I miss home

"They were . . . " Aria struggled for words. How would she explain her injuries? She herself had no idea. "What you would expect after seeing these." She finally settled on these words. "I just had a lot of burns to be honest. Hence the scars." she added, shrugging.

Jacob seemed to be lost for words as he looked from one hideous wound to another. Aria blinked as she looked at him, it suddenly occurred to her that nobody had looked at her in the way Jacob was right now ever since she came to the academy. Like they were so proud of her, but a bit apprehensive of how high she was flying, and worrying about how tired she must be. The way her mother and father used to look at her. And afterwards the way Sonia used to look at her.

"I miss home." The words escaped unbidden from her lips, and surprised Aria as much as they did Jacob and Helen.

Silence settled between the three for a few minutes before Helen said, "Well . . . you could always go back to visit in the next break." Aria blinked as she came out of her shock too. "Yeah." she replied with a shrug. "But I cannot go home now can I? Not really." she added internally.

Aria suddenly had a very intense desire to see her family back home. She wondered how they all were doing. How was mother, father and grandfather's health, how much had Beth and Julia changed, and lastly how big had her little brother or sister gotten. Aria also thought about Penny and the little child she would have had. Had Penny also gotten old? Strangely enough, Aria had no problem imagining her parents as an old couple, but she was never able to imagine Penny old.

She came out of her thoughts with a shake of her head as Jacob leaned out to give her a tight hug, trying not to aggravate her injuries. "Helen and I really need to get to class. But we'll come see you later. Okay?" he said, and Aria nodded with a smile on her face, wishing she was going to class with them.

Aria was stunned out of these thoughts as Jacob leaned and lightly touched his lips to Aria's forehead. "I really miss home too. Let's go together during the next holidays." he said, and rushed out of the recovery ward, dragging a clueless Helen with him.

Aria blinked and wondered what had just happened. She frowned as she tried to recall if she had seen Jacob actually blush as he went away, but dismissed it thinking she was imagining it.

Left alone, Aria lay back down and snuggled deeper into her bed. She lifted her hands up and stared at them, turning them over and flexing the fingers.

She let out a large breath and let her hands plop down to her sides. "We'll get through it. We've been through worse." Aria muttered to herself as her mind went back to how much she had already been through. But little did Aria know, this was just the beginning.

Two weeks later . . . .

Aria twisted and turned as she stared at her body from all angles in a huge mirror in Miss Anhao's office. Today was the day Aria was finally going back to her classes.