Sorry for the wait!

Enjoy!

Walking towards her house after talking with Leann, she didn't even realize that someone was walking towards her until they grabbed her shoulders.

"Aria! Hey Aria!" Looking down, she shook her head, "Oh Lionel, how are you today?" She smiled.

Lionel looked a bit nervous. "Are you alright?" She asked.

"Fine." He smiled, "Although I'm a little nervous, I was wondering if you could give Orland something for me…"

Blinking she quirked an eyebrow, "Well." he stammered, "It's just, I wanted to thank him earlier today for helping me in school a couple of days ago, and when I tried to speak to him, he seemed very unusual…"

"He is always a little strange."

"Ah… let me rephrase that, he's been acting distressed, and then hiding it the best he can." Elves mixed with distress, never a good sign.

Smiling, she nodded, "I'll take whatever you need to him, if he starts stressing around me, I'll make sure he gets his dose of sanity."

Sighing with relief, he smiled at her, "Thank you so much Aria, you have no idea what this means to me, just take this to him." He handed her a small white box and walked by her, "Oh and tell me what he thinks of it!"

He called behind him as he jogged off home. Kaim's words then instantly rang in her head, "If you have any need for advise, ask Orland, he understands the situation your in…."

Turning on her heel, she walked into the inn. Egan smiled, "Oh Aria, nice to see you today, how are you doing?" He asked.

"Good, you?"

"As good as I can possibly be." He smiled.

"Do you know where Orland is?"

"He's up in his room." Just then footsteps while light sounded like they were running. They thudded down the steps, until Orland came into view. He wasn't wearing his regular cloak, or shoes. Without speaking, he grabbed her arm and began pulling her up the stairs. "This way." Walking briskly into the room, he released his grip on her and sat down at his desk. "Are you really going to leave for 3 years?"

Sitting down on the bed opposite his, she nodded, "You've heard from Kaim then?"

He nodded, "I would've never guessed what actually happened… I always thought it was a small problem… until you merged with Katrina…"

Smiling, she walked over and patted him on the head, "Don't worry, I'll be alright, just got to make sure what to do with a blood controlling dragon."

Pinching the bridge of his nose with his finger and his thumb, he sighed, "Honestly… you really are intending on getting yourself killed aren't you?"

"Yup." She said, touching her pocket and remembering the gift Lionel gave her. "Oh, by the way, Lionel wanted me to give this to you." She handed him the small box he had handed her.

"Why are you giving me this then?" He stared at the box she handed him.

"He said you were acting distressed or something, he didn't really want to bother you." Opening the box, he took out a small pin.

"I see."

"Why did you need a pin?"

"Roy got Lionel interested in these, personally I'm not interested in them, but I will keep it."

"After all you're more interested in insect collections." She smiled. He looked at her unimpressed, and felt like she was messing around with him.

She however chuckled and patted his shoulder, "Don't worry, I think it's cute." On some days he regularly reminded her of Jake, but currently he looked like Cecilia pouting in a rather "unlike Orland" fashion. "Anyway see you later, gotta make sure mom doesn't dump a buffalo on me after finding out that I've been gone for a while!"

…

The next week and a bit went on as normal; Aria actually felt a little melancholy for the fact that Kaim and Katrina remained distant for a while, it almost felt like the two were officially gone, and that her life went back to it's usual routine, she could also tell that Orland had seemed to remain around her more, probably because she knew he was the only one within the village to know that she was going to be leaving, and the closer spring came, the more she dreaded the thought of leaving. Petting Weiss' head in distraction, she didn't realize her mother came into the room before she cleared her throat.

"Aria?"

Blinking, she spotted Rosalind holding something. "Mom, is everything alright?"

"Oh come now sweety, don't tell me you've forgotten what day it is?" Looking at the gift in her hands, she smiled gratefully, "Oh yes, it's my birthday, I almost forgot." She said, hugging her mom before opening the present.

It was a pretty locket, with aquamarines and amethysts decorating the outside which was circular. "It's beautiful."

"I saw that when talking with Yue, I know how painful it must be to have Aaron and your... Your father gone on this day, but that doesn't mean you should try to forget it."

Sighing with a slight relief, Aria felt slightly guilty to think that the reason why she had forgotten was that she was going to disappear as well. When she thought of that, she felt like a heartless jerk to leave her mother after all she's been through. Then she reminded herself that if she didn't, then Rosalind could be killed like everyone else if she didn't… Hugging Rosalind, she couldn't help but allow the tears to stream down her face for she knew that Rosalind tried to remain strong and hide the tears, but she didn't plan on telling her about Kyle until she came back for she didn't want to hurt her more.

School was rather regular, lessons went on as usual, but there seemed to be a bit of a heavier air in the school as if a melancholy air flew into the room and took rest there. Aaron was gone, and everyone knew that the two were especially noisy on their birthday, but now the school was just quiet, besides Barrett teaching about how to make weapons, and scribbling stuff down on the board for them to follow.

"Now remember finals are next week, we will be testing you on your capabilities, some things to expect on the finals in my class are…. And … and I expect them to be done and improved, you will have 2 hours to complete this assignment."

Hearing the bell, the class immediately got up from their chairs and began clearing away. Placing her own stuff, she began to walk over to the door, to continue to await, when she her arms were grabbed and a blind fold was placed over her eyes.

"Hey!' she yelled.

"Come on Aria." Roy said,

"You can't miss this." Serena responded.

"What are you guys doing?"

"Just come, you'll enjoy it."

Aria shook her head before allowing them to lead her blindly into what they call fun, and what she calls a nightmare. She felt herself turning and going places she didn't even want to know, before she heard the doors open. Squinting when the blindfold was removed, her eyes quickly widened.

In front of her was a huge feast, and a lot of people were there. "We thought we may as well bring the fun back." Roy smiled.

"After all, just because of the things that have happened, doesn't mean we can't have fun on your birthday," Serena said.

"Although I guess you could say it's not as fun to have to do school work, but we get a free forger so you're forgiven."

"That and whatever else was necessary." Leann smiled innocently, "And I managed to find a rather suitable solution to gifts."

Orland and Lionel were wearing things in their hair. Biting her lip, she covered her mouth before bursting into laughter.

"Sh-shut up! If it weren't for the fact that Roy called her the beloved we wouldn't be in this mess." Orland stuttered, pointing at the 'monster responsible for this horror'.

"Would you like me to add a dress Orland?" He shut up immediately. "You guys are all so infuriatingly fantastic."

"You celebrate our birthdays by embarrassing us and making us feel special, so we decided to reciprocate, after all, you won't be around for much longer."

"Yeah that's… wait how did you know that?"

Cammy and Roy smiled mischievously, "Well, using a truth potion on Orland works wonders, we spotted that he was acting more down than usual, and so we decided to interrogate him."

"So we decided on this." Cammy said.

"You guys, you really need to learn not to dig your noses in everything; but thanks."

"And don't worry, this time Barrett won't know anything!" Roy chuckled,

"Well at least until it's too late to stop you, that's going to be our 3 year birthday gift, and we'll make him swear not to tell."Somewhere deep down, she felt sorry for how they planned on manipulating him... probably telling him that dory's toy is haunted or something like that.

"He didn't tell you anything else did he?" Aria looked at Orland, whom looked ashamed of himself, for more than one reason.

"Well no, he refused to after a while, didn't even tell us, we even tried using Truthus and it didn't work so we just allowed him to pass out from a slight intoxication." Cammy said.

"You two are evil…" She smiled, shaking her head, before digging into the feast.

TBC