The Scrollrunners

Chapter 3 | Letes Takes Charge

"Hello," Letes said softly, but not without confidence, as she stood staring at the scrawny little girl's back in the no longer fully secret classroom.

The girl jumped and scrambled around. She looked at Letes with wide, scared eyes that were half-covered by unkempt hair, her legs slightly bent as if preparing to take off at any second.

"What's your name? Mine's Letes." Letes held up one hand in a gentle wave.

The girl glanced around the courtyard as if weighing her options, but upon seeing that Letes stood directly in front of the only exit, she cleared her throat and quietly answered, "Gaia."

Letes smiled warmly and walked nonchalantly away from the hole in the wall to pick up some fallen scrolls in the math section of the courtyard (Talibah's main scene, typical of her to leave a mess), trying to signal to the girl that she wasn't a threat nor was she going to trap her in here.

The girl inched towards the exit, but something in her face told Letes that she hadn't made the decision to flee yet.

Longing. That's what I see in her.

Whether that was longing for a friend, a safe space, or to unearth all of the wonders inside this discovered hideout, Letes wasn't quite sure.

"Have you been in here before?" Letes asked, careful to speak softly and with kindness.

The girl shook her head rigorously and opened her mouth as if to ask something, but then snapped it shut when she noticed how intently Letes was looking at her.

Realizing that the girl was curious about what this place was, Letes made a split-second decision to voice what had until then been kept strictly between Talibah and herself, and answered the question the little girl didn't need to ask. "This is a secret classroom that my best friend and I created."

Gaia cocked her head to one side and simply asked, "How?"

"Well," Letes began, not wanting to reveal too much just yet, "my friend learned how to read and write when she was about your age, and then she taught me. Ever since, we've been, ah, collecting knowledge that we can and learning from it."

"My older brothers all go to school at the Library, but my little sister and I will never be able to." Said Gaia with her eyes downcast.

"How old is your sister?"

"Just a year younger than I am. And I'm seven."

"Hmmm...." Letes briefly contemplated and made a split-second decision. "How about you two start coming here to learn?"

~~~

Letes smiled and hummed quietly to herself later that evening as she was helping put away her parents' paint stall for the night. She was thrilled to expand the secret classroom, though she wasn't sure how Talibah would feel about it.

I hope she's okay with it. I can't imagine she wouldn't be. She's too rebellious and defiant to not want to start teaching more girls.

"What are you smirking about?" Letes's mother, Nadira, asked jokingly.

"Probably some trouble that she and Talibah have gotten into." Her father, Rune, cut in.

That wasn't far from the truth.

Letes answered, "I actually haven't seen Talibah today, she had some things to do at the Library."

As she stacked rattling boxes of paints into the back of the horse-drawn cart full of jars of paint, Nadira mockingly asked, "However did you survive a whole day without her?"