It is shocking the number of words he has wholly memorised, but with nothing else to do; it makes sense, since all his energy is going towards this.

But due to the fact we can’t break down any of the snow sculptures, we have pretty a large museum outside. If that’s what it takes for him to learn, then I have no issues with that.

It’s almost been a year, and I haven’t just been sitting around. I have been working on a plan to reward him. The plan will be going into effect tomorrow. So, I told him to go to bed early tonight, saying, “I have a surprise for you tomorrow”. The boy looked excited and went to bed immediately after that.

So, I woke up early to get ready and leave a note under his door so he will see it when he opens it. I wonder what his face will look like; I can’t wait.

-Break-

Φ “I’m awake,” I say as I jumps from his bed. “I should go see Capti. I wonder what we are going to do today,” I say as I rush to the door; I jump for the doorknob, twists it, kick off the wall and open it “Woohoo,” I say as the door unlocks with me flying back still holding the knob.

I run energetically to Capti’s room to wake him. Jumping on his bed, I saying “Capti” repeatedly, but he isn’t there. “He must be in the library.”

So, I rush down the stairs and quickly arrives at the library. Looking around; I can’t find anything. I start to panic and looking in the mirror I see my hair turn black. Running to the kitchen I scream “CAPTI”,

Buti hear no response. Unable to find him I run outside as tears form in my eyes, looking and Screaming “CAPTI”, but when I fully circles the house, I  fall on the ground and cry. “, Don’t leave me just like wolfie” I say as I begin to cry louder.

“Didn’t you read my note”. Turning my head to the location of the sound; I run headfirst into Capti’s leg while crying then I bite his leg.

Φ “OUCH!” How did this even happen

As we head back inside, I say “I heard a lot of running, so I came out of the museum area to see what you were doing. Then I found you crying outside. Why didn’t you read the note.”

The boy replies, “What note” while holding Capti’s leg.

Letting out a sigh I say “I left a note in front of your door but you probably ran right past it when you opened the door. The note said to meet me in the museum for a surprise”,

So, after telling him that I asked him to “Close your eyes”.

“Ok” Orb says quietly; he must really be upset.

Then as we walk into the museum, I say, “Now open them.”

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” I say as the boy looks at the decorated museum with wonder. His hair turns a dull grey, and then he says to me, “What’s a birthday?”

I reply, “It’s the day you are born, so people decide to celebrate, and since we both don’t know when that is, I decide this day, Capricorn 28^th, the day you asked me my name to be it, so yet again, happy birthday.”

The boy’s hair then turns bright pink as he runs around the museum in delight. Interrupting him I say, “It’s time for your presents” then I hand him clothes and five books.

“These are clothes you can wear instead of what you’ve been wearing; you’ve grown and it doesn’t make sense to keep wearing those clothes, and here are five books, I recreated from my memory there, their all at a skill level where you should be able to read them by yourself. All your hard work has paid off.”

The boy jumps around with excitement after receiving his books and clothes, but I say, “Open the front cover of one of the books,” and on the front, it says property of Orb. The boy replies, “Who is an Orb.”

“It’s the name I choose for you. It’s a see-through spherical piece of glass. I think the name fits. Do you like it?”

“Orb, ORB, oRb, orB, orb,” the boy repeatedly says with excitement. “I love it”, he replies.

After orb settles down and starts reading his new books in the library, I take down all the decorations to store them. It was easy enough to put this together. All I had to do was take materials from the storage to make decorations and sew the clothes.

Even writing the books was easy enough; since I have never forgotten anything I have seen in my entire life, but the back pain from writing at my age was intense.

Still, regardless of that, he looks pleased, so I hope the next year is as lovely as this year but hopefully with more answers.

 

Year 2 End

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