A/N: Sorry, I tried posting this on Friday like normal and it wasn't working.

Arc 1: First Life (and First Death)

Chapter 10: Back to Lessons

After a while of just sitting contentedly in my father's lap he sighs and says, "you should get going Zelda, your classes start up again today and you'll be late if you don't leave now."

I hesitate for a moment as I glance back at mom.

He gently strokes my head as he says, "you'll be visiting her again tomorrow, and I've instructed the doctors to come fetch us the moment she wakes up, but right now you need to get to class. You're the one who asked to start your lessons again, and it was me who argued that you needed more time to recover. If you've changed your mind I can send a servant to inform your tutors that lessons will be delayed until next week?"

I quickly shake my head, "no dad, you're right. I asked for this, it would be rude to my tutors to cancel abruptly, especially after making them hurry to prepare for the lessons on such short notice. I'll see you at dinner." I slide off his lap onto the ground and grab my bag of school supplies that I'd brought with me.

"I'll see you at dinner," he says with a fond smile as he watches me prepare to leave.

I trot over to the door quickly and pull it open, I pause for a minute in the doorway to grin back at my dad, "I love you." I say brightly.

He smiles tenderly back at me, "I love you too, Zelda."

I smile at him again as I step out the door and close it behind me. I resettle the bag on my shoulder and start hurrying back the way I came. I move at a light jog through the hallways, being careful not to bump into any of the soldiers or servants that I pass. Many of them call greetings and smile fondly at me as I pass. I return the greetings as best I can while puffing. 'God, I'm so out of shape! I used to be able to jog this distance without getting winded. I guess I am still recovering like dad and my maids said.' I think, annoyed.

After ten minutes of jogging I come to a stop in front of my first class's door. I take a moment to gasp for breath before opening the door, in the hopes that I will have recovered enough not to wheeze when I enter. I step into the class and greet my language teacher (otherwise known as reading and writing class, but that's a bit of a mouthful so I shortened it to language class), "Good morning Mrs. Heming, sorry if I'm late." I hurry over to the table that sits in the middle of the room, where my tutor is already sitting.

She smiles in greeting, "good morning Princess, and not to worry you're right on time."

As I settle across from her I wonder what we're going to do today, you might think that I would have a ridiculously easy time in this class due to having an entire past life of reading and writing to draw on, but you would be wrong. See in Hyrule, English doesn't exist. Instead we speak Hylian, and write in Hylian. It is vastly different from English. It was incredibly irritating not knowing what everyone around me was saying when I was a baby, in fact I think the only thing I did understand was when they said my name.

I struggled fervently to learn the language as quickly as possible, and I did. I don't know if the speed with which I picked up the spoken language was due to having a flexible baby brain, because of how much I practiced, the fact that I was already bilingual and had experience learning a second language, because I'd always excelled in language classes, or some combination of all of these facts. Either way, I was incredibly grateful when I started being able to distinguish the meaning behind the previously nonsensical gibberish that I was surrounded by.

However the written language was a far greater struggle. I suppose it's to be expected seeing as it was developed in a world without English, or even any of the languages that English evolved from, and therefore had very little in common with its writing rules. Before I turned two and started taking this class I was completely illiterate. But wait! You must be thinking, 'if you've only had a year of learning how to read, how were you able to read that magic book? Aren't they complicated?' The answer is, yes it was complicated, but I learned to read that book through sheer single-minded determination. I took that magic book, and a dictionary from Mrs. Heming's classroom, and looked up every. single. word. that I didn't understand. And there were a LOT. After all, the book was about magic, it involved a lot of words that you wouldn't come across very often, especially not as a newbie. I even had difficulty reading some of the dictionary entries! The entries would have words that I didn't recognize in them, so I'd have to look THEM up! Sometimes I'd wind up looking up the words from an entry, that was in an entry, that was in another entry, about a word I found in that magic book! At that point if I was STILL stuck I would take the last word in the chain to Mrs. Heming and ask her what it was. Which might have been risky but at that point the word I was asking for help with was so far removed from the original that she had no way of knowing what I was trying to do.

Honestly I felt like my brain was going to implode. It took so much effort just to translate a single sentence, in a book that was as densely packed as a textbook on magic sounds like it would be, that I worried it would take years before I managed to read the entire book on my own. How it only took me a year to translate is a miracle to me. Weirdly I never contemplated giving up despite how hard and frustrating it was, I think it was probably because I knew that no matter how long it took to do it myself, it would still be faster than waiting until I was sixteen to start being taught.

Of course after I thought that I'd finished translating it, I went back and reread it dozens of times for three months to make sure that everything made sense, and that I memorised and understood all of it. I knew that magic could be dangerous so I tried to be as careful as possible.

It certainly helped expand my understanding of the language and improved my vocabulary, but it didn't really help me in this class. I wound up neglecting my basic words to the point where I still can't easily write basic sentences or read simple books. However it wasn't all a waste of time! I learned a very effective strategy to help me read books, not to mention that I gained the skill to sit and study! I never really knew how to do that before. I was so used to things coming easily to me that when I ran into difficulties (specifically math) I didn't know what to do, nor did I have the patience to try to figure it out. But now I know how to study! At least for languages… I'm still fucked when it comes to learning math aren't I?

That aside! I now had a deeper understanding of the language, and significantly more free time that would be perfect to fill by reading, so I was excited to really dive into this class and learn as much as I could as fast as I could. I'm pretty sure I shocked Mrs. Heming with my fervor for her class, maybe she figured out what I'd been working on after hearing about The Incident, and figured now that I was forbidden from learning magic that I would lose all interest in reading? Well luckily for her I'd always been obsessed with books and reading, and my interest was unlikely to fade for as long as I continued to exist.