Royal vs Dragon

Chapter 20

Kaylee:

"Can you teach me to read, please?" I asked Prince Ian, practically begging him with my hands folded in front of my chest.  He looked and just stared at me for a minute.  I then pointed at the book he was currently reading.  "That language please?"  He looked down at his book and looked back up at me again, this time with a questioning look.

Finally, he closed his eyes, sighed and gave me an answer of, "Okay, sure, but it will have to be during your free time and we can't be seen.  Let me ask you something.  Can you read at all?" He had a curious face at the moment.

I put a finger on my bottom lip and looked away for a minute before looking back at him and saying, "Not much in the language I want.  I can read a little.  Barely any, actually.  I know my letters, but I just don't know how to read words with them."

"Okay," he said, closing his book and slapping his hands on his lap.  He turned around and picked up a different book and turned back to face me.  "How about we start now."  He handed me the book and I opened it to find the book covered in pictures and what I'm assuming were words on the bottom.  I looked back at him and looked back at the book again.

He looked at the book and started to bring his hand over to the pages of the book with his pointer finger pointed out.  "See, this letter is 'a' and it makes the 'ah' sound.  Try it."  He pointed to the letter 'a' and I tried sounding it out.

"Ah."  I turned back at him, smiling, and saw him looking at me with a pleased expression on his face.

"Good."  He turned to look back at the book once more.  "Now this letter is 'b' and it makes the 'buh' sound.  Try it."  He pointed to this letter next, and I tried sounding it out.

"Buh."  I was all giddy and clapping my hands like a small child and looked over at him and saw that he was nodding his head in approval.

"Good, good.  Now, we'll go with trying to sound out this letter next."  And once again he pointed to another letter.  This time an 'e'.  "This letter here is an 'e' and it makes the sound of, 'eh'.  This is a letter used a lot in reading and writing, and can cause letters to sound different.  Different as in, you can't really sound everything out in order to read it correctly."

I was confused at what he meant.  "What do you mean different?  What are you talking about?"

He shook his head a few times.  "Never mind that.  Let's just have you try out the sounds of the letters first."

"But-" I began but was cut off by him.

"I'll tell you later.  For now, just do what I'm teaching you."  I could see that I wasn't going to get anything from him and so I did as he said.

"Eh," I tried to pronounce this letter correctly and think I succeeded. 

"Good.  Now, I'll write down the alphabet on a piece of paper if I can find one."  He got up and looked around for a piece of paper he could use as well as something to write with.  There was a large desk with a quill and ink it looked like, and he grabbed that first.  He brought the quill and ink over to the small desk that was beside his bed which was placed a few meters away from the large desk.  There was his large, fancy, wardrobe filled with clothes, and there were also a couple of tall bookshelves, and of course his large bed that I was now currently sitting on.  He looked in those places, but didn't find anything he could use as paper without ruining any of his many books.  He put his hands on his hips and bowed his head, shaking it and took a deep breath.  He looked back up again and had a new look of determination in his eyes and walked toward an empty area of the room and squatted down to where his butt was touching the backs of his heels.  He reached out for something.  He brought his hands to the ground and wriggled a piece of tile on the ground, lifting it up and setting it aside.  This only took about ten seconds in counting.  My eyes went wide when I saw this.  I ended up standing up and walking away from the bed, inching closer to the removed tile in the floor.  He was still looking inside the hole in the floor but quickly found what he was looking for.  He grabbed the papers hidden in the hole and lifted them up out of the ground and turned around to face me after he stood up.  He stopped once he saw that I was coming up to him.