"Oh," she says quietly out loud, finishing cleaning the plate. She spends far longer drying it than she should. You wouldn't mind?

I wouldn't mind.

It seems like part of the problem, for you, was people having really awful expectations of you, in a lot of ways. So - I wouldn't do that very much anyway, but I want to try not doing it at all, for a while, and see how that goes.

She bites at her lip. Looks down. Looks back up. Can...I learn to read, yet? There's a definite impression that she intends to try spending the day in bed.

Yeah, I don't really want to hold off any longer on stuff. Go ahead.

...Do you think Daisy will help me? There's a slight impression that she intends to ask Daisy herself, but also that she intends to see about looking after the quail chick before curling back up.

I expect she'll be delighted to.

Rhoda finishes drying her plate and puts it away. Then she turns back to the table, and specifically Daisy instead of Pradnakt. "I- Would you help me with...reading? Please? After..." she gestures at the quail's cage, already moving over to that to see what needs doing.

"Of course."

(There are a few spots where the wood shavings are dirty, and the chick has kicked some of his food out of the bowl.)

Rhoda smiles at Daisy, bright and eager, and turns her attention to the cage, trying to remember what exactly she's supposed to do. And perhaps more importantly, how to do it without scaring the quail. She bites at her lip, looks sideways at Daisy, "Help?"

"I can hold him while you clean up, or you can while I do?"

That is a difficult question. She presses her lips together as she thinks. "Would you mind if I held him?" she asks, peeking up at Daisy.

"That's fine."

She scoops him out of the cage - she has to herd him onto her hand to do it - and passes him over.

She gently takes him, cupping her hands like she had the day before to provide him with a little bit of shelter, and splits her attention between him and watching Daisy. (He's definitely more interesting, but watching Daisy is important.)

He nestles under the shelter again, settling more quickly this time.

And Daisy scoops out the dirty spots and the mess around the food bowl, checking under the hides to make sure that the entire cage is clean; it only takes a minute. "All done."

She smiles, and again, gently strokes over his back with one finger. When Daisy declares the cage done, Rhoda very gently lowers her hand back into the cage to let him hop off again. "Reading?" she says quietly as she does so.

"Mmhmm. Do you want to start with something in particular?"

She shrugs a little. "...Don't know enough to know?" she admits quietly.

"That's fine." She goes through the pile of books: "we have the rest of the first quail book to go through, and the second one, and these -" she pauses, not having the word she wants, and signs to Pradnakt, who supplies 'science books'. "And the alphabet one; that won't be much help yet. And I have a few relationship books that we should read sometime."

"The. Quail books?" she says. "Or the..." she tries to think of a description. "How-things books?"

Pradnakt signs again. "We'll have time for a few, if you want," Daisy reports, and gathers up the books to bring to the bedroom.

Rhoda is smiling as she follows. It takes her a moment (she needs to remind herself that Pradnakt said this was okay), but then she slides back into it, curling up against the pillows.

And Daisy sits comfortably beside her, picking up where she left off in the first quail book, then starting on the second one. As she mentioned, there are several places where the books disagree, or even outright conflict, in their advice.

"How do you decide which one is right?" she asks after one such case.

"Usually it means that they're both fine, and you can do it either way. Sometimes, it means that one person's way of doing something has a problem, and they're changing another part of how they do it to fix that problem. And sometimes one way is just wrong. And usually the way to figure it out, if it doesn't seem obvious just from thinking about it, is to try both and see how they work, or try the one that sounds easier and see if you have a problem because of it."