"Specials are sometimes really really useful so I'm looking forward to figuring mine out. Healing. Magic, um, promises. Super senses. Maybe it's teleporting."

"...Maybe I only tell people about magic if I need to. I don't want to scare everyone."

"I think if it were handled carefully it could be used for things without telling many people, or people could find out in a slow, controlled manner. Depending on what-all your magic can do – I think you told me some things, but I don't remember?"

She places the books on a table by the bed. There are two early-learner dictionaries and a few 'how stuff works' books

"Fly, faster than hawks and carrying things when I grow up. Make light. Blow things up. Make shields, don't know much about them. I think magic girls are stronger. Whatever my special is."

She eagerly grabs the top 'how things work' book.

"Depending on how that all works with other people, if you can protect them and stuff, it could be quite useful? And depending on what your special is, too."

"The shields are big circles I can put in front of me. I don't know how strong they are, I'd have to test myself."

"What sorts of things do they block? People trying to break through them, people throwing stuff at you…?"

"Um yeah, and bullets and Neuroi's light bullets and other magic girls' blow-things-up and rocks and things. I pushed a wolf into a river with one once."

"Explosions, I think, is the blow-things-up thing? And light bullets, um, lasers? But yeah, that sounds like it might be useful."

"That's good, somewhere I can be useful probably."

Nod. "I'm sure there are other places too, not just that, but yeah."

"No sitting around feeling sorry, Errie says. Stop, think, then work on something or nothing will get better."

"That sounds like advice that might be useful in life, but right now you're only twelve years old, and you're also safe here, so you shouldn't need to worry about that so much?"

"Why would I not be doing things when I could be doing things? Wait, that doesn't sound right... I like playing yeah but you can't just not do anything productive, you'll get used to not doing things and then be so far behind on everything you wanted to do earlier. Um. Like this place's English and reading and writing, I have to figure it out because it will make everything else, learning technology or going to school or having a new family easier."

"Well, yeah, learning English is a good idea, but– I meant more about the, uh, you need to be able to have fun sometimes? If only to make it so you don't burn out."

"No I need to always get things done if I don't wanna be a no-good lazy- Uh, bad person. The village and mom and Errie and all my cousins and aunts and uncles don't like lazies."

"… You need to get things done even while having fun, or do you mean you can never have fun because you have to be doing things?"

"I can't keep not doing things. Fun has to wait until you did some work today, every day except Saturday and Sunday and sometimes then too. Today's not Saturday yet."

"Well no, it's not, and it's good that you're studying English anyway because that's important, but you don't need to be doing things all the time, and I'm just trying to make sure you, you know, get that."

"I like making myself need to do things. People who do that end up much better than people who don't."

She shrugs. "I try to do things too, but if I don't because I'm having a bad day, I try not to beat myself up over it too much."

She processes the idiom, then, "I think I understand."

Smile. "Anyway – was there anything you wanted to do today? Go through some more words or something, or is the dictionary okay for that, or…?"

"Can you tell me all the things you usually do for a day of school? Like, b-before the Neuroi, in summer we wake up with the sun and let out the chickens and I cleaned it and took the eggs while Errie got hay for them and mom washed clothes for the day, then we all cooked and ate breakfast and relaxed for a bit, then it was all day harvesting at least until lunch... Like that. Grownup school is fine maybe."

"Uh, it's three hours of class, an hour of lunch, then two hours of class? You'd probably do math, English, geography, history, maybe a language, science, maybe something like music or art? Also gym at some point? I'm not sure how it works everywhere, but at my school they rotated what classes you had each day – it didn't change from week to week, but like, on Monday I had math, English, French, chemistry and gym, but then Tuesday was French, history, English, geography, government?"

"What's a class like?"