Laws of e(Motion)

Three: #BDA597

"I'm home," Emilia called as she walked through the door, out of breath from forgetting not to run up the stairs again. That was as routine as not getting any kind of response until she'd finished hanging her coat and bag up on her designated hook by the door, putting her shoes in her place on the rack on the floor beneath it and continuing inside to the rest of the family's flat. Today was far calmer, dinner yet to be started after she'd gone straight home with a far clearer mind and the intention of leaving her test paper somewhere obvious for her parents to look at in their own time. Her father was yet to arrive back it seemed, or at least he wasn't at his usual post in his self-claimed, armchair-coffee table setup. Instead her sister lay across the corner sofa, its beige fabric visible from under the wine red throw from where she'd wriggled it out of place. Emilia was surprised her mother hadn't complained yet, she infamously hated the true colour of that sofa more than anything. Alexander was out of sight as usual, Daniel still out at football training, another combination that meant the place was quiet.

"I'm home," Emilia repeated, finding her mother pinning an A5 piece of card onto the family's notice board. It had initially been used for leaving rants and requests but more recently had become a shrine to all the slightly-meaningless-in-the-grander-scheme-of-things certificates brought home from school.

"Oh hi Emilia. Crystal won her spelling bee today!"

"Oh," Emilia muttered as she assessed the atmosphere of the house and everyone in it, before rolling up the test paper and holding it slightly behind her back, but there was no way her mother would be asking about it now. "That's brilliant!" One day, one day she'd bring the test script to her parents. She could set that as a goal for when they'd finished marking it in class, until that day was inevitably focussed elsewhere.

"It's not that big of a deal, most of the kids in my class can't even read," Crystal half-laughed from the sofa, an exaggeration but evidently not a huge one if she wasn't ecstatic about it.

"It's an achievement and we're going to celebrate it." Somehow even in celebration Antonia Croft seemed to speak harshly, at least that's how Emilia took it. Often she wondered if that was just how she took everything, and as the thought crossed her mind she realised just how long and wearing the day had really been.

"I've got some homework to finish up before tomorrow, and I was hoping to stop by the game shop this evening, after dinner?" Emilia asked, permission always necessary. The homework was a lie, she needed an excuse to not have to defend her future life choices or lack of and to get the time to redo her timetable. Of course, the timetable.

"Fine with me," her mother agreed, and had Emilia not already felt side-lined she wouldn't have read any uncaringness into it. She reminded herself that she was the one who had pushed her own achievement out of the potential family spotlight, but a little deeper she felt like she knew it was irrelevant to them. She'd get a brief 'well done' and they'd have heard enough of it. Crystal would be getting double dessert helpings for the next month for that spelling bee.

Training past the distraction of the familiarity surrounding Emilia from physics was impossible, and Jay would just have to accept something. Either that they really had never crossed paths before and it was all in his head that they had anything more than physics in common, or that he'd be training half-heartedly while distracted tonight.

"Jay."

He looked over to his Master just in time for Nya's foot to connect with his chest, sending him falling back into the sand behind him. He'd hardly caught up with washing out the sand from his hair the last time something similar had happened.

"You don't need me to tell you," Master Wu said, the fact clear between the whole team. Jay's mind was not solely on his sparring session. If it had been, he wouldn't be sitting in the sand of Ninjago's beach. "And you don't need me to tell you how to fix it." Jay wasn't so sure about that second bit, maybe he did still need guidance on that. He thought through a range of possible solutions from 'keep going' to 'go home' as he stood up.