Welcome to Gaia! ::

Aliya nodded. "Well that makes sense," she murmured. "If you didn't know you were going to grow why bring bigger clothes? Did it hurt? What does it feel like to grow that fast? Your wings are bigger now, can you fly now?"

Her questions, though continuous, were slower than the last time she had gone off like that, and she paused between each one.

"But you went unconscious," Aliya murmured. "What ... was that like? To be knocked out from growing, I mean. I've been knocked out before, but that was because I hurt myself ..."

What would it be like to just black out and fall down in the middle of something? It didn't sound pleasant.

"You said that was the first time you grew," Aliya commented curiously, "but you had to have been smaller at one time or another - right?"

Suddenly she worried that she might have asked a silly question, or a rude one, and she clamped her mouth shut.

Aliya stared, then shook her head slowly and muttered, "Weird."

They arrived back at the house, and Aliya opened the door for Cindy and led her to the room at the far back of the house - her bedroom. "I'll get some clothes for you," she murmured, leaving the door open behind her so that Cindy could follow her. She headed direcly to her closet and opened the door wide, then stepped inside.

"What kind of clothes would you like?" she asked, her voice muffled from the clothes in the closet. "Regular clothes to go outside again? Or night clothes to go to sleep?"

It was well past midnight after all.

Aliya nodded and handed Cindy a long, white, flowy nightgown.

"Here," she smiled. "This is nice and comfortable. I just don't like wearing dresses and the like, that's the only reason I don't wear it. Do you want anything else?"

As an afterthought, she added, "No one will be waking us up in the morning, we'll be able to sleep as long as we need to, since we were up most of tonight."

It was, after all, only a few short hours from dawn.

Aliya smiled and closed her closet door. "Good night," she replied softly, in a serious tone that was rare for her. "Sleep well."

And she ushered Cindy out of her room so that she too could change her clothes and go to bed.

It was past noon the next day when Aliya woke up finally, aroused by the aroma of fresh-baked bread. There was another scent on the air, one that was not nearly as strong as the bread, but that smelled equally as good. Without bothering to get dressed, she jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen to see what was up.

"Morning, Mum," she grinned at Ulani, who was working at the counter.

"Afternoon, you mean," her mother smiled back. "Is Cindy awake yet, do you know?"

Aliya shook her head. "Not that I know of." She headed into the cellar for a moment and reappeared quickly with a handful of waybread. "Adonai awake?"

Ulani nodded. "I thought I'd send him out with your father today so that he wouldn't wake Cindy," she replied. "I thought she could use as much sleep as possible after a night like last night."

"It was a weird night," Aliya pointed out to her mother. "I even forgot about the flowers ... til now. We missed them." She pouted. "They're so pretty ... I didn't get a chance to draw them this year."

"You could always use the wishsong to see what they look like again," Ulani pointed out in turn. "Draw from that, if you need to draw them so badly."

"Mm." Aliya had just started on her second piece of waybread when she heard the sound of muffled movement coming from down the hall. "I think she's awake," she grinned.