The boy leaping to his feet cried out, "MASTER JA'AISEN!" his face had such an intense look of feral pride on it that Hana thought he'd transform into a lion and roar. Instead, he became calm again and sat down, studying the paper and carefully sounding out each letter on the parchment. Every time Hana felt that she had a clear grasp on the boy, he did something that completely surprised her. He certainly wasn't the sullen child who had practically refused to serve her food. She didn't know quite what he was, but at the very least, he wanted to learn. And she could work with that. "You do know a good deal of the letters, which is good. May I?" Taking back the parchment, she traced a spiral on both sides with a finger, then lightly blew on it. The charcoal which had been smudged onto the paper floated away on the wind. "That's a trick I learned early on, nice parchment is too expensive to waste on practice work." Shaking out her wrist, Hana carefully wrote out the alphabet, writing upper and lower cases. "Let's start from the top, shall we?" She smiled, "Letters will have different sounds in words based on where they're located, but we'll get to that in a bit. Normally though, letters will make one or two sounds, and all you have to do to read is memorize those sounds and figure out how to sound them out. So we're going to work our way through the alphabet, and when we're done, I can maybe read a bit and show you just how it'll sound once you've got it all. Deal?" -- Pieter smile came easily this time as he slapped Uban on the back. "Don' even worry, lad! I was dumber than a block of wood, and I came out the other side alright. He had his apprentice. His legacy was secure, and everything would work out like it should. Maria had been right when he told him not to be concerned about finding an apprentice. Now he just had to keep him alive. Hmm. "Aye, most of my tattoos come from the profession- which is what we call priest-ing work around those outside the ke-ack!" A cloud of dust had floated directly inside Pieter's open mouth, and he bent over coughing. When he straightened, he resumed in a subdued tone, "Er, anyways. If you follow me as an apprentice, you'll get your tattoos. And those'll open doors in places you've never heard of. All this talk has made me thirsty, ye got rum on yah lad?" Pieter propped himself up on the banister, drawing his pouch of tobacco and contemplatively packing a bowl into his pipe. -- Wheel stretched, glad that the cannon was finally clean. If that stupid witch hadn't decided to tag along he'd have been in a better mood. He could hear her now chatting away at Rohaan, trying to fill the scamps head with reading. Wheel couldn't read, and all the better for it. Who wanted to waste time bent over a book anyway, when you could be doing so many other things? The night was calm, and outside of the noise and light of the small ship, the sea was empty and quiet. But. Without knowing why, Wheel felt the curse kick itself up, pushing him to fight. Balling his fists, he surveyed everything around him. Nothing had changed aboard. Straining his cursed eyes, Wheel could make out a faint shadow moving against the black. It was a ship, coming from the opposite direction of the [i]Borealis[/i]. Pirates? Navy? They were far out of cannon shot, and Wheel doubted the other ship knew they were there. Still, it was something to tell the Cap'n about. Wheel turned and strode quickly to Berlin, who was still watching Rohaan and the idiot girl play school. In a soft voice that told Berlin everything, Wheel muttered into the captains ear. His eyes widened, then narrowed. He didn't move, but his grip on his pipe tightened ever so slightly.