Noel couldn't hear what was happening on the other end of the phone, but she couldn't help but find herself liking Aedus' mom. The little snippets she got painted a picture of a woman who wanted to be deeply involved in her son's life, from his financial decisions to his spiritual ones.

"You don't go to church with your family?" Sesame Street had been running for a while now, but the ex-agent hadn't been watching that. She'd been watching the memories off her waffle and trying to make sense of the jumble. One of the most clear was a plea for a son to join his family at church.

Noel had attended church off an on. Probably more off than on, but really who would know the difference? Certainly not her. But she tried to be a good person in the meantime: no swearing or drinking or fooling around. She was practically a saint for this city.

Ah the spit take; a classic. Apple juice sprayed in a fine mist out of Aedus mouth, his only saving grace was that he turned away from Noel in time to not hit her with it. “Um, no, the whole Irish catholic thing, just doesn’t work with me, I um how much of that conversation are you um, remembering exactly. Let me know if you get to the part where she starts talking about women. “ Aedus paused the DVD so they wouldn’t miss Grover spilling soup on the bold complaining costumer.

“They all go, and make a huge deal out of it, and they want me to go so they can make me feel excluded, I know my ma and Da aren’t like that, but my sisters and brother, and my cousins all of them, eh.” Even if there wasn’t a lie to taste, it didn’t take much to know he was both avoiding and addressing the subject. are you into church?

If she listened to much more of his Ma’s ramblings Noel would find that his mother at least didn’t think he was anywhere in the running for a sainthood, not that he couldn’t be if he would just stop chasing skirts. Now, He would admit he was girl crazy growing up, but he had changed…hadn’t he? Well maybe not, but he wasn’t the lady killer his mother seemed to think he was either. Was he? He glanced at the screen and smiled.

He... spit. Had he not seen that coming? Noel thought about it and supposed there was no way he could have known. For her, it was a natural extension of the conversation she had observed. He hadn't been privy to what she'd been watching. He'd been taking in the floppy puppets.

"It doesn't work..." She tried to explain that she didn't always get to pick and choose what she saw, especially in things like this where there were many different stages to the making and a liner conversation didn't follow the process. There was no guarantee for an entire conversation. That's what she wanted to say, anyway. She couldn't though, because just thinking about what his mom might say about women brought that part in to focus.

Noel's eyes took on a rather glassy look as she observed the past as presented to her by her waffle.

And her lips pulled into a small, tight frown.

Confusing and non-chronological, but she'd gotten Momma Teague's verbal lashing over her son's habits. "Can't be that bad."

And as much as Aedus wanted to avoid the church going, he was quite ready to jump back into that topic rather than explain his "philandering? And whoopee so casual it wears socks with its sandals?" Noel's eyebrows scrunched up in confusion. Really. Some of this made no sense at all.

"Am I into church?" Thinking of church brought back the conversation from before, but she'd heard it already so it was a little bit easier to disentangle herself from it. "When I can remember, yeah. I want to be a good person and the best way to do that is have some kind of rule set that I can come back to. Somebody to keep me honest. So... yeah. I guess I am into church."

When she said it didn’t work that way He started to give a look that was almost relieved. But then she raised her eyebrows.

‘It’s not, you can try to explain, but if she decided that the moon was made of cheese, well then it is cheese and that’s that. I am not that bad, If I had a steady girlfriend I wouldn’t date around. But then she’d be after me to settle down.”

“see that makes perfect sense, Church for a moral center, I could go for that, but the fashion show, political, who’s who stuff that goes on with them, ugh. I can’t say that to her either though. I would never hear the end of it if I told her they weren’t actually going for the church.”

Aedus then seemed to stumble on something that made perfect sense to him “Wait a second! How does it work? if you can draw up memories from a fork or a cake, then you don’t just forget you remember too… would it work with this stuff? ” He motioned toward the table and sesame street. He looked at noel with a surge of wonder. She might not have to function in a world of not knowing she could know everything, ever! they just had to figure out how to be efficient. If what he had in mind was right, It was like a computer, she just needed a back up system.

He seemed like he was getting really excited. Noel wasn't sure it would work. "It's kind of spotty. I mean, I can sometimes hear your mom talking... sometimes you. But I never see you, just the phone and the batter and the waffle maker... It's not the waffle's point of view. It's yours. Or some chick who had cake over here and used this fork. I mean, what could I possibly do besides what we're already doing to learn this stuff?" She just didn't get it.

She didn't know if this ability was new or if she'd simply forgotten about it, either way she didn't know all teh details yet.

Something clicked in his brain, she wasn’t picking up memories off everything in the room, everything she saw or even everything she touched, her power was oral. Aedus hopped off the couch and snatched a new pack of mechanical pencils out of his bag. Opened it and washed them with soap and water in the kitchen, He washed his hands while he was at it.

On the way back he grabbed a stack of paper from the printer and dropped it on the coffee table and sat down to carefully scrawl the alphabet, concentrating as he did so to make the letters perfect. He thought about nothing but what he was doing, he concentrated on exactly what the letter was as he wrote it.

“I know it’s probably the oddest thing someone could ask you, but humor me. Would you mind tasting the pencil?” he offered her the clear plastic tool to see if she would do so. Between the sesame street and the pencil tasting he sounded like one twisted weirdo…out of context anyhow.

She watched it all happen. The pencil, the washing, the writing... "When did you learn to read? Like, as a kid, I mean."

He handed her the pencil and she looked at it. Yeah, she knew her power worked from her tongue. Yeah the pencil had just been washed. It was still a pencil. Noel tapped the eraser to her tongue.

Nope. She glanced up at Aedus and shrugged before she put the tip of the pencil in her mouth. Oh! Her eyes widened. She saw... exactly what she'd seen before. Noel closed her lips around the pencil. Did she really sound like that? She combed a stray hair down that she'd noticed... And that was it.

"I just saw you draw them again. And me talking." No specific, magical or useful knowledge. Just the shapes of the letters.

“I was around seven before I really got interested in trying, I wanted to be out in the yard playing, so my Da, would sit me down and read to me, I followed along and that’s how it worked.”

Aedus looked disappointed by the fact the memory didn’t carry over of him writing it. “He was really patient with me, but he kept me close to in case I got tempted to run out and chase my brothers or sisters in the yard.”

He picked up a book he had brought from the library the day before and plopped down next to her, it was a Dr. Seuss book entitled if I ran the circus. “If I could share that memory I would its one of my favorites. This was one of the first books I learned to read from.”

He hadn’t meant to be sentimental, but if he was going to share Sesame Street with her, well then Seuss needed to be represented as well.

This exact book? Noel picked it up and noticed the library sticker on the back. Couldn't be that one. That would have been too convenient.

The brunette tried to remember learning to read, but all she came up with was a budding headache and a serious frown. "I wish I could learn it from you." Not that she wasn't already, but the quick way. Wasn't that what everybody wanted? Besides, she wouldn't have minded seeing a little seven year old Aedus.

Noel turned the book over in her hands and frowned at it. The pictures were nice and she could pick out the letters. It was just plain painful to try to sound it all out.

Aedus raised an eyebrow at a devious thought that crossed his mind. He shouldn't suggest it, it would point to everything that his mother had said and... well, he had suggested kissing for much pettier causes...wouldn't it be awkward to think about his dad teaching him to read while they kissed though... that made it much weirder and somehow less inappropriate, he would be suggesting it educational purposes wouldn't he. "does your ability only work inanimate objects?" he looked at her from the side.

She looked at him. And she'd heard what he said. But her brain sort of shut off and she was having a hard time getting it to chug through what he was suggesting.

Noel looked at the book. She could lick a public library book and hope some other kid was learning with it... instead of countless other things she really, REALLY didn't want to see. Or she could...

"I... don't know." She had no idea and suddenly she was nervous.

"Well... what I was doing with the pencil, I was trying to force my memories onto it. but I can simply remember my memories, if I could concentrate on it and we kissed." he looked down slightly. "Its up to you if you want to try, we can always do this the old fashioned way to, I was just thinking it would expedite things...and if there was anything else you wanted to know, I could try to teach it to you, at least from my perspective...if it worked." so serious.

Did he learn to read with his lips? Why did it have to be the lips? Now that he'd mentioned them, her eyes were stuck on them like magnets and she rolled her own lips in on themselves as if to protect them from the very idea.

"Uhm, the pencil... it only told me things that were happening when you were using it? Like, maybe what it witnessed? If pencils can witness...? Were your... no that's stupid. Of course your lips were there when you learned to read, but... was that what you were using?" Was that a stupid question? That was a stupid question.

But still... she was curious. Insanely curious. Noel rolled her lips together again.

"Some it is easiest to read oout loud so you can sound it out, I also got a movie with subtitles that way you could see what they were saying as they said it...but it would probably move too quick., I dunno, I was thinking that my lips were part of me and that I was learning it... we definitely don't have to if you don't want to, I won't force you but it's worth a shot, there are definitely worse reasons to kiss someone."

His heart seemed to beat a little bit harder, were his hands sweating? that hadn't happened since he was a teen. He swallowed and turned slightly. he was there ready for the kissing if she wanted to. her lips seemed to want to be kissed... He looked into her eyes to try to figure out if it was a yes or a no.

He had a point... Noel considered trying out his hand... his hands had been there too, after all, but hands could get into trouble.

Aw heck, so could lips.

"You would think abut reading? The whole time?" She turned on the couch to face him and stare him down. She had a good stare and she could taste lies. He wasn't getting out of this one without some honesty.

Maybe ears? Noel wondered how involved the ears were in the reading process. And then imagined kissing an ear... yeah. Maybe it was better to stick with traditional means. "Okay." It was worth a shot...