Chapter Text
Sometimes the most important people in our lives arrive quietly.
It all began, as these things usually do, in the simplest way possible.
The Saint Agnes uniform made all the girls look the same.
They wore the same knee-length gray skirts. The same navy blazers with gold buttons. The same white stockings, perfectly pulled up. Even their hair seemed to obey some invisible rule—smooth, glossy, carefully styled by mothers who were far too wealthy or nannies who were far too strict.
By her third day of classes, Aerith had already decided that she hated the place.
Not because it was cruel—though it certainly could be—but because everything about it seemed designed to make people feel watched. The classrooms smelled of expensive perfume and fresh paper. The girls spoke in low voices about equestrian clubs, winter holidays in Switzerland, and family names Aerith only recognized from magazines or the names engraved on buildings. Her mother kept saying she'd get used to it. That she'd have access to opportunities most people could only dream of, and that she'd make valuable friendships for her future.
Six months later, she still hadn't.
Every morning, her stomach felt strange as she walked through the black iron gates, watching the other students step out of immaculate cars driven by silent chauffeurs. Because she always arrived early, she had plenty of time to observe them, and she firmly believed there was something strange about the other girls. Something polished. As though they all knew exactly how to speak, how to sit, and which surname mattered more than the others. Aerith still felt as though she was learning the rules without anyone ever bothering to explain them.
And there were rules.
Rules for things Aerith had never imagined could possibly require rules. Things as simple as the proper way to cross one's legs during assemblies, how long to maintain eye contact when speaking to a teacher, and what tone of voice was acceptable in the hallways. The students stood the moment a teacher entered the room and automatically thanked them for every instruction, even when those instructions sounded far more like orders than favors.
There was something almost rehearsed about the school's politeness, as though everyone was practicing for a future in which they would become important women, important wives, or simply people accustomed to being watched at all times. Aerith still forgot sometimes. She spoke too loudly, walked too quickly. And once, Professor Beatrice had reprimanded her for smiling with too many teeth showing.
As though she were a horse.
She tried not to think about that too much.
It worked.
More or less.
That Monday, Professor Clarimont had been explaining the term literature project for nearly twenty minutes when Aerith completely lost the ability to pay attention. Saint Agnes had a habit of treating every assignment as preparation for either a prestigious university or the leadership of a small nation.
The project, the professor explained, would last the entire term. Students would work in pairs to analyze a classical novel assigned by the academy, prepare monthly oral presentations, and ultimately submit a bound essay before a review panel composed of teachers and several of the school's benefactor mothers.
Professor Clarimont spoke about academic discipline, cooperation, and "appropriate social skills" while slowly walking between the desks with her hands clasped behind her back.
Some girls already looked nervous.
Others looked bored.
Aerith was silently praying she wouldn't be paired with one of those unbearable students who spoke like forty-year-old women trapped inside twelve-year-old bodies.
Then someone knocked on the classroom door. It wasn't an important sound. It wasn't even particularly loud, but almost every girl stopped writing.
Aerith looked up on instinct.
Even Professor Clarimont paused mid-sentence before smiling.
A different kind of smile.
The girl standing by the doorway was small. Smaller than most. Her hair was blonde, the color of sand, yet so pale that for a moment it looked silver beneath the classroom lights. It had been carefully brushed and braided behind her ears, and she held her notebooks against her chest so tightly that her fingers had gone pale.
"Class, this is Daella Targaryen."
That surname.
Of course Aerith knew it.
Everyone did.
Hospitals, universities, political campaigns, entire buildings carried the Targaryen name carved into marble plaques or mentioned on television by men wearing ties that cost more than most people's monthly rent.
But Daella didn't look important. She looked uncomfortable. Not dramatically uncomfortable. Not on the verge of tears or anything like that. Just... rigid. Like someone trying to take up as little space as possible.
She remained beside the teacher's desk, eyes fixed on the floor while several girls began whispering among themselves. Daella tightened her grip on her notebooks, and Aerith felt something strange then. Not pity, exactly. More the specific discomfort that came from watching someone be observed for too long.
Professor Clarimont allowed the murmurs to continue for a few seconds before clapping her hands softly once. The room fell silent almost immediately.
"Miss Targaryen will officially be joining us starting today," she explained, resting a hand lightly on Daella's shoulder. "Due to a change in her academic schedule, she'll need additional support catching up on a few assignments."
Aerith watched several expressions change instantly.
Interest.
Calculation.
Even excitement.
That was to be expected, she supposed.
In her world, nobody did anything without a reason. It was a lesson worth learning early, and having direct access to a Targaryen probably counted as a social opportunity for half the classroom.
The professor's gaze swept thoughtfully across the students. "I need someone responsible, academically strong, and capable of helping her find her footing over the next few weeks."
Aerith immediately lowered her eyes to her notebook, pretending to be completely absorbed in her work.
It never worked.
"Miss Aerith Blackwood."
Of course.
Several girls turned their heads toward her. Aerith suppressed a sigh. Professor Clarimont always chose her for these sorts of things. Not because she was exceptionally brilliant, but because she turned everything in on time, never caused trouble, and possessed enough patience to deal with difficult people without making a scene.
Or at least that was what her report card claimed every term.
"Would you be willing to help Daella catch up?" the professor asked, though it sounded far more like a decision already made than a genuine question. "You'll be sharing the literature project this term."
Aerith was about to say no.
Not because she disliked Daella—she didn't know her well enough for that—but because she hated group projects, and because the idea of spending entire weeks with a Targaryen sounded exhausting in ways she couldn't quite explain yet. But all the girls were watching, so she did what was expected of her and nodded with a polite smile, careful not to show too many teeth.
Daella looked up for the first time then, as though she had only just remembered she was supposed to look at the person everyone was talking about. Her eyes were remarkably pale, such a soft shade of violet that it took Aerith a moment to realize they were genuinely lilac and not some trick of the classroom lighting. They didn't resemble any eye color she had ever seen before. They were gentle, almost translucent, strange to look at for too long, and yet there was something cold about them at the same time.
Something distant.
Daella looked at her for only a moment before lowering her gaze again, and even so, Aerith felt that peculiar discomfort that came from staring too long at something unusually beautiful.
"Perfect. Miss Daella, you may sit beside Aerith."
Several girls in the classroom looked disappointed for some reason.
Daella made her way between the desks with small, careful steps, as though she still wasn't sure how much space she was allowed to occupy there. When she reached Aerith's side, she set her notebooks down on the desk with extreme care before taking her seat. She smelled faintly of something clean and expensive.
Lavender, perhaps.
Aerith pretended to return her attention to her notes. It didn't work very well.
She could feel several classmates still watching them discreetly from different corners of the room, probably hoping to overhear something interesting. But Daella remained completely silent, tugging the sleeves of her uniform down over her wrists again and again.
Professor Clarimont resumed her explanation of the project as though nothing had happened.
"Each pair will submit a monthly analysis of the psychological development of the novel's main characters," she continued, writing dates on the board. "It goes without saying that academic excellence and mutual commitment are expected. Individual failure will affect the team's overall evaluation."
That sounded slightly threatening for a literature project.
Aerith let out a quiet huff before she could stop herself, and to her surprise, Daella did exactly the same.
It was only a small sound.
More like a laugh than anything else, but when Aerith turned her head slightly to look at her, she found Daella still staring straight ahead, completely serious.
Even so, something had changed.
As though they had just shared a tiny secret.
The rest of the class passed with the heavy slowness unique to Monday mornings. Professor Clarimont continued talking about symbolism, narrative structures, and assignment deadlines while the students copied notes in the kind of flawless handwriting the school seemed to value almost as much as good grades. Outside, the gray sky made the classroom's tall windows seem even colder.
Daella spent almost the entire lesson writing.
That caught Aerith's attention too.
She didn't make noise when she turned pages. She didn't tap her pencil against the desk the way other girls did when they grew bored. She didn't even seem distracted.
She simply wrote with a quiet concentration that felt unusual in someone who had only just arrived.
Though there were moments when she stopped.
Very briefly.
A few seconds at most, during which she would stare at some distant point in the classroom with the expression of someone listening to something nobody else could hear, before returning to her notes as though nothing had happened.
Aerith tried to convince herself she wasn't watching her quite so much.
It didn't work very well.
There was something strange about Daella Targaryen.
Not strange in a bad way, nor the extravagant kind of strange displayed by some girls at school who tried too hard to seem older than they were.
It was something else.
Like walking into someone else's house and immediately knowing there were different rules there, even if nobody explained them.
Aerith wondered what it must be like to live inside a family like that.
The Targaryens seemed to exist everywhere at once. In magazines, in the news, in conversations between adults who lowered their voices the moment they noticed children nearby. They weren't merely wealthy; they were the kind of family that had been important for far too long.
Dynasty was probably the word her mother would use.
Old money, old influence, and the sort of quiet power that never needed to introduce itself twice. Her mother also liked to say that families like that eventually became strange, sooner or later. As though growing up believing the entire world was watching slowly robbed people of the ability to behave normally.
Aerith had never fully understood what that meant.
She glanced at Daella again.
Perhaps she was starting to.
Because Daella was polite.
Extremely polite.
But she didn't seem comfortable.
It was like watching someone constantly trying to remember the correct way to exist around other people.
And somehow, that made Aerith feel a little less alone in the classroom.
When the bell finally rang, several students immediately began gathering their books and bags amid quick conversations. Noise filled the room almost instantly. Daella took a little longer to move, studying her schedule as though it had been written in another language.
Aerith hesitated for only a second before speaking.
"The science lab is on the other side of the building," she said as she packed away her notebooks. "If you follow everyone else, you'll probably get lost less often."
Daella looked up and, for the first time since entering the classroom, offered a small smile.
It was careful and restrained, as though she wasn't used to smiling very often.
Aerith nodded and prepared to leave.
Honestly, she expected Daella to disappear somewhere along the way to their next class.
Not in a cruel sense, necessarily.
She simply assumed one of the other girls would eventually approach her. That was what happened with important people. There was always someone willing to position themselves nearby, laugh a little too hard at their jokes, or behave as though sharing a surname with politicians and business magnates might somehow be contagious.
But when she left the classroom with her books pressed against her chest, Daella was still walking behind her.
In silence.
Aerith slowed her pace slightly.
"The lab's up those stairs," she said, pointing toward the far end of the corridor.
Daella nodded immediately.
"Thank you."
She had a calm voice.
Very soft.
They walked for a few more seconds through the noise of the hallways. Saint Agnes became slightly chaotic between classes; shoes striking the polished floors, teachers correcting posture as they passed, and students gathered near the tall windows while speaking in voices too low to be genuinely discreet. The science laboratory sat at the opposite end of the building, beyond a row of old stained-glass windows that the headmistress insisted on calling historical heritage every time a student accidentally broke something nearby.
Science turned out to be even worse than literature.
The laboratory was impeccably organized, with long white marble tables, glass cabinets, and a constant scent of disinfectant that made it impossible to forget that any mistake would probably be humiliating in front of thirty people. Professor Beatrice had already arranged the work groups before they arrived, pairing students according to "academic compatibility," which in practice seemed to mean placing competitive girls together so they could destroy one another politely.
Aerith ended up working with Eloise Davenport, who corrected other people's posture even while measuring liquids, while Daella was assigned to the table at the back with two older students who immediately began bombarding her with questions disguised as politeness. Aerith tried not to look toward Daella too often while adjusting her microscope, but she ended up doing exactly that several times throughout the lesson.
Professor Beatrice spent most of the class walking between the tables with her hands clasped behind her back, correcting measurements, posture, and work methods with the same calm severity Saint Agnes teachers seemed to apply to absolutely everything. Eloise, naturally, behaved as though the laboratory belonged to her.
"Not so close to the edge," she murmured for the third time that hour while nudging one of the glass containers a few inches away. "If it breaks, we'll have to repeat the entire experiment."
Aerith resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
At the table in the back, Daella nodded politely whenever one of the older girls spoke to her. Even from a distance, she looked uncomfortable. Not in any obvious way; she still smiled when she was supposed to and answered calmly, but there was something rigid about the way she held her shoulders.
As though she were constantly prepared to be evaluated.
Aerith returned her attention to the microscope.
When the bell finally rang, the laboratory immediately filled with the scrape of chairs and half-resumed conversations. Professor Beatrice reminded everyone about Friday's assignment while several students were already packing their things without really listening.
Daella was one of the last to leave her table.
The two older girls were still talking to her as they walked toward the door, asking rapid-fire questions one after another, and Daella answered what she could politely enough, though without volunteering much information. Then she glanced up for a moment and, upon finding Aerith watching her from across the laboratory, seemed slightly relieved.
It was something small.
Almost invisible.
But Aerith noticed it anyway.
The older girls drifted off down another corridor as soon as they left the laboratory, probably bored by how quickly they had run out of interesting answers. Daella adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder with a quiet sigh before falling into step beside Aerith again. The hallway leading toward the dining hall was much more crowded now, and Aerith noticed once more that people were still looking at Daella.
Not openly.
Worse.
Out of the corners of their eyes, the way adults looked at famous people in restaurants.
"Do they always do that?" she asked before thinking too hard about it.
Daella turned her head slightly.
"Do what?"
Aerith hesitated for a moment.
"Look at you."
The answer came after barely a second.
"Yes." She didn't sound annoyed, or proud.
Just tired.
That made Aerith feel a little guilty for asking.
"Though I'm far from the one they spend the most time watching."
Aerith frowned slightly.
"Who is, then?"
Daella absently adjusted the sleeve of her blazer as they continued walking.
"My brothers." She said it with a strange sort of casualness, as though the answer were obvious.
Aerith immediately thought of supermarket magazines and blurry paparazzi photographs. She had seen the Targaryen name so many times that sometimes it felt more like a brand than an actual family. People with impossibly pale hair stepping out of hotels. Charity events. Vague scandals.
But brothers was different.
It made everything sound suddenly more real.
"Do you have a lot of them?" she asked.
"Enough. I wouldn't want any more."
That earned a small laugh from Aerith. Daella looked slightly surprised to have caused it, though a tiny smile appeared on her face a second later.
Aerith tried to imagine her inside a house full of people who looked like her. Silver hair, lilac eyes, important surnames, and conversations that were far too quiet at the dinner table. It had to be strange growing up knowing people already had opinions about your family before they had even met you. Then again, perhaps all important families worked that way. Politicians' daughters sitting exclusively with business magnates' daughters. Surnames that seemed to open invisible doors even among twelve-year-old girls.
Aerith had learned that quickly enough.
There were mothers who greeted each other differently depending on the surname embroidered on a birthday invitation.
But the Targaryens seemed to operate in an entirely different category.
Dynasty.
The word appeared in her head again. Not because they were royalty, obviously. That would be ridiculous. But there was something ancient about them, even before you truly knew them. As though the surname carried too many stories on its shoulders.
She looked at Daella again. She was still walking with her shoulders slightly tense, holding her class schedule in both hands as though she constantly needed reassurance that she was heading in the right direction. For the first time since meeting her that morning, Aerith thought something unexpected:
Daella Targaryen looked terribly lonely.
Maybe that was why she decided to share something about herself too.
"I have two older sisters," she said as they made their way down the stairs toward the dining hall. "And that already feels like too many people in one house, so I think I can understand the feeling."
Daella raised her eyebrows slightly but said nothing.
Aerith wasn't entirely sure why she kept trying to fill the silences between them. Normally she didn't do that, though she had always found very quiet people a little frustrating because she could never tell whether they were uncomfortable or simply wanted her to stop talking. But with Daella, it felt different.
Maybe because she seemed lost in a very specific way.
Not physically.
More like someone trying to behave correctly all the time in order to avoid making mistakes.
Aerith knew that feeling a little too well.
"So how many of you are there?" she asked.
Daella took barely a second to answer. "Six."
Aerith blinked. "Forget what I said about my family. That really is too many people."
Daella smiled.
"There are still my cousins."
That earned an involuntary laugh from Aerith.
"Do you get along with them? Your sisters, I mean."
Aerith made a slight face as she considered it.
"Depends on the day." That was true. Her sisters could be pleasant for weeks at a time and then transform into unbearable creatures capable of starting family arguments over the television remote or who had worn a particular jacket without permission. But even at their worst, they still felt normal.
Loud, predictable, and safe.
"But I know that if I ever needed help, they'd come save me."
Daella didn't answer immediately. Aerith caught a small shift in her expression. Not exactly sadness. More the sort of sudden silence that appeared when someone remembered something uncomfortable too quickly. The girl's discomfort was almost tangible, so Aerith tried to fill the silence again.
"Are your brothers older?" she asked. "Well, some of them, I assume."
Daella gave a small nod.
"Three of them are."
"Then I bet they're protective of you," Aerith said before thinking too hard about it. "My sisters are impossible, but if somebody tried to kill me, they'd probably help hide the body afterward."
The joke came out lightly.
Naturally.
Daella didn't laugh right away.
Her fingers tightened slightly around the folded schedule, and for a moment that distant expression Aerith had noticed earlier in class returned, as though her mind had wandered somewhere else entirely.
"Yes," she said at last, though she sounded more careful than convinced. "Something like that. Aemon is very kind, but he's studying abroad now."
She had said she had three older brothers, and yet she had only mentioned one. That was when Aerith realized she had probably assumed something incorrectly. Not because Daella didn't love her brothers. It seemed like she did. Even so, loving someone and feeling safe with them were clearly not exactly the same thing.
She was definitely not going to ask about her parents.
"So two of your siblings are younger than you," she said instead, trying to pull Daella out of the emotional fog her own thoughtlessness had created. "It must be nice being able to boss younger siblings around."
That made Daella smile again, if only slightly.
"Yes. Although Aegon almost never stays still long enough for anyone to manage it, and Rhae is... well, Rhae."
There was something different about Daella's voice whenever she mentioned her younger siblings.
Softer.
Less careful.
Aerith filed that detail away without entirely understanding why.
They finally reached the main dining hall of Saint Agnes, where the noise of conversations and clattering cutlery filled the enormous high-ceilinged room. The long tables were already half occupied by perfectly organized groups; students always sitting beside the same people, as though changing seats would constitute a major diplomatic incident. Aerith chose a table near the tall windows before setting her tray down on the wood. Daella sat across from her.
"Daella!"
Two girls appeared beside the table almost immediately.
Then another.
And another.
Aerith recognized several of them from higher grades; daughters of well-known families, experts at sounding polite while asking invasive questions, and once again Daella answered everything with an almost mechanical calm. Aerith watched the scene while absentmindedly pushing food around her plate with a fork. It was strange, because Daella clearly knew how to handle this sort of thing. She smiled when she was supposed to. Kept the correct tone. Asked questions in return to seem interested.
But there was something too rehearsed about all of it.
As though she had spent years practicing the proper way to exist in front of strangers. It felt like a very odd thing for a twelve-year-old girl to know how to do.
"I'm sorry if I ruined your project." Daella approached Aerith after the bell rang again, announcing the return to classes while the girls began filing out of the dining hall.
Aerith blinked. "What?"
Daella lowered her gaze to her schedule again.
"The teachers usually pair new students with responsible people because they think that way there won't be any problems."
Aerith let out a small laugh before she could stop herself.
"That was a very elegant way of saying they thought you were going to be a disaster."
And then, unexpectedly, Daella laughed.
"And who's to say I won't be?" something in her tone shifted slightly.
It sounded more challenging than anything else.
Aerith looked at her differently for the first time that day. Because there it was.
Beneath all that impeccable politeness.
Something else.
Not exactly rebellion.
Daella still sat up straight, spoke softly, and held her cutlery as though she had been born at a diplomatic dinner. But right then, she seemed like a real child.
Aerith smiled before she could stop herself.
"Well, as long as you don't burn the school down, I think we'll survive."
"I can't promise anything. Haven't they told you? My family has a tendency to be fascinated by fire."
That made Aerith laugh again, this time more relaxed. And it was strange how quickly the awkwardness disappeared after that.
The rest of the day passed without anything particularly remarkable happening, and the rest of the week wasn't exactly an untamed disaster either. Even so, Aerith noticed that her life gradually began arranging itself around Daella in small, quiet ways she wouldn't have known how to explain.
They didn't become inseparable immediately or anything like that.
The world didn't work that way.
But after that Monday, Daella began appearing beside her with a strange sort of naturalness. They sat together in class and at lunch, walked together to their next lessons, went to the restroom together.
It was as though they had both silently accepted that being together was simply easier than being apart.
On Tuesday, Aerith discovered that Daella hated raisins. She didn't learn it in any dramatic fashion. Daella simply picked them out of a bread roll one by one with the solemn concentration of a surgeon.
"They look like old insects," she explained when she noticed Aerith watching.
Aerith nearly choked laughing. Daella looked surprised again that she had managed to cause that reaction.
It was starting to happen often.
On Wednesday, it rained for most of the morning, and Saint Agnes acquired that damp scent of old books and polished wood that always appeared whenever the weather turned bad. Several students complained because the sports fields would remain closed for the rest of the week, as though it were some kind of national tragedy.
Daella, meanwhile, seemed calmer when it rained.
She talked a little more.
Smiled a little faster.
She even let slip a particularly cruel comment about Marie Antoinette's husband during World History that forced Professor Clarimont to pretend she hadn't heard it in order to avoid laughing in front of the entire class. Aerith was beginning to discover that Daella's sense of humor worked exactly like that: it appeared out of nowhere, dry and precise, and then vanished again before anyone had fully processed it.
On Thursday, Daella learned something about Aerith too.
It happened during literature class, when the teacher asked students to read passages aloud in front of everyone. Several girls immediately began sounding like news anchors attempting to win acting awards. The problem was that Aerith hated reading in public. Not because she was embarrassed, exactly, but because she always felt as though her voice came out too loud, or too fast, or too something.
She never seemed able to calculate how much space she was supposed to occupy. When she finished reading her passage, she sat back down convinced she had done terribly.
"I don't understand why you act like you're bad at speaking," Daella murmured beside her while the next student began reading. "Literally nobody was breathing while you were reading."
Aerith turned her head slightly.
"Holding their breath doesn't make it better."
"It was a compliment."
"Oh."
Daella continued writing as though nothing had happened.
Aerith started noticing other things, too.
Daella always knew when a teacher was about to become annoyed before the rest of the class did.
She never spoke much about her family unless someone asked directly.
She had the strangest habit of staring out windows whenever she thought nobody was watching.
Her chauffeur picked her up at exactly the same time every day without fail. The car was always the same as well: black, immaculate. But what really caught Aerith's attention was that several times throughout the week there had been another boy inside the car. He had silver hair too, neatly trimmed, though somehow he looked far more disheveled. His school uniform was wrinkled, his tie crooked, and he possessed that specific kind of energy shared by boys who seemed physically incapable of sitting still, even while seated.
Once, Aerith saw him kneeling on the back seat, making faces through the window while Daella got out of the car and pretended not to know him.
One afternoon, she even overheard Daella say:
"If you touch my things again, I swear I'm pushing you out of a moving car."
The boy smiled as though that were a perfectly normal display of affection.
"That's Aegon," Daella explained later, adjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder as the car drove away. "Technically he's my younger brother. Spiritually, he's a public nuisance."
Aerith had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing too loudly.
On Friday, while they were waiting for literature class to begin, Daella left her phone on the desk for a moment before going to retrieve a book she had forgotten.
The screen lit up when a notification arrived.
Aerith didn't try to look.
She really didn't.
But it was impossible not to catch a glimpse.
The wallpaper was an old photograph.
Daella looked several years younger, sitting on the grass beside other silver-haired children, and another boy with the same hair color as hers who appeared older than the rest and was holding a baby. The photograph was slightly blurry, probably taken in the middle of movement.
Nobody was looking at the camera properly.
"Rhae was two years old there," Daella said suddenly as she returned to her seat.
Aerith looked up, slightly embarrassed.
"Sorry. I wasn't trying to look."
"It's fine."
Daella sat back down while locking the screen with her thumb. Her fingers lingered on the photograph for a second longer before slipping the phone back into her blazer.
"Aegon was crying because they wouldn't let him hold her, and Aerion had been arguing with Daeron for about an hour," she explained afterward, almost absentmindedly. "I think my mother had just threatened to go on vacation by herself."
That Friday, after the last class of the day, Aerith was putting her things into her locker when she heard footsteps stop beside her.
"Aerith."
She recognized Daella's voice easily by now.
Daella was holding several books against her chest, though one of them was upside down.
Aerith decided not to mention it.
"Yes?"
Daella tucked a pale strand of hair behind her ear before speaking.
"About the project..." She paused briefly. "We could meet at your house this weekend, if that's alright."
Aerith closed her locker with her shoulder. For some reason, she had automatically assumed they would end up working at some absurdly enormous Targaryen house, filled with marble staircases, ancient paintings, and silver-haired people drifting silently through the hallways like ghosts.
The image appeared so clearly in her head that she had to suppress a smile.
"My house is close by," she replied as she adjusted her bag. "Besides, my sisters are already used to people showing up without warning."
Daella glanced up.
"Would they mind?"
The question came out too quickly.
Almost cautiously.
Aerith frowned slightly.
"Not really. My mom will probably try to feed you to death, but other than that, you'll survive."
That earned a small smile from Daella.
Then silence returned for a few seconds as they started walking toward the stairs. The school was already beginning to empty.
It was Daella who spoke again.
"Perfect." She nodded to herself. "I can survive your mother's culinary dangers."
"The only dangerous person there is my oldest sister whenever somebody touches her hair products."
Daella let out a brief snort.
"That does sound terrifying."
"It is. She once made my dad cry for using her curling brush."
This time Daella actually laughed.
Aerith followed suit.
For the first time since arriving at Saint Agnes, Aerith felt that maybe school could become a little less exhausting.