"Watch where you're going," Prince Kwan says harshly.
My heart thunders in my chest with fear. "Sorry!" I squeak.
"Don't apologize," he grumbles. "Just get out of my way. Scram!" He walks away.
I flinch at his impatient, rude tone. "I hope you realize that we're going to the same place," I say angrily, following him from a distance.
He sighs. "I'd forgotten about that part. Come walk with me then. It's rude to walk behind someone as if you're stalking them."
I frown slightly, really not wanting to walk with him, but ultimately deciding that I don't have much of a choice. The silence is awkward, and the distance between us is making it weirder. "How was your morning?" I ask nervously in an attempt to break the nervous atmosphere.
"It was fine," he says curtly. "And we're here." He pushes open the doors to the library and steps inside, heading straight for the corner we usually sit at. "Grab your history books, because we're researching the human and Birdsong treaties today."
I toss him a glare as I set my stuff down. "Must we?"
"If you do well enough, I'll let you go grab a book about pressure points at the end?"
"Fine," I grumble, and follow him to pick up a book. The library is a wonderful place, but I feel impatient, standing there with bookshelves towering above me. Like there could be a better use of my time. There are entire sections dedicated to human treaties, and, naturally, the many ways that humans have broken promises and forgotten vows. It's a little bit disheartening, especially knowing I grew up with them. Heck, I still feel like a human most of the time.
Prince Kwan grabs a bunch of books and drops them at my feet. "Can you bring those over to our area?"
I raise an eyebrow. Getting me to do your dirty work now, are you? I pick up the books and slowly make my way over to our table. Who does Prince Kwan think he is?
I take a seat and flip through the first book, numbing my mind with repetitive mush that seem to erase any miniscule amount of eagerness I had for doing this. Somewhere in my passive scanning, Prince Kwan sits down with an even larger stack of books, and begins reading intently, his eyes alight with fascination, despite probably already knowing half of what he's reading.
"How are you so interested in this?" I ask as we near the fifteen minute mark.
"How are you not? You like stories, don't you? Well, history is just more realistic stories that actually happened. Even when you're just reading treaties and agreements, if you think about what had to happen in order to put those rules into place, it leads you to think about the conflicts and struggles between Birdsongs and humans. It's quite enlightening, if you dig deep into it."
"I don't understand how you actually enjoy this," I say. "Even if I think about it like that, the words just go over my head. I need, like, an explicitly spelled out summary for each treaty."
"Just don't overthink it. If you just read it, I'm sure it'll make more sense. You don't need to pull it apart as if you're going to analyze it. You just need to know the information."
I sigh heavily and get back to reading, my eyes burning from the small text. Birdsongs don't write or talk in traditional English, so I have a pair of contacts and an earpiece that translate words and speech for me. Perhaps the translations are too literal, and that's why I'm having difficulties reading the text. It's often the small nuances that make or break the level of interesting a book is.
I'm slowly learning the language that Birdsongs speak, but it's a very slow process, especially because there are many words in the Birdsong's language that don't translate directly to English. The word 'Birdsong' itself is a word that humans made up ages ago, when Birdsongs and humans didn't hate each other's guts.
