Not long after Anortha and Pochi finished their meal, Anortha’s parents came home from work. The first thing they noticed was the sweet aroma drifting in the house.

Wondering what it was, they went into Anortha’s room and asked, “Do you know what’s that smell?”

Anortha never asked for permission and wasn’t sure if it would be a problem if Pochi was using the kitchen, so she said, “That’s the smell of the dinner I cooked.”

They gave her an incredulous look, as they had to drag her kicking and screaming to make her cook in the past.

“No really, mom, dad. Do you want me to save a portion of it next time?”

If it really was Anortha that was cooking, they’d expect the smell of burnt food, instead of the enticing sweet aroma, but giving her the benefit of the doubt, they said yes.

Anortha felt somewhat bad about claiming it was the dinner she cooked, although helping dispense water and operating the stove counted, right?

When they left, she turned to the lupo, only to realize it wasn’t there. Panicking, she searched her room, only to see a furry tail sticking out from under her bed. Anortha gently pulled it out and told it that her parents left already.

Anortha really wanted for Pochi to learn how to speak, so that way she can give precise orders and maybe have someone to talk to when she’s alone at home. However, how was she supposed to teach it how to speak?

She then remembered she taught the lupo some basic commands like “sit” a long while ago. She used that as a starting point. While she was surprised that Pochi still remembered them, she couldn’t get it to repeat her commands. All that came out was some weird noises that sounded not even close. Pochi did keep pointing at the chalkboard, but Anortha thought that jumping straight to writing would be a bit too early as she remembered how to read and write a few years after she learned to speak.

The elf eventually gave in and began teaching it how to write. Pochi copied exactly what she wrote, down to the smallest detail. Too perfectly, in fact, as the lupo also copied the mistakes and messiness in her handwriting. This forced her to write really slowly and carefully on the chalkboard.

She eventually grew tired of trying to write so neatly, and instead just took a notebook and a pen and carefully wrote down the alphabet once. Pochi seemed extremely interested in the notebook instead, however, but while the notebook and pen aren’t that expensive, chalk is definitely cheaper.

Pochi’s persistence won out in the end, and the elf handed it a notebook and a pen. To her surprised, the lupo wrote some foreign script next to the vocabulary and letters she taught. She never knew that the lupo had their own written script.

Nouns were easy to teach, since all she needed to do was hold the object or draw it and then write the words. Some verbs weren’t hard either, as she could just do the action. However, how would she teach it parts of speech like articles or conjunctions, or more abstract concepts?

Anortha reasoned that for communication purposes, she could get across quite a bit with just nouns and verbs, so she decided to shelve those for later.

A few hours later, Anortha got bored of teaching and went out with the lupo to play outside.

For once, I didn’t mind playing the mindless game called fetch. My brain was overworked from trying to memorize all the new words and letters of the elves’ language. Luckily, their written language is phonetic instead of pictographic, otherwise I’d have to essentially learn two languages at once.

I really hope their language is more like Spanish, where there are pretty much no weird exceptions in pronunciation. I don’t want the annoyance of learning stupid exceptions, like you can find in English. For example, the “o” in women is actually pronounced as an “i”. I mean like, what the heck is up with that.

The being said, apparently I don’t have the vocal cords or mouth structures to pronounce them anyways, but it’ll help me connect the words I learn to what she says.

I ran around until I was exhausted, and since I was both physically and mentally tired, by the time I came back home, I immediately collapsed on the bed and slept, even though it was rather early. Guess that’s one way to fix my sleeping schedule.

Over the next few weeks, my days have been rather routine. It starts off with either waking up naturally or being woken up by Anortha, followed by a breakfast of nuts. Anortha then does whatever studying or homework she does, while I review my ever-expanding English-Elven dictionary. When lunch time comes, I cook for both of us while the elf helps operate the stove or dispense water. Apparently, Anortha saved my food to give to her parents one time, and after that, I was cleared to use almost all the ingredients, except for the alcohol. With the new ingredients and proper equipment, I can cook quite a variety of food, although I occasionally make bad decisions about some of the ingredients.

I made the assumption that all the ingredients in the kitchen were edible, but some of them were poisonous to me. Some were bad enough that Anortha had to cast some kind of spell to detoxify whatever it was. Hurray for magic. I guess it’s like how chocolate is great for humans, and poisonous to dogs?

Anyways, after lunch, Anortha teaches me some words for a few hours, usually until she gets bored, and then we either play in the room or go out. Dinner comes by and I cook again, sometimes for just the two of us, other times including her parents. Given that I know Anortha is a terrible cook, and I’m pretty sure her parents know that too, not to mention that the dishes I make are not standard elven cuisine, I’d be really surprised if they didn’t suspect that Anortha was not the chef. Even so, she still tells her parents that she was the one to cook it.

When I do cook for her parents, we end up all eating at the dining table, much to my surprise. Their initial treatment to me was as if I were a wild animal that needed to be collared and caged, yet somehow there were totally okay with me sitting at their table while they talked about stuff. I wondered what caused their change in behavior?

After dinner came more play time, and then a bath. The first few times, I was happy for the soap that I haven’t used in a while, but after a while, I started disliking the baths. The elf was rather rough in scrubbing my body, and way too often, I get soap in my eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Not only that, they don’t have any conditioner. I tried to tell her that I could wash myself, but she misunderstood, didn’t trust me, or simply just liked cleaning me, so she continued to roughly scrub me clean.

One of these days, I’ll learn enough words to convey my intentions, and she better give me a good excuse if she insists.

Finally, bedtime comes and Anortha uses me as a hug pillow and falls asleep. Initially, I had problems falling asleep, but I eventually got used to it. And on colder nights, it actually is pleasant as her body heat helps keep me nice and cozy.