Edie writes down a series of short, three or four letter words with no spelling irregularities.

She stares at the page blankly for a second, a little panicky. Then, voice quiet and hesitant, tries to read the words aloud. She doesn't get them all exactly right straight away - not quite able to connect the sounds accurately - but once she has an idea what they sound like, she can recognise them as words she uses in speech and repeat them a little more surely.

"Perfect."

And there's a smile and that pleased glow again, and something that is probably pride (she did it!).

"Thank you," she says, looking at the sheet again. (It's a lot less intimidating now.)

"You're quite welcome, you earned it."

She giggles a little there, blushing. (She doesn't quite get how she earned any of this yet, but this... she's so glad she did.)

"...more?" she requests after a moment.

"Of course! Now, some of these letters make different sounds when you put them together. C and H make ch, S and H make sh, T and H make either þ or ð, and P and H make ph."

She repeats the sounds back. "Um. How do you tell the difference between þ and ð?"

"Context. This is a word, þis isn't, for example."

She nods. "So...whether it...sounds right?"

"Exactly!"

She smiles again, happy she got that right. "What else?" (She's eager enough now that she's almost forgetting to be scared.)

Edie will teach Blaze about Silent E and consecutive vowels!

Blaze will be an attentive, occasionally very hesitant but mostly highly enthusiastic student! (And the more she learns, the more she smiles.)

Edie is generous with praise, genuinely pleased with her pupil's progress.

The praise gets confusion (she has no idea what to do with it), and more blushing and shy smiles. And if she starts striving a little harder to hear Edie praising her, she's probably not aware of it.

Blaze is so great! And such a good student! Edie is so happy to be here doing this.

Blaze still can't quite identify the happiness she's feeling, but it's a nice sensation.

Eventually though, Blaze realises she's getting hungry again.

Reluctantly, once she's worked up the nerve, she quietly mentions it. "You- said to tell you? If I was. Hungry?"

"Oh! Yeah. We should go get you some more food, reading lessons will keep. Thanks for telling me."

She doesn't really want to stop the reading lessons, but. But she was told she needed to eat more. She smiles at Edie again. "You're- welcome?" (She's still really not sure how to respond to people saying 'thank you' to her.)

Edie beams at her and then leads her to the cafeteria.

Blaze follows, continuing to stay close to Edie and shift closer if there are other people around.

There are sometimes other people around!

She watches them slightly warily, but also a little curiously. She's never really interacted with people outside of the church, and even less with people closer to her age. (And from what she can tell 'seen and not heard' does not seem to apply.)

The people her own age are noisy as a whole and sometimes individually loud. Some of them engage in good-natured shoving. A girl a little younger than her rolls her eyes at a group of boys and lifts off from the ground, floating away loftily.