"I could read when I was four."

"Good for you. I couldn't read at all until I was thirty!"

"But that's a grownup!"

"Not for us, we grow up slow! But you probably read better than me. I couldn't read that book."

"Dyslexia sounds like no fun at all."

"I'm not saying, like, 'being dumb is central to my personality! I wouldn't change it even if I could!" But it was mostly only not fun when I was trying to be good enough anyway."

"Dyslexia isn't being dumb," she points out.

"You've mentioned."

"Apparently you didn't listen!"

"What's your book about?"

"There's three weird ladies taking a girl and her brother on adventures in a bunch of worlds."

"It's known in your world that there are a bunch of different ones? Because we definitely did not know that."

"Nuh-uh. It's fiction. Nobody thinks it's true."

"I see. Wanna take a story about Elves back with you? If no one will think it's true?"

"Okay!"

So he tells some.

She listens attentively.

He leaves out the bad parts. Everyone in her world will think Elves are rather goody-goody.

Well, they're being filtered through a six-year-old, it would be weird if they weren't.

"I may not have been able to read at six but my bedtime stories were all about political dilemmas."

"...Why?"

"Parents were too busy and Maitimo has extremely boring tastes."

"Who's Maitimo?"

"My big brother."

"I'm sorry he's boring," she says sincerely.