Ashly shows Richard the piece of paper with a grin on her face. "It seems I'm much smarter than I remembered. I never knew these words would be this easy to learn." Richard holds the paper and checks the words. "Well then, I guess I can leave now right? I just learned in this short amount of time." Ashly says with pride.
"…" Richard looks up at Ashly then back at the piece of paper. He makes a face of pity, and he takes a deep breath before he looks at Ashly again. "Most of these words are mispronounced, most of these definitions are incorrect." He then hands the paper to Ashly. "These things don't just happen instantly Ashly, take your time. To learn you have to slow down." He says.
"You mustn't rush all the time Ashly, taking it slow will get you further than you think." He says hoping it makes him seem wise. "Watch your surroundings, if you run you'll miss everything. Learning isn't always about the end result, it's about the effort you put into the process."
"Ashly you must know that learning is about taking one step at a time. You must remember everything you've learned and if you dont, it's not called learning." He points at her paper.. "There is a difference between understanding something and knowing it."
"Let me explain it in a way that you will understand alright?" He asked and Ashly just nods. "Knowing is just the familiarity of things, everyone can know anything if they heard it once. Understanding in the other hand is the comprehension. To be able to explain said something, and be able to add your own ideas and thoughts. To be able to use concepts with ideas as a basis on your ideas." Ashly is completely confused by what he had said and he can see it in her expressing.
"Yeah sure whatever you said, I'll just try again then." Of course Ashly is not to happy to hear her pride get destroyed. "I'll make sure to take my time this time." She says with a fake smile.
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It's late in the day and Lucas is a bit tired, he is leaving the library and he thanked the librarian. He is holding his map that he has worked on all afternoon. Lucas thinks about how difficult it was to make the measurements perfect. He knows if he gets them wrong then he will have to redo his entire route. He doesn't want to end up in a different area because of his miscalculations.
His stomach growls, that's right Lucas hasn't eaten in hours. Lucas doesn't want to return back home because he will meet Ashly. "Remember Lucas, you can't see her right now. If you see her now, you will let yourself make the same mistake again. She will manipulate you, that's not what you want to happen." Lucas tells himself.
As he repeats this again he hears faint footsteps, and he is nervous to know who it is. "Lucas, so there where you have been." It's undoubtedly Ashly's voice, Lucas turns and sees Ashly. "Why do you look like shit Lucas, you don't seem to happy to see me huh?"
"Well I m making plans right now Ashly, I don't need you to disturb me right now." He says as he turns to leave.
Ashly then walks in front of him, and shoves a piece of paper on his face. "Look at this Lucasz" Lucas grabs the piece of paper, there seems to be a bunch of words defined incorrectly but only some are correct. "As you just saw Lucas, I just changed. This is proof I can make decisions."
Lucas looks up at Ashly, "Are you making fun of me Ashly?" He asked, "This is genuinely insulting and I don't want to speak with you." Ashly makes a huge huff, "I don't know if you're joking or being completely serious."
"What? This isn't enough proof for you Lucas?" She asked "I thought it was, I thought this is what you wanted." She said but Lucas just rubs his face.
"Ashly, I want you to change and grow as a person. You can't just learn in one singular day, that isn't enough. I'm giving you a few days to answer this dilemma. I know you're uneducated so I'm giving you extra time." Ashly is not surprised that he softened up a bit after he had time to calm down .
"Ashly, what's to say you didn't just do this for one time. That you are hoping I fell for your trick so I can take you with me to Ethneal. What if you just faked it and then ran away abandoning me."
"You're smart Lucas as always, but I wasn't thinking of that. Even if I tried, I wouldn't think that far ahead. I'm just doing honest work Lucas, nothing more." She says with a smile.
"Well I don't have any way to prove if your lying or not. I won't accept anything from you until you give me an answer in a few days. You can't answer me later not earlier than that, those are the conditions." Lucas says as he begins to leave. Ashly waits until Lucas leaves to flip him off.
It's the next day. "So you're being serious with this aren't you?" Richard asked as Ashly approached him. "Well alright then, I thought you would have already given up." Richard is surprised a bit. "Lucas seems worse than he did yesterday, what did you say to him."
"Nothing, I just told him what I did and he wasn't happy." Ashly said, "He wanted me to do more."
"Well of course, you have to put in effort. It means you have to do way more than before." Richard says.
"Of course I'm putting in the effort, why would I try to talk to him if I didn't?" Ashly said, Lucas is a necessary to her survival. Thinking about it, this man might be her next option. He does seem willing to somewhat listen to her. He also doesn't seem to want anything in return for helping her out.
Ashly looks at the guy and can see in his eyes he has some form of attraction to her. To think being born with a bit of more beauty than others would be great. Is her looks what is making him want to help her or because of Baxsol.
This is a bit risky if he isn't only doing it for her looks, but does she have any other option? Why wouldn't she attempt this, it wouldn't hurt to try. Ashly then thinks a bit more and realizes that Richard would not want to tolerate her shit. He doesn't know her as much as Lucas nor spend as much time for him to be an option. He will have to be a last resort, she will slowly gain his trust, and if everything else fails he will be there.
"Hey are you alright?" Richard asks Ashly, she looks at him with confusion. "I've been trying to get your attention for a while after you just stop responding." He sees that she just shrugs it off "I'll forget that for now, I can see you aren't pushing yourself and you seem bored. Try to learn something that might interest you at least. There are interesting things inside this small town, a hobby perhaps."
"Yeah… I don't know about that, I will hear you out on this if that's what you want." Ashly said.
"Well I can show you around, maybe there is something that you're into." Richard said.
Ashly is holding onto something. "Yeah sure I'll go with you, show me around." Ashly then throws the thing she was holding away.
They begin to walk around the small town. "Let me show you this one place right now Ashly." They arrive at a pond, it's very cold. "Maybe fishing can be your hobby, it's relaxing and we are lucky that the pond isn't frozen."
"Pass." Ashly said and Richard asks why? "Don't get me wrong, I don't hate fishes or anything like that. My problem is that I heard it is very time consuming to catching a singular fish."
"Well, you're not entirely wrong, and you do have a valid reason to not want to fish." Richard said. "Just sit down for a bit Ashly, I want to tell you why I chose this pond as the first stopping point." Ashly sits down with him, having put distance between them first. "This pond is very special to me, my father used to go fishing with me. We used to fish here a lot when I was a kid, I loved spending time with him." Richard then makes a slight sad face. "We stopped because he died, of course we did he was dead, what am I saying."
Richard looks at Ashly then looks back at the pond. "I stopped fishing for two reasons, and one of them was because I didn't have much time. The other reason was because it reminded me too much of my father. I still try but it hurts knowing that this meant something to my father."
Ashly nods to everything he says, she even smiles at him. "Wow that's sad, I didn't know." Ashly then looks away because she isn't interested in that story as much as he is.
"Hey, would you like to eat something? I'm sorry if I was being a bit too emotional." Richard said, and Ashly accepts his invitation. She is getting free food out of this, and maybe even making him like her a bit. Lucas stopped buying her food, and she struggled to make something edible.
They make it to a small place, and they sit down to eat together. "This world is very beautiful, and I'm grateful to be living in it. Ashly you need to open your, eyes and have a look around." Ashly just goes along and looks around, there seems to be less snow now which she hasn't experienced in a while. It's underwhelming and sad.
"Take your time Ashly, don't just glance around. Check out and examine everything, the footprints leading to he store next door. Check out how the trees are different sizes, and how one has more branches than the other. To appreciate this world you must appreciate every small detail first.
Ashly knows that she can't just glance, she was taught to examine everything. To be able to spot people, enemies when she was still part of the gang. She looks at the plain snow but feels bored, is there nothing else he has to say. Ashly then looks at the houses and begins to feel uneasy, it's as if she been in a place like this. It's safe, the people around are being nice and the kids are having fun. Her mind is telling her that she has been in a place like this before but she can't remember.