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"Savius, I don't want new clothes. Why can't I just wear 'rain's?" A boy's voice, coming from a lanky, awkward kid wearing jeans torn to shreds and a shirt in nearly the same shape. Taylor held a book in one hand, his finger in place to hold the page. He did not look like he belonged in the clothes shop. For that matter, neither did his winged guardian, who wore a look of passive disinterest as he sorted absently through jeans.

"You were easier when you couldn't talk, brat. Now stand there, and don't cause trouble."

And so, of course, as soon as the teen's back was turned, Taylor was slouching off to find a place where he could sit, maybe under a clothes rack, and read in peace.

He was just pushing apart some shirts so that he might duck behind them when he spotted the shuffling boy. And stared, through his glasses, frowning.

He... they'd met before. Hadn't they?

Oh! Yes. Taylor did remember. Taylor had been with Savius and 'rain. The other boy had been with... a man. Yes. And there had been ice cream, and it had been hot. Great. Now he wanted ice cream.

"Yeah. You liked my dog." He shifted uncomfortably. As a toddler, he had been... well... a toddler. Social just because of age and curiousity. Now, having grown, thinking clearly, socialization was sinking in.

And he was part of an anti-social, aggressive, and possibly insane family. As such... he wasn't entirely sure HOW one went about talking to other children. "I was going to read."

He held up the book. It was... the dictionary. "There's a lot I don't know yet."

He shifted in place, obviously a little uncomfortable. "Umm... what are you doing?"

"cab·ri·ole." Taylor read, "Furniture. a curved, tapering leg curving outward at the top and inward farther down so as to end in a round pad, the semblance of an animal's paw..."

He shrugged, "Some of it is hard. I don't know the words about the words. What does 'semblance' mean?"

And then, as if realizing that there had been questions ask and statements made, he caught up with himself, and stopped rattling off definitions. Right. So, what was the correct friendship making way to respond to the boy. Erm...

He shuffled a bit. "Fen's a dog. So he's alright. Dogs usually are. You can have my shoes, if you like." And promptly began untying the laces, a task made difficult by the fact that he insisted on keeping a finger in his book, to leave the page marked.

"I figure it will." Taylor replied, having finally given up and closed his book, as his attention had turned to his shoes. "But this is a small one. They've got others. More words, more languages. I got alota catching up to do."

He stopped untying and was frowning in confusion at Alek. This didn't make sense. The boy needed shoes. And he had them. And sure, they weren't very nice shoes, only some scuffed up black tennis shoes his sister used to wear. But they were better than no shoes.

"'s okay." He said finally, still puzzled. And he returned to the task of untying. "I'm getting new ones. See, I had hallucinations and grew. And now Lithle's mad at me and I need new clothes."

He tugged at a difficult knot and popped off his left shoe. "They're 'rains anyway. And she doesn't mind either."

The shoe was held out, and maybe it was a gesture of friendship, though the young gryphon's expression was more confused than anything else.

"No. I went to 'rain." In the way of children, Taylor was comfortable with assuming that Alek must know who Jer'ain was, just as he was comfortable with assuming that they had hallucinations and then grew because that was what everyone did.

He took off the other shoe and held it out to Alek. "And she told Lithle, and then Lithle got mad, Lithle is umm... she owns our house, and now Savius and I are shopping."

There, summary of his whole life, in a few simple sentences. He wiggled his toes, hidden though they were beneath the socks that he still wore. "I didn't like the hallucinating part." He scrunched his face remembering. "It was... atrocious."

He might have said disconcerting, but he hadn't gotten to D in his dictionary yet.

There. Now Alek was properly shod, and Taylor could flaunt his problem solving skills to 'rain when he got home. Though, he guessed he'd have to explain why the shoes were gone. 'Sis, I gave your shoes to a boy the boy that we ate icecream with.' It made sense to him. Why shouldn't it to her?

"Lithle's mad." Taylor repeated, an echo of his early statement that didn't exactly impart new information. He shrugged his shoulders slightly and looked over at Savius, then back at his companion. "Most of the time, for anything. So, my being bigger is bad. Savius says she'll get over it. She says I have to start training, so I can fight good."

He wasn't sure how he felt about that. There was a certain pride in his past as a warrior, but it was mingled with memories of an emotion he still didn't know how to place. He just knew that it had burned in his throat, like blood.

"Do you have to do training?"

"You play music? I think maybe I'd like that more than fighting. No one in my house makes music." He sounded a little... sad. Or perhaps nostalgic. His memories had given him something to contrast his current living situation with. He was aware, as he hadn't been before, that there was something very cold, very wrong, inside his house. The air tasted broken. "It's boring? I like music. I had a cd player. I broke it."

He had been trying to fix it at the time. Somehow, it hadn't gone well. Toddlerdom was a bit sketchy at this point, but he remembered being fascinated with the way the light shone on the cd. And he remembered Lithle growling.

"What's karate fighting?" Tragically, Taylor had little access to any media but books, and he had yet to reach 'k' in his dictionary.