“I’m not doing this,” she said, rubbing at her face with her dirtied sleeves. “What kind of a ratfart instructor asks his student to close her eyes while running through a forest?” “ ‘Ratfart instructor’?” the accused ratfart instructor repeated, his eyebrows raised. Indignantly, Lan pushed herself to her feet. “What, never heard a village girl talk?” The sun had begun to dip in the sky; hardly a day had passed, yet she was already tired of putting on airs for the boy. He was refined where she was rough-cut; he was a scholar and she a songgirl; he spoke in riddles that befuddled her uneducated
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