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The Jejune June Cafe was a bit of a trick to find, at least to a Fa'e who was used to directions in the style of -- "Go left three blocks, cross the street, take a right, two blocks down, third building with the flower trees in the front" -- and not the kind that involved street names, addresses, and reading building signs to figure out which was what. A cafe was a cafe, and Lethe knew she was looking for something with dishes on the tables, people drinking coffee, and newspapers, but cafes were also popular modes of businesses and it took quite a while of wandering into places that matched this description and being told she had gone down the wrong street, or needed to turn on some other particular road. It was a good thing she had left early.

But she was here at last -- and while the Jejune June Cafe was not entirely what she was used to (seemed to be more casual, more personal, than the busy in-out franchises she normally patronized), it was not entirely disagreeable to Lethe's more refined tastes either. The River Fa'e had settled herself at a table by the window, not quite in the sunlight but tolerably near it, and had busied herself by arranging all of her supplies out before her. A mechanical pencil, an eraser, a notebook -- all things she had used as a toddler to draw, before she had decided it was a waste of her time, and had barely touched at all throughout her long career as a kid. She drummed her fingers lightly against the glass of lemonade she'd ordered (at least, with learning to read, she might get to order other things for once -- she'd peeked into some of the other patrons' cups and had seen some oddly intriguing drinks that had no business being the color they were) and tried to figure out whether or not she was actually nervous.

"Good afternoon, Tzao!" The young girl beamed her new teacher a smile, one often practiced by herself in bathroom mirrors. "You look well today." She inclined her head slightly as well -- she'd been struck with the urge to get up and curtsy, but the concept of showing proper respect for one's teachers was not something she had ever needed to learn, and today she wanted to attract as little attention as possible besides.

"Yes, I suppose... I'm not sure I could have prepared any more." No, she thought to herself as she idly stirred the ice in her drink, Lethe's not nervous. She had, however, come to expect a certain level of perfection from herself -- and while she normally thought of herself as a quick learner (language, after all, had come very quickly to her, she'd started speaking even as an infant), she was honestly not sure how well she would take to reading. After all, she was a river, and... "For a very long time," she said suddenly, abandoning her drink for favor of opening her notebook to the first page and arranging the pencil just so on the surface -- obvious busy work for her fingers, "I referred to myself in the third person. Didn't use 'I', just 'Lethe', because 'Lethe is Lethe'. The change in my speaking habits came because I needed to blend in more, because no one else did that, not because I particularly thought it was a mistake."

And then, realizing it was an odd thing to blurt out, she mumbled, "I just hope your efforts won't be wasted, that's all," and because there was nothing more she could do, took to playing with the ribbons wrapped around her fingers. "So... What shall I do first?"

The River Fa'e obligingly put the pencil down (taking a moment to align it just so on the lined paper) and, propping her chin up with her hand, considered his question. "The alphabet? Yeah. Well, I know the song, anyway, my guardian sings it a lot. I think it's her favorite..."

And then, softly, and with lips barely moving, so no one would overhear her singing a children's song, she demonstrated: "A bee, C-D, eeffigy ache. I J/K..." Figuring this was enough to clearly show her mastery, she substituted the rest of the song with a long swig of her lemonade.

"Ey, be, see," Lethe repeated obligingly as her teacher walked her through the alphabet, inwardly wondering how this was going to help her learn to read. Or -- was this some subtle stab at her accent? Lethe'd begun speaking Greek, which was close enough to English in certain parts anyway, and while she had an easier time forming certain clumps of letters over others, she didn't have enough experience with spoken Greek to really let it influence her English.

Oh... Oh well. Tzao surely had to know what he was doing. Maybe this 'alphabet' was some secret incantation that would instantly impart all knowledge of reading and writing to her, and certain mistakes in her diction had prevented it from working its magic.

"Okay." ...If anything, he was at least efficient, and she appreciated that he seemed to be tailoring his lesson to her inherent abilities (that was -- she didn't feel like a patronized two-year-old, nevermind the fact she technically was.) She took the pen and obligingly swept her gaze down both columns, reciting the alphabet underneath her breath as she moved from symbol to symbol. A a 'ey', B b 'bee'...

The first glance-over was merely to take a mental photo, as it were, of the symbols. Tugging the paper closer to her and leaning over it to peer more critically at her instructor's handwriting, Lethe looked over it again in closer detail, noting the basic shapes composing the letters and their subsequent similarities, the whole and broken circles, straight lines, dots...

Once she was satisfied she knew her way around each letter, she adjusted her gripped on the pen and carefully copied two parallel columns of uppercase and lowercase letters. Her handwriting was an approximation of Tzao's, albeit shakier and slightly more uneven -- the mark of someone who hadn't yet trained her fingers to draw such tiny details yet. Once she was finished, she looked up towards the red-headed young man for approval.

Lethe nodded her confirmation, unable to keep from smiling in obvious pride. "It will take me a while to recognize these letters everywhere, all the different ways of writing them... But I can write them now." But it was still interesting now to look around the cafe and recognize letters in what were formerly just 'squiggly drawings'. The menu was of particular interest, with its frequent m's and t's.

...So what prevented her from reading now? What sort of word did a 't' and an 'e' followed by an 'a' make? "Tee-ee-ey," she guessed, squinting at the distant word and promptly lapsing in a long silence. Even after going rapidly through all of her lingual-related memories (or as many of them as she could stand to remember, mostly distant memories of learning English from her guardian and her aunt, each woman naming things as she pointed to them), the River was still at a loss as to what a tea could be.

"I see." At least, she sort of did, trailing her fingertips over the rough paper of the menu, recognizing that there were now very many different flavors of tea listed beneath them. Language had always been an attractive side-effect of humanity, but now that she was coming to be immersed in it, so arbitrary. "Who decides that this is called 'tea'? That only this certain combination of letters and noises refers to this type of drink."

A mind shaped by soap operas and the overactive imaginations of her best friends conjured up an organization of her mind, tall shady people in sunglasses who carefully sat at oblong tables to discuss the labeling of Forms. It seemed like an interesting-enough position -- and perhaps there was some benefit in petitioning them to have 'river' changed to 'Lethe'? This way, she would have claim over all the world's water without even trying. Not that she knew what to do with it. Give it to fish, probably.

Thus distracted, she wasn't quite paying attention to Tzao when he started to speak again; it took a few moments while she replayed the memory to determine what he'd just said. "Oh. My name? Well, that should be obvious, right?"

Studiously curving her back over her paper again, she brought the pencil determinedly to its surface and paused. Ey bee see... But no matter how many different ways she approached her mental list of letters, there was nothing that made the 'lee' sound. Or the 'theeee'.

To save face, she immediately scribbed something unintelligible on the paper -- it looked a little like a 'scribble-censor storm of cursing' that one would see in a comic strip. "That's what it is in Greek. I know." She lied without batting an eye, straightening and looking up at Tzao, casually shrugging on shoulder, "But in English... Are there letters for it?"

If she seemed nervous that he would see through her momentary deception, she gave no sign of it, instead using the lull as a chance to sip at her lemonade. It didn't matter, she decided, if he somehow knew Greek, how to write it. Ancient Greek was hers, he could not argue against her claim on it, and if -- if someone could decide that a smile was a smile, and a glare was a glare, then she had every right to say that such a scribble was her name.

Accepting the paper back with a smile, she obediently copied the letters out before her. 'L', first, then 'e', 't', 'h', and 'e' -- it didn't cross her mind to ask how it was that he already knew how to spell it -- she was too busy with the recognition of the letters, flashes of documents surfacing in shallow memories that she now recognized as bearing her name. People wrote about her? Her guardian did. ...What for?

"But 'ell'," she interrupted with a vague puzzled confusion, "Is 'ell'. Doesn't this say 'Ell-ee-tee-aych-ee'? Eleteaychie is hardly a name. Or... they are just unexpected sound combinations?" Spelling was beginning to look like a highly complicated ritual.