This chapter's a bit short, but I thought the beginning was particularly entertaining….

Chapter 64: Spelling

Kassra left once the dishes were done to go about finding more paper and pencils, both of which this endeavor would certainly need plenty of, and it was at this time that Gol tried to get as much work done as he possibly could while she was away. Dictating the entire thing would surely be a tiring affair, and he was never good about voicing his private thoughts aloud in such a manner, but after starting and stopping several times when the pain in his hand became too much, he realized he would just have to leave the rest of his book to her and hope she was merciful. How literate was she anyway? She certainly wasn't great with speaking words, so how adept would she be at actually writing them?

He spent what remained of his time waiting for her to return with the needed supplies, as he rested his forehead in one hand and stared both at the unfinished pages before him and at the horrid state of his twisted right arm, finding at this time that the cut on his thumb was worse than he remembered, not that he cared enough to do anything about it. Eventually she returned, and he looked up as she plopped down in the seat across from him and set before her a great stack of paper and several pencils, all sharp, one straying from the group and rolling towards the edge of the table before she picked it up and held it poised in one hand.

"Now, let's get a few things straight before we get started," she said.

"Excuse me? I allow you to—"

"Who's doing who a favor? Now," she wagged the pencil at him, "if I'm going to do this for you, you have to write some kind of a warning, y'know, so people know just what Dark Eco can do to them, 'kay?"

He huffed. "People already know—"

"Well, they need to be extra informed," she said, leaning forward as she jabbed the pencil even more forcefully in his direction. "I'm not going to write something that's going to make more people turn grumpy like you."

He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms as best as he was able. "I thought you liked me, for some deluded reason."

"I do, but you know what I mean. So do you agree to my demands or what?"

Gol rolled his eyes. "I'm sure I'll make it clear enough in my book just how corrupting Dark Eco is. They don't need another warning."

"I disagree."

"Too bad."

She set the pencil down and placed her hands on the tabletop as she pushed herself to her feet. "Okay, well, I guess my work here is done."

"I'll put it at the end! Okay? Happy now?"

She smiled. "You know I'm always happy."

"Sit down."

"Yes, sir." She did as she was told, picking the pencil up and taking on a stern expression as she shook the pencil at him again. "And see that you do. Otherwise, I'll just have to write something myself, and it won't be nearly as good as what you can write, I'm sure. Something like… 'Be careful or Dark Eco might make you really grumpy, okay?'"

Just the thought of such a sentence in his book, his book, made him want to vomit. "I'll put it. At the end," he said, pronouncing each word quite clearly. If she defiled his book in that way, he'd…well, he'd be quite unhappy about it, and that was an emotion he was quite adept at.

"Good, let's get started, then, shall we?" She looked down, pencil poised over the page before her. "'Once upon a time…'"

"Don't even." He slid the most recent page of his book across the table to her. "You start here. But, first, you do know how to spell properly, don't you?"

She looked up at him, pulling the correct page into position. "Of course, I do."

"And proper grammar and punctuation. Do you know that, as well?"

"Yeeees…"

"I hope so. Because I don't want to be made to look like a fool. And I really would rather not have to tell you where each and every comma goes, either. Or semi-colon."

"Semi-what?"

He sighed. Maybe this wasn't going to be such a good idea, after all.

Their joint effort at writing his book had a rocky start as Gol found that Kassra was indeed less skilled in the written word than she had advertised herself to be, and he had no choice but to spell out the more difficult words for her ("analysis", how hard could that be?) and remind her of commas she claimed to not have missed, even when he could quite clearly see her adding them afterward, a grin on her face the entire time. And then he'd have no choice but to slow down for her as she wrote, or repeat things, her slow pace stemming from her confession that she had sloppy handwriting, and it would be illegible if she went any faster. He doubted her work enough even with the slower pace, however, and made a mental note to read over it all himself later.

As afternoon made way to evening, they eventually did get into the groove of things, their progress picking up as she got the hang of recording his every word, and he no longer seemed to need to remind her of every instance of punctuation aside from the most cryptic. Even her earlier attempts at striking up a conversation ended, and the only real interruption was for dinner, which involved nothing more than cactus fruit, quick and simple, which they ate in between the continuation of their appointed tasks, with cups being banned from the tabletop altogether. By the time nightfall had arrived, they had a good stack of finished pages piled on the table.

The woman set the pencil down with the click of wood on wood, before lifting her arms to stretch them over her head with a yawn. "Is that all? My arm's starting to really cramp up."

"Yes, that should be fine for now," he said, suppressing a yawn of his own.

She rested her elbows on the table and began to open and close the fingers of her writing hand, watching the movement with lazy eyes. "So, this is the kind of stuff you used to do? Just…study Dark Eco all the time?"

"Yes. I was the Dark Eco Sage, after all."

The movement of her hand stilled, and she looked over. "Didn't it get…boring?"

He scoffed. "Of course, not. Dark Eco is so complex, so full of mystery, that I spent much of my life learning about it." His attention dropped to the surface of the table before him, his eyes nearly closed. "And there is still so much I don't know, I'm afraid, more mysteries remaining than I ever realized possible. After…being under its influence, I know that now. I still don't know the first thing about preventing the corruption it causes or learning to control it without having to be corrupted."

"So it was the thing that made you change?"

"I suppose so. I never wanted such a thing to happen, but…I guess by the time I began to fall under its control…I didn't care."

"And your sister?"

He continued to stare at the table, eyes tracing over the lines in the wood that curled and coiled about each other. "Yes, she, too, suffered my fate. She was my assistant. It…" It shouldn't have happened. He deserved what happened. It shouldn't have happened to her, though.

"What was she like before?"

He pressed his good hand to his chest, forcing a ragged breath into his failing lungs. "That is quite enough for tonight. Get some rest. I have a few more things to do."

"O…okay." She stood, and he heard a clattering as she began to grab the plates they had left on the table.

"I can get it."

"Are—"

"Just leave it."

She obliged, but continued to watch him in silence for a time, his gaze remaining on the table to better avoid hers, until she gave up studying him to bid him good night and headed for her bedroom, leaving him in the peace and the loneliness of an empty room, but even having someone around wasn't enough to expel the latter, not when there was a void that person couldn't fill. No matter how close they came.

With a sigh, he grabbed the pages Kassra had written thus far, pulling them to his side of the table before retrieving his glasses from his pocket. He got to reading over her work, eyes burning from exhaustion, taking notice of the chirp of a cricket that seemed to have snuck in. He looked up from his reading, diverting his gaze towards the corner of the kitchen the sound seemed to be coming from, but he didn't see the culprit, not that he expected to, and he didn't quite care enough to go look for it, either. He attempted to return to his reading, but when the distraction refused to relent, he set the pages down again and stood, his attention turning instead to putting the plates and cups away after as much rinsing as he could manage with one good hand. This done, he retrieved the pages and turned off the lamp, remembering only after darkness had overtaken him that he'd have to find his way back to his bedroom without the aid of his vision. Nevertheless, this he still managed, after creating quite a commotion as he nearly tripped over his chair and bumped into a wall, the latter he proceeded to feel along until he found the hallway he was seeking.

Once inside his room, he fumbled around for the table that held his lamp, feeling around next for the lamp, and once he could see again, he pulled up his chair and got back to reading. The woman's handwriting turned out to be less atrocious than he was expecting, but certainly less flowery than Maia's, and there were minimal errors he had to fix, sometimes spelling, sometimes commas she had forgotten and he had neglected to mention.

He stayed up late into the night reviewing these pages, but even though there was no longer the racket of an insect around to bother him, his mind continued to stray from his work as he thought over his newest assistant and the knowledge that things never seemed to turn out well for those associated with him. He was bad luck, and while the woman claimed that few people knew that he still lived, he wondered if that would be enough to spare her from the curse he seemed too often to bring upon others.

The next morning, Gol still awoke before the sun had yet been given a chance to rise, starting his day out, as always, with a fit of violent coughing, even though he no longer needed to get up so early, and despite the fact that his eyes still burned from last night, a headache working its way into the space between his eyes that he could only assume was from lack of sleep. When returning to his usual restless slumber didn't seem so appealing, or possible, with his strained breathing, he instead found various ways to keep himself busy until the woman woke up, including watering her still yellowing plant and doing a more thorough job with the dishes than he had last night, realizing now that perhaps he should have just gone to bed at a more reasonable hour and left his reading for the morning, which could have saved him from both boredom and his growing headache.

Fortunately, it wasn't terribly long before Kassra had emerged from her room, offering him fruit for breakfast, which he refused, as he had already eaten during his wait for her, more to keep himself busy than due to an actual appetite, and then they returned to the table in the kitchen to get back to writing, though they encountered a bit of a slow start, partly thanks to the distraction her breakfast created, but he didn't push her to work too fast, as he wanted to avoid as much fruit juice on the pages of his book as possible. Those first few drips were quite enough.

To the former Sage's relief, after the first hour or so, the vigor of yesterday returned, only to wane again at midday, but seeing as they had an entire day to work as opposed to just half, and she was helping him, after all, he allowed a break for lunch. And he found it to be most effective in keeping her enthusiasm up to promise that, once the day was done, he would tell her more about his time as a Dark Eco Sage, the anticipation of which seemed to speed up her writing quite a bit in her renewed cheer.

And then nighttime arrived, and with their work done for the day, they retired to the slightly more comfortable chairs in the sitting area, Gol's eyes wandering over the figurines on the mantle as he spoke, though as he delved further into his recollections, what he really saw was not here at all, but far away and long ago, and he found himself reliving the very things he spoke of. He told her of the events surrounding some of the discoveries thus far chronicled in his book, and about his old village and the one his sister and he had moved to later, and even about the homely woman that had a crush on him, a story that incited a few giggles from Kassra.

It was in this way that the day dwindled down, the two of them living and reliving what he saw in his mind, and the former Sage, or current Sage, as the woman claimed he still was one, couldn't stop the lazy grin that formed on his face as he recalled how good the times of long ago truly were, and he wondered inwardly why he had lamented so over those days, when at least his sister was still around and his health was better and he had committed no crimes against society. Those times were not really so bad, but at this moment, when he could ignore the ache in his hand and the heaviness in his lungs, things were not so terrible right now, either. And this woman, that sat and listened to his stories, something that no one else ever had, was not a part of the past that he had begun to long for more so now than ever, and as pleasant as his memories of those distant days were, as much as he had learned to appreciate them as of late, he supposed there were certainly some things the present had that the past lacked.

It's good to see the two of them finally getting along. Please review.