Lu Alix's Zia

"What?!", Ningtao stood up, stunned, "What did she say?"

"Zia."

"Huh? What does that even mean?", the woman frowned. She'd never heard such a term before, so where did baby Alix pick it up from, she wondered.

"It means Aunt in Italian.", Lu Wei answered proudly, "I was playing with Alix when Xinghe phoned me. So as Kiddo's face appeared across the screen, our daughter pointed at it excitedly and shouted 'Zia!'. Clearly, it wasn't merely a coincidence. I've shown her about ten to fifteen pictures of Xinghe from our album, and the girl is calling out to her Aunt with the same word."

"Oh... so that's why Xinghe would insist on speaking to Alix every day.", Ningtao laughed, "Zia is the easiest pronunciation for Aunt. Kids can learn it quite briskly. Ironic, isn't it? The girl hasn't even called us Mama or Dada in Portuguese yet, and that's her first foreign word."

"Yeah. When are you coming home, Mrs. Lu?", the man asked then, "I miss you."