I Don't Understand
Ira Brooks was a boy of simple needs. Give him a book or tell him new information and he would be as happy as a clam.
He supposed he had gotten his personality from his parents, who had been scholars. They both studied different cultures, though his mother had always been more interested in the magic of other cultures since it was uncommon to find mages of various types in a single area.
He had always been more interested in the food, clothes, and landscapes of the places they visited than the people. He wasn't much of a people person even back then.
So when his parents died and he was bounced begrudgingly from family to family, he struggled to fit in. After the first two gave him the boot, he decided to act more like a scholar studying cultures and do exactly what he thought the families would want in order to let him stay.