"The Case Of The Fire Inside."

But now im just making up facts 11

"Here, let me help you," Phil said, leaning over and taking the pencil from Tommy's fingers. "You're holding it wrong. See where my fingers are? That'll help you have much more control over it all."

Tommy shifted his fingers, trying to get them properly situated on the piece of wood. Phil had recently decided that learning how to read wasn't enough, he wanted Tommy to do something called writing. Apparently printing it out on one of those fancy computer things wasn't the only way to write words down. People could just write words at any point in time if they really wanted to.

It had taken Tommy an embarrassingly long time to realize that writing was what Dream always did in his office. Tommy had always been curious about what he was doing with those papers and pens all day, but Dream never let him close enough to see. Tommy wasn't really allowed close to the desk unless he was sitting by the side of it to keep Dream company while he worked.

And now Tommy was learning how to write, just like Dream was. Tommy wanted to show it off, to display his new skills to Dream and see his friends grin of pride, but Tommy wasn't allowed to be here. Wasn't allowed to learn.

The guilt struck. Tommy pushed it away, focusing on shakily holding the pencil.

He had a few pieces of paper in front of him, Phil's elegant writing sloped across the page reading out simple sentences for Tommy to copy. To his joy he was able to read them with only a little bit of difficulty. Reading handwriting was very different from reading the typed-out words in Phil's books. It was more challenging, but Tommy was nothing if not stubborn.

He had managed to con Techno into writing a bunch of shit out for him, subtly asking him to write things down for him and then practicing recognizing the letters and words on the paper. He noticed that Phil liked to leave handwritten notes around the house as well, so he stole those as well, memorizing the swoops and curls of their lettering. It was getting easier by the day.

Writing was a whole other story. The pencil felt weird in his grip no matter how many times he adjusted his fingers, and everything he wrote was shaky at best and illegible at worst. It was starting to get frustrating. Tommy liked being good at things, even if he often wasn't.

Not like he had a lot of new things to be good at. His hobbies including swimming, fishing, and doing puzzles. He had been born in the ocean, so swimming was actually more natural than walking to him. He knew the fish around here better than anyone else, able to catch them easily in both forms based on his knowledge of their travel and behavioural patterns. He's been doing puzzles since he could even remember. Other than that, Tommy never really had to learn anything new. If you ignored learning how to be human, something he thinks he's getting better at but honestly he has no idea now that the others have just stopped being shocked at his weirdness.

So being bad at writing was frustrating. More than frustrating actually. But he wasn't about to give up. He wanted to learn this more than anything, and a few discouraging attempts wasn't going to stop him. He'd master writing by tomorrow or die trying.

Phil reached over, gently taking his fingers and shifting them into something that felt a bit less straining. Tommy was sure that to normal humans this movement came as natural as breathing.

That was the most annoying thing about being a selkie. You'd think that with a human body and being raised mostly human by a fully human man that he'd be used to things like this. To moving and talking like normal humans do. He could excuse the whole not knowing how to act solely based on the fact that he's never really met many people before, but he didn't have an excuse for anything else.

Human things didn't come naturally to him. George had told him a story once, a couple days after the whole selkie thing was revealed to them. He told Tommy of how selkies and humans had once lived side by side peacefully as two separate species, with distinct differences in actions and presentation. Tommy was pretty sure it was all bullshit, but it was also probably the only fond one on one memory he had with George so he cherished it to the best of his ability.