Work Text:
It had been a hard feat, acquiring the books.
Ever since they had left Kilkenny, they had done their best to make their way deeper and deeper into the heart of Ireland. Where no ordinary humans had yet settled, forests untouched for countless miles. There, nature still ran wild, pure and just the way it should do with its unpredictability without the influence of man.
Though, on their quest to find the perfect place to settle down, the caravan and the pack of wolves had suddenly stopped as they had seen the smoke coming from a distance. A town nearby.
And instead of immediately changing their route, Robyn had begged her father to go into this town, they had a lot of money that they had found in a chest left behind on a badly damaged, abandoned caravan similar to their own. In the end, Bill had brought back rare foods like milk and bread, and Robyn had spent her money on several different books.
Storybooks for both children and adults, books about England and Ireland, books about the mystic far away countries on the other side of the Earth, but no Bible. She made sure not to buy one of those for many reasons.
And, it was a joy to read once more, when she wasn’t a wolf running around and playing with Mebh, she sat in the caravan and enjoyed the rocking feeling as the horse pulled them all forward, her nose in a book. She loved to explore those faraway worlds, and after a few days of an annoyed Mebh telling her it was boring to just watch her, Robyn had immediately taken on the duty to teach the redheaded wolfwalker how to read. After all, every human should be able to read, even if they also happened to have the ability to turn into a wolf in their sleep. Reading was important and could always be useful.
Mebh hadn’t really gotten it at first, not good at memorizing the letters or the way the letters could change pronunciation depending on how the word was built, but Robyn never gave up on her and gently guided her through the processes, using her finger to trace along the sides as she read aloud for Mebh. All to get her familiar with reading and trying to remember the letters and what specific words looked like. All while she also continued to let the girl practice her alphabet.
After a while, Mebh had finally gotten all of her letters, both in upper and lowercase and were now able to read most of her words, with help of reading them aloud, pronouncing every letter by itself right after each other to finally form a full word. Her sentences took a long time to get, but she worked in a slow and somewhat steady rhythm for a beginner, and Robyn couldn’t be more proud. Soon, Mebh only needed to pronounce just a few letters each word instead of all, and her pace sped up even more, even though it was still slow compared to Robyn.
“T-th-the g-i-girl s-sa-said than-k yo-u, the girl said thank ye!” she happily repeated, giving Robyn a big smile that showed her canines. “Did ye see that? I almost got it on the first try I did.”
Robyn couldn’t help but laugh, loving the excitement of the wolfwalker.
“You did, I’m really proud, you’ve improved so quickly.”
“Thanks to ye, at first this reading thing just hurt me head because it’s hard. Now it’s easier.”
“Yes, if you keep practicing you’ll only get better.”
“For sure.”
“Okay, how about you read two more pages and then we can play in the forest?”
“Sounds like ye know me well, that’s some
real
fun.”