“You have not earned that yet,” Inri spoke leisurely.

  “You have not earned that yet,” Anaphol squeaked, his head bobbing mimicking Inri.

  The two of them were walking in the streets outside the royal castle of the Keyriftrian Empire. Inri nor anyone else told Anaphol the name of the capital city. And right now, he and Inri were walking there in a market close to the castle.

  The sun shone brightly in the sky. “Come on,” Anaphol drawled, “why do you guys get to know everything, and I don’t? How is that fair…to a guest to not know the name of the city they are in?”

  He hoped to leverage the so-called guest position he was given in the Keyriftrian Empire.

  Inri answered, “You could simply go and ask anyone here. They might answer, but then again you don’t speak their language.” She smiled wickedly, “And I choose not to.”

  Once again they fell into silence as they kept walking, Naph hearing the hubbub of the market with intent. His hope to decipher what everyone is speaking even when he had no idea of the constituent parts of the language and its rules being used.

  His ears pricked up. Inri too noticed the same outcry. Anaphol brisk walked to the origin avoiding the foot traffic as best he could. Inri followed him.

  Reaching the origin of the outcry, his and Inri’s gazes fell on the man who shouted the words in English. He ran a simple makeshift shop in the wednesday market of the royal castle’s neighbourhood. Looking up the man recognized Inri Plora.

  Nodding he welcomed her, “Duchess Inri! Welcome, welcome. Which fruit will you like to buy?” He stuck to speaking English.

  “An apple would be nice.”

  Agreeing with her choice, he nodded. Anaphol witnessing said, “If it’s ok with you Inri, could you buy a fruit for me too?”

  The man said with no hesitation, “I don’t prefer selling to someone not from Jhorime.”

  Inri drops a coin on the table. He handed her the fruit. Naph saw Inri walking away and he stood there his head turning from Inri to the seller and back.

  “Why!”

  The man shouted ignoring him, “Fresh fruits from Irka! Fresh fruits from Tarna!”

  Clicking his tongue, Naph hurried after Inri. She was already waiting on another cart, haggling with the seller on the price of an item. Anaphol reached her, saw the simplistic crafts handcrafted from straw-like stems. His mouth opening to ask.

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  The lady however said first, in a mix of two languages. One being English, the other a local from her hometown far, far away from the capital. “Ithy don’t hubnna foreigner.”

  “What?”

  She raised a finger and pointed at Naph then made a cross with her forearms.

  Naph gulped down the words with his saliva. Inri however, did choose to translate just for Naph. “She does not want to sell to a foreigner.”

  Naph’s eyes went from the lady to Inri and back to the lady. He spoke carefully his hands pointing first at him then at the lady seller, “Can..we.. talk?”

  “Hubn?”

  Inri suppressing a laugh, “She asks if she will get paid for talking.”

  Anaphol asked Inri, “Can you?” Inri said, “Of course, it will be my pleasure.” He did not ask ‘will she.’

  Inri told the same to the lady. She immediately said, “No.” And she turned around to pick up items from her stash to fill her cart’s top. Her son sitting behind her asked her about why she did not want to sell to him or talk even unlike other foreigners she had sold to.

  The lady answered in the same language she used along with English. “I don’t want to. He had not earned it. And he is not from Jhorime.”

  Naph feeling he was being talked of but he couldn’t tell that could be the truth all because of a language barrier. It was purely his guts saying that. While his guts said so, he felt many gazes falling on him and leaving him. In the castle, he never felt one even when Inri or any of the servants there looked at him.

  The two walked away. Naph did ask after a few paces to Inri about what the lady talked to the boy behind her. She answered, “That is a private conversation. If you want to eavesdrop, learn the language.”

  “How?! If no one teaches me, then how could I learn it.” Anaphol had not found a reason to quip till now. “And then there’s that!” He points to the same three words he had seen on many boards till now. “A cockroach.”

  Inri slipped her arm around his shoulder, stepping closer to him and said in a whisper. “Say that again about Rian no Tera and I will feed you to.” Inri did not finish the sentence.

  “To what?” Naph tired of staying in the dark asked again, “Who is Rian no Tera?”

  Inri took a breath and straightened her back. “A legend of a man who became a Hirto. And what’s a Hirto? A being more than a god.”

  Anaphol shaking his head, “So, he is just a hirto. That’s it?”

  “The first Hirto. The one who gave the idea and hypothesis of what is a cata mind.” Inri removed her arm off his shoulder. “At least in Jhorime.”

  The noise around them lessened for a split as she said so. Then it skipped back to the normal level.

  Naph was now beginning to regret Inri’s suggestion of experiencing the capital. She had been snubbing his questions except this one.

  The one about Rian no Tera. He had received many answers, none specific enough.

  The first one that he had received was a simple whisper. “One of the few who would talk to you as an equal…always.”

  The next half an hour went by and Inri and Naph went from vendor to vendor wherever Inri wanted to go or where Anaphol felt he was gazed at or heard the same language he spoke.

  Every single minute during that, he had repeated the same questions he had been asking, one after the other. Inri simply bounced around or answered cryptically all of them. One of those questions being ‘when is the council going to take him to a place where he could learn lesios to prove to the emperor?’

  It was the first when she suggested something.

  “How about we go and know what are your lesios?” Her fingers pointing at a decorated four storey building.

  As Inri suggested that she was more curious of why this human’s cata mind at Dream cata mind. The most insignificant amount a human has. The amount they have if they live a life without a goal, a goal so small it could be achieved by the next day. And yet, Naph had lesios that needed more cata than mere that.