Chapter 51 : School Away From School
If Kim thought that her visit to Alfea was to be a vacation, she was to find out in short order that she was sadly mistaken. Within three days, Shego had whole days full of classes lined up for her. There are classes in Alfean taught to her by Stella because the purest form of High Alfean is spoken on Solaria. However, it did little to change Kim's impression of Stella that she is a first class snob and in Alfean she sounded even more so. There are classes in Witchspeak given to Shego and her by Stormy – although Shego would have preferred to have Icy teach them, she is still too weak to be up to the task. Tecna insists that Shego and Kim also learn Kimiran because they are an integral part of the mystery. Vulpa then insists that she be allowed to give Kim a crash course in Auric Reading 101. Darcy is delegated the task of bringing Kim up to speed on the whole situation with the site. Finally, the Cat-Witch Guards wanted their turn to determine where Kim's fighting skills lay. Then there is K.P. duty helping to prepare and clean up after meals and other shared tasks in the upkeep of the site.
Musa and Kim hit it off famously, having the same tomboyish background, and found that they also had similar tastes in music. Stormy, by Kim's reckoning, is not such a bad kid after all now that she stopped being so up-tight and defensive about everything. With Kim and Piff as catalysts, Musa and Stormy started to get along and the three of them often found themselves together in the evening after work and driving Tune crazy with their unladylike antics.
Icy, thanks largely to Flora, is on the road to recovery and within a week is loudly protesting having to drink cup after cup of Flora's concoctions. When one day she refuses to drink any more, Shego tells her that she will either drink it down without complaints or she and Flora will find another orifice through which to get it into her. Given that choice and seeing the determined expression on Shego's face, Icy suddenly decides that Flora's potions didn't taste so bad after all. After a week or so, she has gained back enough strength to be once again able to sit and move around in her wheelchair but still not strong enough to stand on her feet or fly. The other Faeries contribute what they can towards Icy's recovery. Bloom warmed her joints and kept them supple with Dragon's Fire, Stella continued to warm the rest of Icy's body with Solaria Light which stimulated the body's production of certain vitamins and hormones, Musa used her skills in harmonic therapy to ensure relaxation and sound sleep, and lastly, Tecna with the three Cat-Witches started giving Icy physiotherapy to help strengthen her enfeebled limbs so she could once again start to walk.
While convalescing, Icy finds she has a lot of time on her hands for thinking. Everything in her life has been turned topsy-turvy. She now forms part of a powerful quadrix and, because of her bond with Shego, has acquired many new powers that she has yet to understand and master. The hardest thing she now has to deal with is her new relationship with the Winx. If it were not for them, she would not be alive today. Bloom and Tecna rescued her from the jungle. Flora cured her body's ills with her botanical magic and potions. Both Bloom and Stella gave of their rejuvenating fire and light and for Stella it was even at the risk of endangering her life and the life of her baby. And Musa's harmonic therapy helped her to relax. By Witch law from time immemorial it means that she now owes the Winx a life debt and any to whom you owe such a debt becomes your sister forever. Equally important is the law that states that anyone who saves your life is never to be repaid with harm or evil. Those who break that law forfeit their lives – usually by beheading. How then is she to get her Dragon's Fire from Bloom who is now her sister and to whom she can do no harm or evil? But every moment she closes her eyes to think on it, a voice seems to whisper in her mind that she should go back and re-examine her research and thereby find the solution to her problem.
Meanwhile, after a blow-out baby shower, the Winx are still all a-tweet and a-twitter over Stella's pregnancy to the point that Flora is almost rooted to the floor of Stella's apartment and has to be shooed out for Stella to have some privacy or get to sleep. In the Comm Station Stella is all a-tweet and a-twitter telling everyone how her baby will be named Starla and how she plans to paint the nursery that wonderful new shade of pink she created after blowing up the potion lab at Alfea College. The Witches, (except for Darcy who always chooses these moments to be away), are equally happy for Stella but, after hearing several weeks of she-this and her-that, Vulpa looks at Stella with her head tilted to one side and an ear down and suggests to her that she needs to paint the nursery blue whereupon Stella's golden eyes go wide and the others of the Winx look at her in surprise.
