Chapter 4

Maeve walked back to where she left Anaya. She saw that while neither of them were looked at the other, both Khai and Anaya still sat next to each other. She took a seat on her stool and reached the nearest drawer to pull out forceps, a tray, a bottle of saline, some cotton and gauze.

"My hand is swollen." said Anaya. Maeve nodded.

"That's because it's holding the numbing fluid. It's going to go back to normal within an hour, don't worry." Maeve held Anaya's hand over the tray and used to forceps to pull the stone out of her palm. It dropped into the tray with a 'clink' and blood gushed out of the girl's hand. She heard a soft sigh from Khai, but ignored it and used the saline to wash the wound before pressing cotton over it. She held it there for a while a looked up to see both Anaya and Khai staring at the walls and windows, as if they didn't want to look at all that blood.

"How old are you Anaya?" Maeve asked.

"I just turned twenty-one."

Maeve smiled as she addressed Anaya. "Alright, the blood should stop in a bit because I've injected something to control the bleeding as well." She dropped the cotton, now soaked through and pressed a new one over Anaya's wound. When she was convinced that the bleeding was in control, she reached for the gauze and began to wrap her wound.

"I am going to give you some antibiotics, antiseptic ointment, saline and more dressing. You will need to change the dressing twice everyday. Even if you're really busy, don't forget to change it at least once every twenty four hours. Okay?"

"Aren't you stitching her up?" Asked Khai. He was intently listening to every instruction Maeve gave Anaya, but he made sure to keep looking at the window like he wasn't bothered.

"She's young, she will heal on her own." Said Maeve. She turned to Anaya again, "This might take a month and a half to two months, but you will be A-okay after that. You can do most things, because your fingers are still okay. Doing anything may hurt a little initially, so let me give you some pain meds."

She walked to the cupboard and pulled out a small pill bottle. "Here, take one every six hours if you need to. You can't wet the wound for forty eight hours and no soaking your hand for the first month if you want to heal fast. That means you will struggle while taking a bath, so ask someone from your dorm to help you."

Anaya nodded at Maeve's detailed instructions. Her mood plummeted when she realized she couldn't use her right hand properly for the first two months at a new school. She scolded herself internally for being so careless.

Next to Anaya was Khai, whose mood had now slipped to an all-time low. He was going insane with guilt and anger for not stopping her fall. Maeve looked at them both and chuckled.

"Relax! It will be better before you know it." She laughed. "Did you guys get lunch?"

As if on cue, Anaya's stomach growled. She reflexively put her hand on her stomach and flinched at the sudden movement.

"Let's g.." Maeve began speaking, but Khai cut her off.

"I'll take her to the café to grab something. Lunch is probably closed by now."

Maeve agreed and they all got up to leave. She handed Anaya a small bag to hold her pills, ointments and dressing. "Come visit whenever you feel like something's off with the hand, Anaya." She smiled as she walked them out of the clinic.

"Thank you." Anaya smiled politely at Maeve and started to walk out, in a rush to feed herself and just lie down for a while. She felt weak and she just wanted a good rest more than anything else.

As they walked out, Khai kept checking on Anaya to make sure she wouldn't pass out on him. She looked gloomy and that didn't set well with him.

"The café doesn't have a lot of options, but we're late so that's all that is open right now. Do you know what your room number is?"

Anaya remembered that she received an email from Arcane about her room details. "G8, Maven. Is that far?"

"Not too far from here. The women's dormitories are on the extreme right of the main school building. You're at the last building on the first floor." Khai's mood perked up. "Great views!"

"You've been there before?" Anaya's thoughts slipped out of her mouth before she filtered them. She pursed her lips, nervous that the question came out wrong.

Her question did come out of nowhere and Khai went red for a quick second before he composed himself. "We memorize the school's layout in case of an attack." He responded.

'Did she think he went to the girl's dormitories for fun? Well, he did. Quiet often, but she didn't need to know that.' He frowned when he realized that someone would tell her sooner or later. Would she even care? Feeling deflated, he decided to focus on walking to the café so they could have lunch together. He wanted to know everything about Anaya as fast as he could.

Anaya looked ahead of her, noticing that they made their way to the main building. She climbed two flights of stairs before she entered the large building with ancient temple like doors. The inside of the building was a huge long hallway with multiple deep blue doors on either sides of the walls. As she looked a few feet above the doors, she saw numerous flags hanging in equal intervals from the walls. The flags represented towns that every Healer and Wahren came to Arcane from. She looked for the Bellevue flag with excitement, as if finding it meant finding a piece of Bellevue in Arcane.

Khai noticed her staring at the flags with a child like curiosity, "Careful, we don't want you tripping again." He said, keeping his tone light.

Anaya snapped out of her daze and looked at him before focusing straight ahead.

"Did you find your flag? Where're you from Anaya?" He kept repeating her name in his head internally grinning at how smoothly her name rolled out of his tongue.

"Bellevue. It's pretty far up north, almost nine hours from here."

"The flag is up there." Khai pointed to the pastel blue and white flag on the left corner. He knew where Bellevue was, although he'd never been there. He wondered how her life was, back in Bellevue, while she looked up at her flag with mirthful eyes. He realized that she must be missing home.

Anaya kept staring at the Bellevue flag until it was behind her and then set her sights ahead to see what was in the rest of the building. The building was empty, with barely any students at sight. She noticed three cleaning staff so far and the doors were all closed shut.

"This is where our classes are held, and classes haven't begun yet, so no one is in this part of the building." Khai spoke, as if he read her thoughts.

Walking ahead, Anaya noticed that the building opened up with tall windows that let sunlight stream into her path. The windows replaced the walls in this section of the building allowing her to see multiple floors on the side with symmetrical staircases leading up to each floor. On her right, she saw a huge library, 4 stories in length. The shelves were tall with occasional ladders to reach the books on top. A few students perused through the books, while others settled themselves in cozy reading nooks. There were rows of study desks at the entrance that were mostly unoccupied. She memorized the path to the library's entrance, knowing that she would be spending a lot of time here.

Her shoes softly clicked on the tile floor as they walked past the expansive library through more deep blue doors similar to the beginning of the building before the space opened up to a huge dining hall.

The dining hall had no walls on it's left and was entirely made of large window panels to let in as much light as possible. She looked to her left and saw that the dining hall opened up to wooden benches on manicured grounds. The entire dining hall had views of the forest to it's left.

She looked around to see multiple chefs behind their respective counters, busy cleaning up after lunch. It was 4 PM and Anaya almost wept at how hungry she felt. She followed Khai to a small counter at the right end of the dining hall.

The counter was empty, but she heard some shuffling behind it. "Grab what you want." Said Khai as he flicked his head towards the food on the counter.

Anaya spotted a small basket at the corner and picked it up while she scanned all the food the café offered. She picked up some fruit – bananas and oranges, two of the cup noodles and a small bag of jalapeño flavored chips.

Noticing her, Khai walked over and picked up a basket to fill it with 5 of the cup noodles and 2 larger bags of chips. He also grabbed 3 bottles of water as he walked back to billing. He stretched his hand out, as if asking her to hand over her basket.

Anaya shook her head, "I got it." She said, as she fished out her phone to pay for the food.

"Just give it." He gently snatched the basket from her hands and Anaya frowned slightly. She saw him scan all her items and then his, before a stout lady with a hair net popped up from behind the counter. She smiled at Khai and started bagging everything he scanned.

"Did you find everything you needed?" She pleasantly smiled at Khai. He nodded, thanking her for her help before pulling out his phone to pay for the food. She bagged everything neatly and handed it to him, blushing as she wished him a good day. Her eyes never left Khai's and she completely ignored Anaya's presence next to him, as if she was invisible.

Anaya didn't let that bother her. She assumed it was because she was much shorter than he was. Maybe she skipped noticing her because Khai's presence was much larger than hers.

By the time they walked to the girl's dormitory, Anaya's legs were tired. She noticed a few girls staring at Khai and her, giggling as they whispered to each other, but she ignored them out of sheer exhaustion.