No one had ever made anything like it

The sun's heat was just getting a little less when Aria suddenly stood up.

Professor Dalhia had left her sleeping after their last conversation and had not bothered with her. The class was deadly quiet then as many of the vases were in their last stage of freezing and the students were very tired, concentrating was very difficult.

So the whole class was distributed when Aria's chair scraped the floor and she stood up.

"What's wrong, miss Aria?" Professor Dalhia asked in a bored voice.

"I'm done." Aria said, her clear voice ringing in the whole class.

The students were not very surprised and Professor Dalhia said, "Bring it here for a minute. Then you can keep the vase back in the ice box and leave."

If she was being frank with herself, Professor Dalhia had expected more from Aria. She had been the talk to the academy for the one year she had been here, and the Professor had expected her to finish really quick.

Well of course Aria could do nothing about the time it took the vase to freeze, but Professor Dalhia was sure that the other students would be finishing up any time soon.

Her thoughts were interupted as Aria took out her vase from the ice box and held it in her hands. A small gasp escaped the Professor's lips as Aria began to walk towards her.

The students also turned to look at Aria and there was much murmur and many gasps as they saw Aria's vase.

Professor Dalhia had to admit that the vase was more beautiful than anything any other student or for that matter, anything she had ever made.

Aria walked forward, looking like a queen and the vase seeming very in place in her hands.

The vase itself was very beautiful, no one had thought of making anything like it. It had beautiful patterns as small as though they had been carved out by a needle in the ice. And the vase was full of them.

But the numerous small patterns clearly did not look like much. They seemed to be complimenting each other's beauty.

And the flowers that were sprouting out of the vase were just.....wow!!!!!

Each petal of the flowers and each leaf was so perfectly and delicately made that it looked like Aria had actually plucked flowers, painted them the colour of ice and stuck there.

This had not been very difficult for Aria as she spent much of her time in the forest, and her favourite pastime was to make things by bending. Though she usually used earth and had never tried water, because it would not stay.

Professor Dalhia as she stared at Aria's vase, found herself imaging how beautiful it would look if they actually added colours to the pale blue ice.

But something inside the Professor whispered that if colours really were added, they would diminish the beauty of the vase rather than increase it.

By the time Aria reached the Professor, many of the students were already standing and craining their necks to see the vase, they just couldn't keep their eyes off it.

Professor Dalhia could also not take her eyes off the vase as she took it in her hands and muttered a single word, "Beautiful...."

"Thank you Professor." Aria beamed.

This seemed to break the reverie as everyone blinked and looked at each other.