Free Gratuitous Epilogue : Touchstone Extras by Andrea Höst Page A

think that's going to last. She's
perfectly conscious that people think she's beautiful, and enjoys
that, and she's somehow transformed Enna into an admiring follower.
[Lira's actually done Enna a world of good, just because Enna
really wants Lira to like her, and is so absorbed with getting Lira
to accept her that she's distracted from her nightmares and the
overwhelming grief of losing her family.]
    But Lira is also a
touch capricious, now that she's no longer isolated and angry. She
constantly shifts her interests, exploring something, growing quite
fascinated by it, then dropping it completely, bored. Art, music,
dancing. Her latest is cooking, and she's still in the very
interested stage of that, but I have no faith in her not dropping
it entirely next week. I don't particularly care – to a degree I
even encourage her to try out as many things as possible – and the
only stricture I place on her is that she has to complete her set
school work, and participate in family activities. But I'm hoping
to teach her to be aware that if she behaves that way with people
she could really hurt them. Perhaps I'm being unjust – she's
remained very firmly Ys' compatriot – and she was lonely long
enough to not want to hurt people. But she sometimes doesn't
think things through, and I don't know if she is going to be able
to handle the immense interest she is starting to inspire half so
well as Maze.
    Ys is perfectly aware
of social consequences, for all she picks and chooses who to bestow
her compassion upon. She clocked Del and Lore ogling Lira just as
readily as we did, and was very scornful of them as a result. Scorn
is still Ys' default reaction to most things, but that's a cover
for a wider range of responses. Just looking at her reading access
list tells me so much about Ys that I start feeling guilty for
something which I do think is parently-appropriate. I made sure
she's aware I can look, anyway, and I think she decided it was
okay.
    Currently she mainly
reads great heaps of history and sciences – lower high school level
for the most part, dipping into more advanced books when she wants
to pursue an explanation of something. She's already more than
equal to handling anything her age level at school can throw at her
and well beyond. Ys is so intelligent I'm surprised she didn't work
out how to read just by looking at an alphabet, and her only
weakness is that the classes are always starting on areas which
she's never studied at all and she has to do catch-up before
handling the current work.
    But she also gets
through huge galloping realms of fiction – she allows herself a
novel a day, slotted between school reading, extra reading on the
subjects on her courses, and a thorough review of the newspapers
and interface sites she has bookmarked (all the kids, even Sen, are
incapable of not checking to see what people are saying about them
each day). Her fiction interests range all over the place – she
especially loves Earth fantasy stories and is forcing me to both
keep conjuring up new books to read to her, and also to write up a
proper translation dictionary of Taren to English. Dinner every day
involves me adding a mandatory three words to the dictionary while
we eat, and then answering Ys' cross-examination of the fine detail
of their definitions. Kaoren says it's very useful, and is keeping
up with the lessons as well (Lira, Rye and Sen to a lesser extent),
but none of them can rival Ys, who simply doesn't forget anything
she doesn't want to. She wanted ten words a day, but that would
have made dinner very long.
    But along with history
and science she has an absolute soft spot for teen romances and
schoolgirl 'chum' stories about close knit groups of friends
overcoming spite and pettiness. Being brilliant doesn't stop Ys
from being human, and she wants acceptance and romance every bit as
much as I did at her age. The influx of Taren students at the
talent school is helping her get past the way she was raised
(though