So maybe I'll just keep my mouth shut...

[likes_pears]

At the Casa del OT3, John Smith is curled on the sofa with a library book. He's caught up on recent history, a few key scientific advances, and now it's on to just reading for fun. He also happens to be avoiding his room. By this point, the sight of a strange person or creature in his bedroom's so typical he just ignores it and finds someplace else

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[cyfor]

There is a naked cat girl trying on clothes that she has stolen from the rooms of everyone present. Many of them do not fit, and as such have ended up wound around her head. She is now holding a pair of Martha's pants, contemplating whether or not they will serve as a shirt if she rips a hole in the crotch.

No, Cy has no sense of ownership. In that everything that is not hers is also hers.

[likes_pears]

The sound of someone there causes John to look up from his book and...

Oh dear.

"You, ah... You might want to put some of those things on. And... Those are trousers, not a shirt." He's blushing furiously, because, well... Naked people. He's not used to them.

"And I'm fairly certain they're Martha's, anyway."

[cyfor]

Cy ties the pants around her neck like a scarf and tilts her head at him. "Little brother nowhere boy? The world're my pantaloons."

And she wanders over to sit next to him and peer at the book that she cannot read. Are there pictures?

[likes_pears]

Sorry, Cy, there are no pictures in John's book. Just a lot of words.

And John has no idea how to react to any of this. "Yes. Well..."

A thought occurs to him. "...Are you the one that's been in my room?" He knows someone's been in there. Or something. And lately, he's found it best not to ask too many questions.

[cyfor]

"Your room? Johnny Smithsonian? Desiree put me in there." She turns a page in search of pictures. "How do you make those mean things?"

She points to the lines.

[likes_pears]

Desiree. Oh, John's sure he knows who that means, and he may just have a few words with Des when next they meet. "There are other empty rooms. Des just has strange ideas about what's amusing."

And at her question about the lines... Well, that's familiar ground. "Well," he says, "each of these is a letter, and every letter stands for a sound. You put them together to get words." He glances over at her. "I can teach you, if you'd like."

Because a girl who can't read is just... wrong. And it should be fixed.

[cyfor]

"Teach me?" She tilts her head and the pile of clothes falls off and into her lap. She's never been taught anything before. It was just sort of... there, the psychicness and the weird magic and the dancing with ghosts. "Teach Emimily too."

[likes_pears]

"I'd be happy to, if you'd both be interested," John says, smiling. "It's more or less what I do."

She's a strange one, but he's still a schoolteacher, and this sort of thing makes him happy, indeed.

[cyfor]

That surprises her. "You do that? That's a thing things do?"

[likes_pears]

"I do," John says. "Oh, not the reading so much, but history, a bit of geography..." He shrugs. "I didn't have a chance to do it for very long, back home, but I'm teaching Maria now... Do you know her?"

[cyfor]

"She picked me up when I fell through the fireplace." Cy manages to get most of the way into one of the shirts she stole from Martha's room before getting stuck with her head in an arm-hole. "Clothes are stupid. Why do you teach those things? Everyone knows those things."

Forgive her, John, she's a cat.