"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
He was quickly growing bored by their discussion of specific letters in the alphabet, and decided to go do something more interesting instead. There was the strange structure right in front of them - he would go investigate that. Without giving any indication of where he was going, he got to his feet and wandered over to it.
"Well... it's kind of hard. The long a or short a sound..."
James spent the next few minutes explaining a few of the rules he knew about vowels and pronunciation, and when to use what sound. Engel was a good student and asked good questions, so it seemed to be going well. James decided to put a few of the things he'd showed Engel to the test and asked him to sound out a word, pointing to it. It was the word 'and.'
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
"The uh...bungle jungle?" he asked Hero, stopping next to him as he looked up at the 'bungle jungle' as he called it. A large smile broke out on his face. "You play!" he said with a giggle as he jumped onto the slide and tried running up it. He slipped once or twice, but otherwise made it up.
I'm cool as a cucumber Even if I'm in a pickle
Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
James was very pleased with Engel's progress. "Awesome! Okay, uh, try this next word." He pointed a little further down at the word 'man,' trying to pick words that didn't have exceptions to rules.
Engel smiled, glad that he was doing what he was supposed to. "Mm-aa-n."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
James smiled and nodded. "Yeah! That's right. Man. You got it." He lead Engel through reading a few more words, patiently letting Engel go at his own pace, until he felt like they'd done enough for the moment.
"Hm... you wanna take a break? Let uh, what you learned kinda sink in?"
"Ja, sounds good," Engel smiles, his gaunt face lit up by the genuine happiness. "Danke! So much!"
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
James grinned back, and closed the book before sliding it back into his bag. "Yeah, no problem! Reading is important." He looked over to the big contraption that the little boy had started climbing on, and noticed how he was able to slide down one of the tubes. It looked... kind of fun.
"I'm gonna go look at that thing," he said as he got up and walked toward the playground.
