“Arthur, I am so sorry, that was a terrible misunderstanding.” Melody said, breaking the silence as we walked farther into the cave. 

"It's fine, I get it." I said, dejectedly. 

A few hours after that incident, I’d woken up on the cave floor with Melody standing away from me at the wall. She’d looked deeply uncomfortable at that time and when she explained what had happened I joined her. Love confession? Who am I kidding?

The tunnel from the main entrance had been a long one. The light from the outside of the cave entrance had eventually all faded away leaving the sunless tunnel only lit by Melody herself. The dragon held out her hand in front of her with a stone that she had previously picked up and cast a soft white glow onto the smooth walls around us. Unlike the area we entered at, it would be hard to call this place a cave. It had obviously been carved somehow and the roof was a curved arch that I was pretty sure would have ever happened in nature. I had asked her exactly what she was doing when she picked that rock up in the first place but, when she showed the glowing face to me more closely, I saw another magical circle resembling the one I’d learned for fireball. Thinking of fireball, I think I’ll have to ask her to show me that pattern in a bit. I completely forgot what the smaller details looked like. and I'm sure that I wouldn't be able to draw it again if pressed. It's magic but it's pretty complicated. I would like some sort of book that I could draw all the magic circles down in. A book of spells, wouldn't that be a grimoire? With how this magic thing has been working I'm sure there are some grimoires in this word. Dark grimoires, of course. I can't forget the 'eat people to gain magical powers' thing.

Melody stopped, almost having me bump into her. Stretching out her hand holding the makeshift flashlight she pointed it at a door built into the wall. It was just a simple wooden door built with an old design. It was made with a solid piece of wood and didn't have a doorknob. 

"Here, I think this is it." Melody says. Isn't she at least a little concerned that someone else is here? We've been walking through this cave the whole time seemingly oblivious to the idea of another pressince but here I'm looking at something someone could hide behind and I'm getting suspicious. 

With her other hand Melody casually opens the entryway and walks inside without a second thought or a word. She shines the light around in the room as I go in after her, looking around. 

It smelled musty. The room was filled with neatly organized shelves of papers and cluttered with various objects which I had no clue the use or purposes of. It was long, like a hallway, and stretched back farther than the weak light of the stone Melody was holding could shine. The dragon places the stone on the stone under her chin to begin shuffling through the papers without caring if they fell on the floor or not. I walked over to some sort of chemistry set table and looked into one of the jars of mysterious liquid sitting there.

“What are we looking for?” I asked curiously, picking up a sheet of paper that had been left on the table. At the moment I picked it up something horrible struck me. I couldn’t read anything on it. The words on the paper were written in some strange language that I’d never seen before. It somewhat resembled ancient greek characters but I couldn’t see anything that I personally recognized. That’s a bad sign. I know this trope. I was never fantastic in any forign language classes and I’ll probably eventually have to learn how to write whatever the writing in this world is.

“Damnit, it’s all in some ancient language.”

I let out an audible sigh of relief as Melody said this behind me. I dropped the paper to the floor and thanked the A Goddess for giving me this one little bit of leeway.

“What?” Melody said, looking over at me infustration.

“For a second there I thought I couldn’t read.” I said, chuckling nervously. Immediately fitting this new piece of information into the weird image she has of me in her mind the dragon girl disregarded what I said and looked back at the documents.

“If you are worried about such a thing you still may not be able to. The presence of another language here does not rule out your lack of knowledge in regards to other forms of modern human writing.”

“Ah.” My shoulders drooped again as I realized she was right.

I went over to the bookshelves that the girl had stopped sorting through to look for myself whether or not there was anything I could read. Even if she says it’s all in code that seems unrealistic. Only the valuable stuff would be encoded, right? 

I picked up a piece of paper lying on the floor.

It was in plain english. I read on to see it was talking about some formula that I couldn’t begin to understand. Upon reading the contents over twice I managed to understand that it was describing some sort of acid. I looked over at the girl.

“Melody, I can read this.” I said growing more unsettled the more the fact seeped into my mind. Why was there English here? Why couldn’t Melody read it? If this is English what was the other paper? If this is English what have we been speaking this whole time? 

“Wait.” I said, getting down on the floor, looking for where I dropped the paper that had been left on the table. Everything was mixed up even from how much of a mess the two of use had already made.

“What are you looking for?” She asked, bending down with me.

“There was another paper here that was in another language.” I said. "Here it is!" I said, holding up the strange note. I handed it to Melody who seemed to be able to understand the contents. 

"This note is addressed to the human identity of my brother." Melody says, frowning.