"Have any of the older apprentices taken you aside to talk to you about--stuff?" she asks in a slightly hushed tone.

"No...?"

"Oh. The older girls did with me, they--explained some stuff--I dunno how the boys do it, boys don't bleed..."

This is not the most coherent she's ever been but it's okay, he's patient.

"What stuff did they explain?"

"Like, where babies come from, and that people want to do it a lot even when they don't want babies."

"Huh. No, nobody's explained anything like that to me."

"And girls bleed--not like normal bleeding, girls just bleed from their privates five days a month for no reason, and when a girl starts bleeding it means her body can make babies, so that's when the older girls take you aside and tell you stuff, but boys don't have anything like that so I dunno when they would tell you."

...the information that girls just bleed from their privates five days a month for no reason is new and interesting!

After a moment, contemplating the boy version of this educational experience, he says, "Maybe they just don't."

"Oh. ...I guess maybe I should tell you the things, then? There's a lot of stuff in there that only matters for girls but some of it's not."

"Maybe you should," he agrees.

"Okay. Uh, so, you have that anatomy textbook, you know boys have sticky-outy privates and girls have innie privates, did it have much else to say about privates I only looked at it enough to know there was a bunch of the kind of pictures you like."

"It had some things to say but it didn't go into detail about that stuff beyond 'here's what all these things are called and what they look like when you take them apart'."

"Okay, well, the boy parts go inside the girl parts, and then a sticky thing comes out and then sometimes the girl gets pregnant, except there's a nasty tea thing that can prevent that. And it feels good for the boy all of the time and it feels good for the girl if the boy knows what he's doing."

"Huh," he says, contemplating this knowledge. It's good to have an Anaseverina to tell him these things. They are good things to know.

"Some of the girls drink the tea all the time because sometimes boys don't ask first or do it even if you say no. But I'm yours and you're good at making people respect that so I don't think the other boys are going to do that to me. If you want to do it will you let me know far enough in advance to drink the tea, it's nasty and I don't want to drink it when I don't have to."

"Sure," he says, shrugging. "How far in advance do you have to know?"

"A couple of hours."

"Yeah, that's fine. I probably won't want to until I've got my own room, anyway."

"That makes sense, they mostly talk about older boys doing it."

Nod. "Thanks for telling me," he says, giving her a smile.

"You're welcome!"

What a good Anaseverina he has.

Eventually he turns thirteen and gets his own room.

Having his own room is nice. He sets up a few alarm spells.

He contemplates what he might like to do with his Anaseverina, now that he has his own room.

His Anaseverina is vaguely oblivious to his thoughts and not really worrying about it. If he wants her to do something he'll let her know, he doesn't expect her to anticipate what he's going to want from her ahead of time. She finds him a slightly fancier knife than last time for his birthday.