What is... "Home?" (Hetalia Fanfic, W.A. '13 Finalist)

Chapter 77~!

"Melinaaa! This food sucks!" America complained as he held out his ration of hard tack. "I want England's food instead!" 

I almost choked on my own ration of the hard, bland, biscuit-like "food". "You would rather have what now?"

"England's food!" he repeated, and I whipped out my iPod secretively. 

"Okay, now say that again while looking right at this," I instructed while holding up the device and pointing to the camera. 

"I want England's food, this stuff is crap!" he yelled, and I stopped recording before stowing it away again down the front of my shirt. 

"Okay, thanks, America. Very cute, I'll use that later on for sure."

"What was that thing?" he asked, setting the hard tack down and climbing into my lap.

I looked around to see if anyone was paying the least amount of attention to me, but because no one was, I leaned down to whisper in his ear. "It's magical."

"It is?" he said, eyes wide in awe. "What does it do?"

"It can do a lot of things," I said. "It can make music come from nowhere, and make perfect images of things you see. They're like paintings, but better and faster."

"Show me!" he said loudly, but I put a finger over his mouth.

"Shh, not so loud. If this was broken because the pirates decided to take it away, then I wouldn't have it anymore. We wouldn't want that, right?" He shook his head, and I smiled. "Right. I'll show you later, when we can be alone, okay? I don't want this to get all busted up. That would suck, big time."

"Yeah!" he agreed. "Hey, can it make food appear out of nowhere, too? I hate this stuff. There's worms in it!" For emphasis, he grabbed a worm out of the biscuit and held it up for me to see. 

I shrugged. "You tap it against something to get rid of the worms. Or you could eat them. They're extra protein, y'know. And for you, a growing country, you should eat lots of protein."

"What's pro-tein?" he asked, settling down with the hard tack in his hand.

"It makes you grow stronger," I told him, leaning back against the rail and biting into my own hard tack piece. "You want to be a strong country, right?"

"Right!" he said, happily munching on the food for a moment before his expression soured once more. "It's still gross..."

I laughed and ruffled his hair. "You'll live, I promise."

"Well, of course I will! I'm a country!" he declared. "And I'm going to save people, too! I'll be a... a..."

"Hero?" I offered.

"Yeah, that's it! I'll be a hero to everyone!"

That made me smile and look up at the clear, blue sky you only saw in certain places around the world. "I know you will..."

~~~

"Hey, you guys want to swim?" I asked the chibi countries after another intense lesson with the captain. I was sweaty and needed a break desperately; the other chibis looked bored, too. "It'll be like taking a bath, but more fun!"

"Okay!" America said happily, jumping up and running around excitedly. 

"Si, that-a sounds so nice!" Italy agreed, sighing contentedly.

"Alright, I like that idea," Canada said softly, Gilbird still perched on his head.

"Awesome!" I said. "I'll just go tell Captain Rayn where we'll be for the next little while."