||The Legend of Taavi ||

|curious|

"Do you want go through our cards?"

Taavi snapped her head, shaking off her daydreaming. Her eyes took a moment to focus fully on James's smile, which faltered after a few long moments of silence.

"Are you alright?" he asked, leaning towards her and examining her face.

Taavi was used to the question, and gave the same answer she always did. "Fine."

But this time, James wasn't convinced. His mouth turned down into a thoughtful frown. Then his eyebrows shot up in revelation. "I know!" he announced excitedly. "I'll teach you something new."

This caught Taavi's attention. New was one of her favorite words. James hopped up from his cot where the two of them were seated and began to rummage through his suitcases and boxes, mumbling fanatically under his breath.

"What?" Taavi asked, her head cocked to the side.

James turned to her, a sparkle in his eyes. "How would you like to learn something new?"

It had been weeks since Taavi had been taught anything new. Over and over, her lessons consisted of perfecting the words she already knew, and learning the synonyms of those words, and what they meant. How they were spelled, how they were read, how they were signed. It had been starting to get a bit tedious.

Taavi clapped her hands in excitement. "Yes!" she exclaimed.

James nodded quickly and pulled a box of old-looking cards out of the bottom of his drawers. "Ah-ha!"

He returned to the bed and emptied his box into his hands. The cards had strange illustrations on them, with bold lettering under them, and notes scribbled on the back of each. The drawings were of people in odd and outrageous clothing, doing things like handing each other flowers and holding their arms out.

"I want you to know more about humans," James explained, shuffling the cards. "What we do, how we act."

"Okay," Taavi said breathlessly, feeling the bright, yellowy feeling bubbling in her stomach once more.

James grinned, and held up a card that showed a man holding a large array of beautiful flowers, some that Taavi had never even seen before, with all different colors.

"When a man cares for a woman, he shows it in many ways," James explained, making sure she heard every word. "He gives her gifts, like flowers, and chocolates."

Chocolates were one of Taavi's favorite things about humans. They had somehow taken the cocoa bean, a bitter, disgusting seed that Taavi had grown to loathe, and turned it into a delicacy, rich and creamy and sugary. They sometimes filled small chocolates with fruit-tasting jams, such as wild raspberry, or orange. It was so sweet it made Taavi's teeth ache, but she couldn't get enough of it.

"Chocolates," Taavi said dreamily, which made James's laugh.

"Yes, chocolates. Also, sometimes clothes, and jewelry, like necklaces."

Taavi waved her hand, "More!"

James flipped another card around and it showed a man holding a polished log in his hands, slung behind his head. "This is what we call baseball. In some parts of the world, people are mad for it. They love it."

"Baseball?" Taavi asked, pointing to the log.

"That's called a bat. It's a part of a sport."