After taking up Hyraj’s Saturday with magic lessons, I tried to keep to myself on Sunday, then another week of working began. The fresh air did me some good, though. Managed to burn myself out on all that thinking.

Love was… not for me. Maybe because I’d grown up without it. Maybe I was born this way. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. Hyraj’s feeling didn’t even matter to me since I wasn’t gay. Not, like, they did matter, but I didn’t need to understand her love. I didn’t need to tell her she couldn’t love me. Maybe, it was okay for her to love who she thought I was. We weren’t going to be more than friends.

Not weighed down by that any more, my walk to Mr Arl’s was much lighter.

It was a fun morning with Sisi. Learning, playing. After everything I’d been thinking about, it really reinforced that I loved looking after the little ones, but hated being their “parent”.

I couldn’t love them like they deserved. Didn’t know how. Like, I could comfort them, but I could only try to make them feel like they had a home. Only so much I could do as just another kid at the orphanage, so much I couldn’t do. We all had to just go along with whatever happened. When new children came and left, when new staff did—just to name a couple.

This “role” was much better for me. I liked the challenge of making learning numbers fun a lot more than the challenge of keeping two girls from fighting or keeping everyone on schedule.

That said, it wasn’t like Sisi was perfect. She was getting better with eating, but some meals she’d barely touch, sometimes needed to eat in her bedroom. Mr Arl still agreed that the important part was that she did eat. There were other times when she was difficult or grumpy or even rude.

But those were only a small part of my time with her, most of it spent, well, however I wanted. Of course, I wasn’t ever forcing her to do anything.

Anyway, today was an easy day, lunch something she was happy to eat at the table with me and Frinnef. Afterwards, Sisi and I settled down for some knitting. I couldn’t help but notice that, over the weekend, her scarf had gained a few more… parts that Mr Arl would love. I chuckled to myself, then looked over mine. Honestly, it wasn’t much better, my own mind wandering yesterday while I tried to keep myself busy.

“Miss Loulou?”

I finished the knit and looked up at Sisi, smiling. “What it is?”

“What is a friend like?” she asked, her face cutely serious. Especially now she was a healthier weight, her cheeks puffed up a little when she pouted.

Her odd question didn’t stop my humour. “Why does Sisi ask?” I said, curious.

“Well, Papa and Big Cousin talked about Miss Loulou and Miss Hyrash, and Papa said they’re only friends, not he… helale.”

I almost snorted, trying to keep in my laugh. You really couldn’t talk about anything around young children and expect them to keep it secret. Even if you told them, there was a good chance they’d share it anyway. As for what “secret” she wasn’t keeping, well, people liked to gossip. It wasn’t like they’d said anything bad.

But Sisi had asked me a question and I’d already made her answer mine first, so I didn’t put off answering any more.

“That is it… a friend is someone they like playing with,” I said, a bit of a struggle to think about how to explain it and translate it. It being kind of impolite to use “you” didn’t make it easier. “They are nice, and kind, and it makes them happy to be with them.”

Unsure how much sense I was making, I watched for Sisi’s reaction. She still looked confused from before, her hands “nodding”, and she let out a bit of a huff.

“That just sounds lovely,” she said.

I almost snorted again. The way she said it—definitely something she’d picked up from Mr Arl. I wondered if he said that when Frinnef offered him a cup of tea in the evening? “It is,” I said, smile so wide it hurt.

She looked up at me, her expression more serious than confused now. “So Miss Hyrash is Miss Loulou’s friend?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What do they play?” she asked, her head tilting in a cute way.

I hesitated, but liked to be honest with kids. “Well, we are adults, so we don’t play much.”

“Oh,” she muttered, her head hanging down. It was all the more sad to me given how people didn’t really move their heads much when talking here, usually moving their hands instead.

Feeling pressured by that, I blurted out, “But we live together.”

Her little face looked up at me, full of hope. “Really?”

“Yes,” I said.

She looked at me for a long moment, then frowned again, looking at her hands. “Girls can live with girls? We don’t have to live with boys when we grow up?” she half-said, half-asked.

I winced internally, feeling like I was very much getting into tricky territory. “Yes, but girls normally live with boys because they get married,” I said.

She went back to pouting at that. “A friend sounds better than a boy,” she said.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her boys could be friends too.

After a sigh, she continued. “I wish I can have a friend.”

Softly smiling, I resisted the urge to pat her head. “I’m sure Sisi will make many friend in the city.”

“Miss Loulou really thinks so?” she asked, looking up at me with such wide eyes, melting my heart.

“I know it.”

She settled down with that, if anything looking smug. Well, while she seemed mature in some ways, she was still young.

At the end of the day, walking home, I went over that conversation, thinking of how to tell it to Hyraj. I tried not to bore her with stuff that wasn’t actually interesting. Like, she didn’t care if Sisi did a good job knitting. But funny things that weren’t personal, those were fine, I thought.

Just that I wasn’t sure how funny it really was by the time I reached our room.

Keeping it to myself for now, I greeted her and then went to help the cook. Kept my mind busy. I’d spent too much time overthinking things recently.

So I helped cook, then we ate dinner, trying to focus on the food in the silence. Good fritters today. I was always impressed how the cook could make vegetables into, like, a snack. No clue how healthy it actually was, though. I wasn’t the best with nutrition stuff, but it did seem like a lot of flour and oil, so….

Still very tasty.

I felt kind of ashamed for thinking I was a good cook for adding the garlic-nuts to the weird mash, the cook adding so much texture and flavour to everything. Even after all she had taught me, I could really only copy her, still picking up, well, what cooking was really about. Or maybe cooking was all about following recipes? The way she cooked, it seemed a lot more impressive. She’d randomly decide we needed to cook a particular dish, then change how we did everything else to complement it, like, making something less spicy, or more acidic, or boiling it instead of frying.

My mind drifted around, wondering if I would ever be as good as her. Dinner over, I took our plates, washed them up and some other stuff around the kitchen. The cook sat off to the side, eating after serving everyone else. My “privilege” for helping was the first servings.

By the time I went back to our room, seeing Hyraj sitting peacefully, book in hand, I decided not to tell her about the talk with Sisi. One thing I’d learned from the orphanage, it was easy to tell people cruel things because it was the “truth”. Hyraj didn’t need to know this little anecdote. Even if it was the funniest thing in the world, I didn’t want to hurt her even a tiny bit. Where the balance was, I didn’t know, but this wasn’t important enough to test the balance.

That took a weight off my shoulders. No more thinking needed, so I could just settle down and knit.

One day rolled into the next, another fun day of work, then dinner together again. A familiar routine, comfy. What wasn’t so comfy was running out of wool. Sisi working so hard on knitting for her dad, I really hadn’t expected to finish my scarf this soon. Maybe I was getting better at it too. Either way, my usual way to pass the time wasn’t an option.

For a while, I just stared at Hyraj, letting my thoughts wander. Old memories, new memories, mingling together, along with bits of hopes and dreams. Sisi wasn’t wrong to think living with a friend was nice. I wondered if being married was like this too, always having someone around who made you smile, laugh, appreciated the little things you did, did the little things you appreciated.

Eventually, Hyraj looked over. I smiled and she smiled back, then her eyes looked around a bit, a wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. “That is it, you aren’t knitting?”

Lingering in my thoughts, I couldn’t remember when we started using “you” between us, or had we always used “you”? With Mr Arl and Sisi, I was so conscious of using “they”, but I didn’t really know how close you had to be to use “you”. Something you just had to learn from growing up in the language?

Already a bit late in responding, I stopped my thinking there. “No. I finished the wool,” I said.

She seemed to hesitate, unusual for her, or at least unusual for me to spot it. Maybe because she wasn’t so guarded around me now?

“That is it, I was thinking of our magic lessons,” she said, speaking a bit slower. “I thought it best to teach you how to summon fire and water for those were important at the time; however, now, it would be easier to teach what is easiest, both in terms of learning and in how freely it may be practised.”

Though a bit meandering, I understood what she was saying. Maybe. “There’s more magic?” I asked, then felt like an idiot considering I had seen her do that, like, lightning bolt attack?

She hummed in response, then raised her hand. I watched as she made the familiar ring with her thumb and forefinger, watched the ring start to close up, heard a buzz—probably imagined it. Finally, a sort of glow started, getting stronger and stronger as the ring shrunk, until it looked like there was a wriggling worm, part of a magic thread gently waving in an unfelt breeze.

It was a white light, but in the way white light was a mix of all colours? The more I looked, the more colours I saw, like a TV with pixels, everything blending together. Probably a lot of colours there I couldn’t see.

Beautiful. I wanted to touch it, reached out, even, before catching myself.

“Do,” she whispered.

So I did. Leaning over as far as I could, I still had to stretch to reach. Once I did, I felt… a hum, the magic, like, resonating inside my finger. Almost ticklish. But it wasn’t real, my finger going through the light like the illusion it was.

She broke the ring and, after a moment, the light dissolved, vanishing into nothing.

“What do you think?” she whispered.

Still staring at where it was, I said, “Please.”