Several Deregger rescues bemoan themselves, constantly claiming they are stupid and useless. The therapist tries an interesting tactic, and teaches them a puzzle game, Sudoku. -- Lessons
Dereggers were, as the Alliance liked to call them, Rescue Humans. Like any other creature that was rescued from a bad place, they had their issues.
"You provided Health and Caregiving with a list of your skills," said Therapist Vide, doing her best to avoid sounding reproachful. "There are several freelance jobs available that could use your skill sets. Why have you not applied?"
"It's above my school grade," mumbled Qianne. "I'm too dumb."
As a therapist, Vide could not tell her patient that ze was being silly. It was her job to encourage Qianne's self-confidence. Therefore she said, "That's what others have been telling you in the bad place. You might surprise yourself with how capable you truly are."
"...I dunno," mumbled Qianne. "I'm scared of trying to prove it."
"Have you heard of a game called Sudoku?" offered Vide.
"Oh, that's the numbers one. I'm no good at math."
Poor Qianne was thinking of Magic Squares, an entirely different number puzzle. Needless to say, therapists had encountered conceptual blocks like this before. Therefore, solutions were already close to hand.
"I have a different puzzle," said Vide. "One about putting shapes into a grid. We'll start simply with a four by four grid, and four shapes." The game table between them came to life, showing the blank puzzle grid of sixteen squares in a grid, divided into quarters by thicker lines. The symbols popped into view next to it.
Circle. Square. Triangle. And finally, Star.
"The thing that makes it a puzzle is... each of these smaller squares can only contain one symbol. Also, each line or column can only contain one symbol." She demonstrated, making a column of the symbols, and then working out the rest of the grid from there.
It looked easy because it was. Qianne ran through every permutation of the puzzle very fast, and graduated to the nine-by-nine grid familiar to those who played Sudoku. The symbols changed to pictures of food familiar to Qianne. With some symbols already in place.
Qianne spent most of hir therapy time on some puzzles before the food symbols became randomly replaced with numbers.
"Oh," ze said. "It was never math. They're just pieces."
"And you are smarter than you think," said Vide. "That one you just solved is in the extra-hard category."
It would take Qianne some further months to start believing it.
[Photo by Richard Bell on Unsplash]
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