Aeonia

Chapter Eight

Scanning the room to determine any eavesdroppers, Aelia dropped her voice to a low whisper and continued explaining. She attempted to put the idea across as though Asher was the only person who could help, giving him the confidence to agree to the offer. In case he decided he wouldn't come along, Aelia made sure to only tell him details to the extent of the information she had shared with Malcom. Once she was done, Asher's face had a searching look on it, examining Aelia. His eyes trailed across her eyes, nose, cheeks and lips, checking to see that she was being completely serious. After a few moments of waiting anxiously for his decision, Asher came around.

"Alright," He agreed, giving Aelia a half smile. "I'll do anything I can to help you."

Goosebumps pricked on Aelia's skin as a strong sense of deja vu kicked in. Hadn't Malcom said that exact phrase earlier? Noting the smirk on Asher's face, Aelia knew he had meant to repeat Malcom's words and affect Aelia the way they had. Just how long had he been listening in?

Creep.

Hoping that Asher hadn't secretly listened in to any of Aelia's other conversations - ones that may or may not have included her opinions of him - she tried to wipe her face clear of expression. Disgruntled when Jaspa and Leilani didn't turn up, she scoffed down a quick smoothie and left the table, only asking them to tell Maysie if they saw her.

She'd waited at least half an hour for them, attempting to joke around with Asher and Malcom to lighten the mood, but her heart wasn't really in it. For once she was craving a deep conversation with someone, but at the moment, nobody seemed to be offering one. Aelia was confused. Were Jaspa and Leilani really that mad at her, not to turn up to breakfast, just to avoid her? Immediately after she'd stalked out of the dining hall last night she'd regretted it. Surely they'd realised, right?

As Aelia left her seat and began to make her way towards her history class, her frustration kicked in. Longing accompanied it. All she wanted to do was search for her family, find them and love them. After all her time spent in orphanages, most would probably expect Aelia to have some sort of resentment towards them. But for Aelia, it wasn't the case. She'd witnessed so many unfortunate children through the years who had suffered much worse. Plus, she had been transferred to an entirely new world, so it must've been for a good reason.

Taking her time to reach her history classroom, Aelia tried to pause the running thoughts in her mind. She'd only make herself anxious and would then miss out on learning anything important. The bell for class to begin had still not rung, but students were already making their way towards them early. With the nearing exams, everyone wanted to get a good seat in class. The better seat, the better chance you had of not getting distracted by the people around you. Having never attempted these exams before, Aelia could confidently claim that she was the most nervous. She'd taken much of her free time in the afternoons and dedicated it to studying, even with all the training in between. One of the classes which she had needed to do background learning on was history. In their first year, they'd learned all about the monarchical formation of Lundor. Then, they branched off from that in year 2, learning about the different places, and the environments of geographical locations around Lundor, along with their comparison to Earth's. This year, they had been learning about the different races that inhabited Lundor, and their locations.

The bell for class finally rang, everyone huddling around the entrance to the classroom as their Professor slid open the glass door.

"Come in, come in!" He chirped, a short man with a squeaky voice.

Aelia easily was taller than him, Professor Lazarus couldn't be taller than five feet. He had clearly tried to give himself some extra height by making his greying hair stand up like a wave, but it didn't really do much, other than accentuate his already too-large head. Being abnormally short for any person Aelia had ever met, he stood on a box in the centre of the classroom, the desks forming a wide 'U' shape. Aelia took a seat facing front on to the board, the extended amounts of time turning her head to the side when sitting anywhere else giving her a migraine. She'd always gotten them when she'd been sitting down for too long with her head looking to the side. Something about the uneven pressure in her head set it off.