After their initial interaction and brief lesson by the fountain, Kester had expected Calanthe to lose interest in teaching a Dresmondi refugee Arynnite sign language, but instead, this study room and ones like it had quickly become familiar locations. Entertaining himself by watching passersby and repeatedly freezing and thawing a bit of water nearby, Walnut lounged in the window of this particular room while Kester sat at the table with Calanthe, more comfortable with the friendly woman now than she had been when they first met.

Theoretically, after Akagi had gifted her an enchanted quill that wrote down what she said, Kester’s communication challenges with everyone who didn’t have a dyr were resolved, but she wanted to have a contingency to fall back on in the event that the quill and parchment were lost or stopped working. So her lessons with Calanthe continued.

Kester repeated the motion she’d just seen the Arynnite perform, motioning with her right hand from her chin to the woman sitting across from her. At the mention of her fingers, she nodded and did so again, this time making sure that they were together like they should have been before. “I used some basic signs before I found Walnut,” The Dresmondi mused, knowing that her voice would be heard in the quiet of the private room. “This is similar to the one I had for expressing gratitude. That’s a little funny, isn’t it?”

Huh. Kester hadn’t thought of it quite like that, but now that Calanthe mentioned it, the similarity seemed rather intuitive. She wondered idly if people in other kingdoms would have signs similar to the ones that the Arynnite had taught her, though she doubted that anyone in Coheed understood anything other than fighting and killing. Now that she thought about it, however, the sign for death was probably fairly universal as well. Funny.

Calanthe’s question had Kester casting her a smile and a nod. “We’ve been in Elyusian longer than I thought,” She admitted with a slight shrug, before focusing on trying to copy the sign that the Arynnite had demonstrated. Friends. Walnut would argue that she didn’t have many of those, not really. “But Walnut and I have met a lot of people. It’s different here than it is in Illianar. Bigger. Fancier.” And not as many refugees walked the city streets.

Kester glanced down at her fingers, comparing them to Calanthe’s, and her brow furrowed slightly. Something didn’t look quite right. “Can you show me what you did again?”

Calanthe offered such a typical Arynnite – and at this point, Calanthe – answer that Kester couldn’t help but smile and let out an amused exhale: Illianar was a beautiful city, but Elyusian was better because all of the big discoveries were made there. “Do you ever get tired of it?” She asked, half genuine and half good-natured teasing. “All that thinking and learning.” The irony of her asking this question while receiving a lesson on sign language did not escape her. “It always sounds like your mind never sleeps. Sometimes it’s nice to just pause and enjoy something instead of trying to figure out everything about it.”

Life in Dresmond was more predisposed toward simplicity, she thought, than life in Arynn Frey. They had their caravans to provide for and their lands to defend, and while existence might not have been as easy as living in this kingdom, their work had provided them with enough purpose that they didn’t feel the need to go finding it on their own. She missed the evenings spent sitting around a campfire with Kaveri and Nephys, enjoying the satisfying tired that followed a good day of work. Some meat from hers and Walnut’s kill would be cooking over the fire, and the warmth of the flames would dance along her skin—

Calanthe’s fingers were also warm as they adjusted Kester’s own, and she relaxed her hand so the Arynnite could move them into the proper shape. Looking at her sign, she could see – and feel – how her fingers more closely resembled what the other woman had shown her. “Oh, I see. Less tension.” Something that Kester historically was not great at. Unhooking her fingers, she shook out her hands and then tried again. The sign felt different this time, more natural, though Calanthe would be the judge of its correctness. “Like that?”