The Elven Thief

First Lesson

We walk out of the kitchen and past the living room. We reach the dining hall, with a chandelier and the longest table known to man! At the end of the room is two glass doors that leads to the back porch. He opens it and I stride out, feeling the humid summer heat on me. We take our seats in some chairs, and he takes out some books and other things he grabbed along the way. Setting them on the table in front of us be begins, "Do you know the English alphabet?"

"I know it has a A, B, and C in it?" I reply with a cheeky smile.

He sighs and starts to write on one of the pieces of paper, "There's a total of 26 letters in the alphabet, A through Z." He then started to say the alphabet out loud as he was writing it both in capital and lowercase letter.

I noticed that he was saying it in some kind of rhythm, so as is my nature when he was done I gave him a weird look, "Why did you say it in some rhythm?"

"It's how everyone learned it as a kid, it just sticks with you. It's a way for you to remember it." He said in his matter-of-fact voice. When he was finished he handed me the pencil and said, "Underneath each one write the letter and say it out loud." I gripped the pencil like how I held my fork and before I could even start writing he took it away and laughed, "You're holding the pencil wrong, Look." Then he positioned my fingers and pencil so that I held it sort of like I was holding the fork "properly". I drew the letters, saying them out loud as I went. Legolas would guide my hand if I had trouble with a litter, like the capital R. When I was done he looked over them one last time and must have noticed how I did my capital J, lowercase j, g, and y.

"why did you add the little swirl with the tail?" His voice was soft, smooth, like wheels driving along nice cement. I looked at my work, seeing how the capital J and lowercase J had a little swirl type curve that went over the bottom part with the tail, I shrugged and replied, "Why not, it adds a little something to it."

He raised his eyebrows at me and repeated, "Something?"

"Yeah you know, the alphabet looks so boring and plain, this just adds a little, pizzazz to it." I then held up jazz hands and couldn't help but laugh.

He laughed back and copied me, "Pizzazz!" We laughed some more at our little joke before he managed to catch his breath and say more, "Who knew an elfling thief would would want to add some pizzazz to the alphabet?"

"You'd be surprised at a lot of things about me." I grinned now slowing down my breathing.

"Really?"

"Yup."

"Well let's not get off topic and get back to it, we still have a lot of things to learn."

"Damn." I mumbled under my breath, he laughed but made no other comment. Above his writings of the alphabet, which was much more neatly written out than mine, he wrote A, E, I, O, and U.

"These are vowels, no word can be a word without at least on vowel in it." He said straight faced, I nodded looking back at him. He went on about how they can sound like the letter itself sometimes, and how they can also be added as a vowel. After spending about five minutes on the vowels and how the other letters sound when you say them in a word, he wrote down three letters next to each other; A, N, and D.

"Let's try now actually reading words, what does this word say." He lectured pointing at the words. I studied them and tried to make out the word but it just didn't click!

"Concentrate, sound it out." I heard Legolas' voice echoing in my head. It seemed so simple yet I was so confused! Is the a suppose to sound like A or ah? I eventually just got too frustrated and shoved the papers off of the table making a yell in the process. "Calm down, there's no need to get angry about it." Legolas voiced, sounding edged but kept his voice sweet and calm. He put the papers back down and scooted his chair closer to mine. Which by the way Legolas, there's this thing called personal space... you should try it sometime! I commented in my head but didn't dare say it out loud.