"Welcome back."
"Thank you."
"How are you feeling?"
Arezoo conducted an internal inventory. Her head felt heavy, but she didn't have a headache, and her throat was dry but not sore. Everything else felt a little off. Her bones ached, and her skin tingled as if it were being stretched too taut.
"I feel fine. A little strange."
He frowned. "Define strange."
"My bones are a little achy. It's not painful, just a little uncomfortable, and my skin feels dry and tingly and stretched out."
He nodded as if he had been expecting that. "Your body is rebuilding itself. Those aches and discomforts are normal. You are probably growing."
"Growing? Like in becoming taller?"
Soraya scoffed before Julian could answer. "Joonam. It has only been twenty-six hours. Nobody grows taller in such a short time."
"It actually happens," Julian said. "In fact, I came in to take some measurements, if that's okay with you."
"Of course."
He produced a measuring tape from his pocket. He took her wrist and ran the tape from the joint of her thumb to the bend of her elbow. He took the length of her forearm. He took the span of her hand. He moved down to her foot, working underthe blanket, and she let him because she was curious, and her mother held her hand very still on the blanket.
Doctor Julian recorded each measurement.
He moved up to the head of the bed and unhooked something from the wall, a flat board with markings on it, and he positioned it carefully against the top of her head. He marked a point on it with a pencil. Then he detached the board and held it against a fixed measuring strip on the wall.
"You've grown." He sounded surprised.
"How much?"
"A quarter inch."
"Is that a lot for one day? I mean, for a transitioning Dormant?"
For a human, it was practically impossible, but she was no longer human. She was on her way to becoming immortal.
Talk about surreal.
"It is, especially for females. Most don't get any taller. It's usually just the transitioning males, and not all of them."
"Does it mean anything?" her mother asked.
He shrugged. "Perhaps something about Arezoo's childhood stunted her growth. The transition to immortality fixes those kinds of things."
Soraya's expression became pained. "There was a lot of stress in our household, and being the eldest daughter, Arezoo absorbed the brunt of it to protect her sisters."
Julian nodded. "That can definitely affect growth."
Arezoo didn't care about the past and the reasons for her not reaching her full height potential. She only cared about the inches she was going to gain now.
She had always been the shortest one in her house. Both of her sisters were taller than her, and even her mother had a couple of inches on her. Ruvon was a head taller than she was, and when they walked together, every step of his was one and a half of hers. He had to deliberately slow down for her or she would have been forced to speed walk to keep pace with him.
It would be wonderful to grow a few extra inches.
"How tall can I get?"
