Chapter 8

"Ok, Rina, now that we've gotten through that, can you promise me not to do that again?" The man asked. Rina nodded. She smiled.

"I'll try not to!" She said. There was a sound of rustling paper.

"We seem to be curious of your vivid interest in books. I'm wondering how you can read so much so quickly. Most are in foreign languages that even our linguists don't understand, and yet you can read it! How do you comprehend it all?" He asked. Rina tapped a finger to her cheek.

"Hmmm... how do I explain that..."

"Well, maybe I should ask some questions that lead into it. Let's start with... How did you learn to read?"

"Oh! That's much easier! I learned from the same man who was the leader of that gang who followed me!"

"The leader of the gang?"

"Yep! He was nice!"

"But I thought you only knew him for a few weeks..."

"No! I never said for a few weeks! More like a few years!" She said.

"Hmm... Ok... so how exactly did he..?"

"Teach me?"

"Yes."

"Well... At first it was really awkward. Cause he just randomly came up to me when I was trying to figure out what a sign said at a market and he just said 'Can you even read that?' I said kind of. And he said 'You're a lier. You depend on the shopkeeper to be fair and sell you everything.' I said he was being a little mean. He laughed. Then he just simply said he was going to teach me. I said I didn't have time. Then he just grabbed me and dragged me into the shop he lived in-"

"Wait, exactly when was this?"

"My.... fifth city."

"Ok... So, if you told me right, you moved to thirteen total cities?"

"Yep! Thirteen is a little unlucky... but I didn't count the Vatican!"

"Please continue."

"Ok! When he followed me around, he always got a room above a bar. Either that or a really dark store. But he dragged me through the bar, past all these guys who were drinking and smelly, and pulled me upstairs! It was so weird! I ended up getting a lot of bruises on my legs because of that! He pushed me into his room and locked the door. He pushed me down into a seat and pulled this giant picture book out in front of me. He said 'This is the English alphabet. It's the most common thing today. I'll teach you the letters and make you sound out words by combining these letters to words and how you think they're spelled.' What's odd is that the entire time he didn't take off his hood. And it was really dark in his room. He had to windows and blinds shut and no light at all. I could barely see the letters. I was corrected so much! But I learned the whole alphabet in less than a half an hour! I was happy! Then he kept me up there for three more hours to teach me small words and then medium leveled words. He said I was the level of a ten year old who went to school. I was young! I couldn't help it! Then afterwards, he booted me out of the window when it was dark and I landed on a cart of hay! He was so rude! Grr! I just wanted to smack him!"

"Oh, so he rudely forced you to learn how to read?"

"Yeah, but after a while I got used to it and he began to teach me big words. After three weeks of English, he moved to Spanish. I learned about half the language in two weeks. I spent seven hours a day memorizing every word he forced in my head! But he was so quick! Then he stuff Italian and German in my head in one week, those were hard... Then he taught me some Japanese for a few days. I learned the rest myself from a book. Then the last thing he taught me was Latin. He told me it was the most important language I should learn in this day in age. I learned that in under one and a half weeks!"

"All that in under two months!"

"Oi... my head hurt after that... but he said I was really intelligent for learning all those languages in a month and a week... He even said I may have an IQ of over 300... That's already off the charts!"

"But it says here you also know-"

"Russian, Greek, Roman, Korean, Taiwanese, Portugese, Arabic, Somolian, French, Mongolian, and Chinese." The man coughed.

"That's an awful lot of languages you know, Rina!"

"Hey, I also know the secret language the vampires know!"

"Wha-what???" The man said in surprise.

"Yeah! I forgot, that's the last thing he taught me."

"He?! The one who was the leader of the gang?"

"Yep!"

"So... he was a vampire?"

"Yea... is there something wrong with that?"

"No, nothing. So... back to the question that started this all... how do you comprehend so much?"

"Oh, well... not to brag, but I have excellent memory when it comes to double, triple or cuadrople tasking. I can read up to ten books at a time! I'm so proud of myself! I'm working on eleven, but I have to control myself! The thickest book I've ever read was over seven thousand pages long! I don't remember the title, since it was faded, but boy... it was interesting! And it was all a screenplay..."

"A screenplay?"

"Yep! Did you know the most famous play writers of the Elizabeth Saga came together to create one giant screenplay? At the intro, they all wrote in their own comments! It's suppose to be up to three days long, if there are breaks every night and at Act endings, and it's a love and tragedy and drama and action and adventure! It was beautiful!"

"What was it about?"

"You read it."

"I'm afraid I can't do that..."

"Of course you can't! It's written in old English, old Spanish, old French, and old German. No one can read it unless you're a native to each language. I barely got to translate it enough to grasp the concept of the play and write it out in my mind. That book took me a month to finish! Most of it was translating from one language to the other in a few seconds. Man that was hard..." Rina shook her head.

"So have you made any pieces of art or books? Something in that nature?"

"No books! And whenever I get anything to paint big pictures or draw portraits, I give them away or sell them for food money. You know, so I can live."

"Did your teacher ever recieve any paintings or drawings?"

"No... I offered him one once, but... He turned it down and said I should keep all my stuff... Then two minutes later he said it was crap and walked away," Rina said.

"So, first he slightly offended you then completely insulted you?"

"Pretty much. But I didn't mind. He was always like that."

"Now this is a personal question from me, but... I want to know this badly; where you born with the ability to distinguish the difference between vampire and man?"

"Yeah. Ever since I could remember. But what's weird is that... here in the Vatican, there are different people."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what I see is so much different than what others see. Some people in the Vatican are different. They aren't vampires though. They're... special," Rina said.

"How do you see them?"

"I see them, but they have a light shining off them and their eyes are different. Like, for humans, it's a dull color and whatever color their born with. Vampires is always bright red. But, lately I've been seeing all sorts of colors, like green, blue, black, and white."

"What do you see from me right now?"

"The light around you is human, but your eyes are a faint white."

"Can you tell my eye color through that?"

"It's brown."

"Yes. So you've been stretching your power to see these things?"

"Yea, to pretty much keep myself out of trouble!"

"Out of trouble? What do you mean by that?"

"Well... for the humans... the light radiating off of them can sort of tell my how they are. If they're evil, I can tell. If they're good, I can tell. If they're confused, I can tell. When I first saw a difference in the radiance, it confused me. But it all depends on how bright the light is. It goes with every one."

"What did you see in your teacher?"

"He was confused. Whenever he acted mean, his light was dark. But whenever he performed his version of nice, it would be brighter, but still confused. He didn't know what side he was on."

"Hmm... That's interesting..."