Lesson Time

Writers: Heather, Miriah
Date Posted: 7th April 2019

Characters: Enamra, Thayde, Embly
Description: Thayde arrives at Enamra's quarters to resume her reading lessons. When m10 d18
Location: Dolphin Hall
Date: month 10, day 1 of Turn 9
Notes: Mentioned: Jylanya

Enamra

Thayde

*********

Thayde carried everything they would need for Enamra's lesson up under
one arm as he approached the small family quarters that they had been
assigned by Jylanya. He would be lying if he said he wasn't a bit
nervous at the thought of being alone with Enamra and her younger
siblings. It was true that he wanted to help her learn to read and
further her education so that she could be more independent, but he
didn't know how deeply he wanted to get involved in her family
affairs.

"Enamra?" He knocked on the open door as he poked his head into the
living area. One of the stipulations about him teaching her at home
was leaving the door open for modesty's sake.

A young girl with large brown eyes and cheeks that were still a bit
sunken peered up at Thayde around the door frame, her expression
cautious. Her hair was half in her face as she stepped back. "Nama?"

"You're supposed to be in bed, Embly." Enamra came up to the door and
saw Thayde, offering a hint of a smile. "This is Master Thayde, Embly.
He's going to be teaching me like the Harpers will be you, okay?"

The young girl nodded, looked at Thayde, then back at her sister. "Is he nice?"

"Yes. Now go to bed. You'll be up early tomorrow to start classes."
She watched as Embly walked into the other small chamber, four beds on
each wall. Instead of crawling in her own, she joined another little
girl and snuggled close. Enamra sighed, half-closed that door and went
to the desk. "Sorry, Master Thayde. She's having trouble sleeping."

"No need to apologize," Thayde assured her as he stepped into the
living quarters. It was sparse with little decor but clean and tidy.
It was sad, Thayde thought, they were all just children, and now here
they were without a parent to make the place a home.

Taking a breath, Enamra pulled up to the little table that she'd been
given and looked up at Thayde expectantly. "Uhm, where will we start?"

"Last time we started working on a few simple words that are easy to
recognize. Let's see if you remember any of them," Thayde said as he
sat down and wrote the five words neatly on the hide: "THE", "AND",
"WORK", "CHORES", and "ENAMRA".

She stared at the words and they seemed to swim a little as she gazed
at them. Her brow knit as she rubbed her eyes. "Uhm..." She licked her
lips and found one that looked remotely familiar and pointed to it. It
was the most complicated one, but she recognized the first letter,
even though it looked strange. "That's...me, right?

"That's right," Thayde smiled encouragingly. "There are a couple
of different ways to write the letters, big and small, remember? So you
may sometimes see it written like this," and he wrote them in
lowercase letters.

She frowned as he wrote, the letters seeming to jumble together. An
ache started behind her eyes and she had to glance away to pull her
own small sand table towards her. Not grabbing the stylus, she used
her finger to try to write the first small letter.

"Well," Thayde said, "that's close. It can be tricky because they're
similar shapes. What you drew was a 'c', 'c's look like this," he drew
the letter. "The letter you're looking for is a lowercase 'e' and they
look like this," he drew it. "See the difference?"

"They look the same." She stated, then stopped. "Except one has an
extra line on it." She tried to copy it again but it looked more like
what she had done except a horizontal line drawn through the center.
"Like that?"

"Like this," Thayde took Enamra's hand and used her finger to make a
correctly formed lower case 'e'.

Didn't she just do it like that? She looked up at him, then back down
at what he had helped her write. It looked the same to her. "Okay..."
She hurriedly wiped it away and looked at the second letter.
Painstakingly, she drew the "N" in the sand, but unknowingly it too
was backward.

Thayde's brow furrowed as he watched her draw that letter backwards
too. Couldn't she see it wasn't correct? He shoved his fingers through
his hair. He wasn't a harper teacher, but he was doing it exactly as
he remembered being taught when he was a child. "Why don't we take a
break from letters? I brought a story book today. I figured we could
read it and you could look for some of those sight words we worked
on."

His evident frustration made her stomach knot up. She looked down at
the letter. It looked right. Why wasn't it? "Uhm...I guess. What am I
doing wrong?" She sat back, but nodded. "Okay."

"You're not doing anything wrong," he assured her, a rueful grin on
his face. "I am sure it's my lack of teaching skills."

**Or I'm just as dumb as Papa said I was,** Enamra thought with a
sigh."I guess we can try the book."

"Okay, relax, you're going to like this one." Thayde assured her, "It
was one of my favorites when I was a kid." He settled back and opened
the book.

Last updated on the April 12th 2019

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