Page 41 of The Syndicater (Dark Verse 6)

Morning Xander!

Something super urgent has come up and Tristan and I have to go take care of it. Aunt Zephyr(please tell me you remember her or this will get awkwardddd ??)is going to be here when you wake up and spend the time with you until we get back. Fingers crossed, we have some good news when we come home! ??

Have a great day and lots of fun Love youuuuu ??????

Text or call if you need anything!

Cool ??

I like Aunt Zephyr. She cries a lot.

Don't say that to her face! It's impolite!!??

??

He was a smart cookie because he had found a way around saying it to her face but instead showing her. But his replies threw her off, making her chuckle again. The contrast of the messages on the screen, especially the little thumbs up, was hilarious. The fact that the boy would always call her the crying lady set her off even more. Zephyr laughed again; after so long, it felt good.

Fuck, she felt good. After so long, there was something to feel good about.

And the fact that Morana had referred to her as 'Aunt Zephyr' made her soften inside. Whatever their hangups, she was relieved and glad to have a friend like Morana in her life now.

She looked back at Xander, realizing he was almost as tall as she was short, wanting to ruffle his bedhead hair but not wanting to make him uncomfortable.

"Awww you like me," she teased him.

He just pocketed his phone and drank his orange juice. Zephyr noticed he took three quick sips before pausing for a second and doing it again, his eyes on the mindless way she was mixing the batter. The sips, combined with him telling her to breathe in threes, made her take note of it. To match, she rotated the wooden spatula in her hand through the batter three times clockwise, paused, and did it again. "That better?"

He nodded. "It tastes better when you do it in threes."

"Really?" She was fascinated. "How?"

"Three is the dimension of the space we occupy physically," he told her, looking at her mixing the batter in the pattern now. "Anything physical we do, if we do it in threes, our systems align with the space we are in. Our eyes are trichromatic and can perceive only three primary colors… the rest are all added to them. Three is also the triad number and is important in geometries, which makes architecture we see all around the world. There is a progression in three and probability. The probability for any event can be concise in the rule of three. There is a primary triad in music, too, though I'm still reading about that. In mathematics, any equation will come down to three numbers, two on one side and one on the result. And the most interesting thing is computers for me. We can use three binary numbers to code anything, 01, 10, and 11. Morana toldme she'll teach me when I'm older. There's rules of three in psychology too, Dr. Kol told me about that."

Zephyr was frozen, the mixing bowl forgotten. She watched in stunned shock as the boy spoke stuff most adults didn't know about, launching into more words than she'd ever heard him speak. He was not just special; he had to begifted.This kind of intelligence and articulation was by no means normal in a child his age.

"Wow. Who's Dr. Kol?" she asked, genuinely not knowing but also fucking fascinated by the passion with which he was talking, his cadence quicker than usual.

Xander took some butter out of a fancy ceramic thing she needed to get. The butter was perfectly soft inside.

"He's my psychologist," Xander shared. "He talks to me and helps me." His tone let her know he didn't want to talk about that.

Breaking from her slight daze, Zephyr put on the pan, waiting for it to heat, and added the batter in. "Do you want three?"

He bit his lip, in a way that finally was like kids his age. "Can you make big ones so I'll be full?"

She grinned. "Of course." Adding more batter, she asked him. "So, have you made any friends at school?"

He shook his head. "No. I think some kids are mean. Most of what they say goes over my head. Morana gets mad though."

Shitheads. She hated how cruel kids could be, having been bullied herself, but she was glad he didn't get most of it. She pointed the spatula at him. "If anyone bothers you too much, tell someone about it. Tristan or Morana or a teacher. Anyone. Don't take shit from people, especially ones who don't know you."

"The pancake is burning," he pointed out and Zephyr immediately flipped it over, exhaling in relief when she saw it was fine.

"Are you sick?" the boy asked her out of nowhere.

Zephyr blinked at him. "What?"

He pointed to the living room. "You fell down dizzy. Are you sick?"

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