Chatoyant College

They walked down the hallway, Annie trailing slightly behind the rest of them. Edie knocked on Roe's door; Talia opened it a moment later. "Hi, I guess you're looking for Roe."

"Yeah," said Corrie. "Is she here?"

"She's taking a nap," Talia started to say.

But Roe interrupted her in a sleep-filled voice. "No, I'm awake. Someone's looking for me?"

"Hi," said Dawn, leaning her head into the room. "We want to show you something."

"Um... okay." Roe yawned. "Let me fix my hair."

After they had located Dawn's shoes (still on the floor in Annie's room) and everyone else had gotten theirs on as well, they trooped off for some lunch. Annie invited Salome, but she declined. Edie enjoyed the lunch, glad to be having a normal interaction with friends again after the strangeness of the night before. Her mind couldn't stop wandering to Leila, though, and she looked around the dining hall surreptitiously, hoping to see her. She didn't, however, and decided with disappointment that Leila was not here; she doubted she could miss that tall form and flame-red hair.

They followed the same process with Dawn's poster, skipping the falling down part, as well as the part where Salome was sitting in the same room but ignoring them (Naomi was nowhere to be found either). But when they went to Corrie and Edie's room, they realized putting up Corrie's posters was going to be more complicated. "These are both vertical," said Corrie, looking at the posters and then at the wall. "They'll fit on the wall, but it's going to be a lot harder to hold them up. I don't know if we'll be able to reach."

"Yeah," said Annie, holding up the poster. "It's too big to unroll here, but you can see it when I get it back to our room. It's a painting by Joseph Paton of A Midsummer Night's Dream."

"Interesting choice," said Dawn with a grin.

Annie returned the grin, knowing what she and the three friends knew. "I thought it would be a nice thing to have on my wall. Have you guys gotten anything?"

Corrie shook her head. "We just got here."

Saturday, September 6

Corrie has convinced Edie to learn more about paganism, and the two of them join the campus's only club for pagan students, Circle of the Goddess. They've heard bad things about it, and it does seem odd that only female students are allowed, but the leaders seem friendly and eager to have them join, so they decide to try it out. Then Roe has another vision, which is sadly incomplete, but that seems to point to Circle of the Goddess as a good place for them. Unfortunately, the club members and leaders seem to be more and more prejudiced and holier-than-thou the better they get to know them.

It was three AM at Jenny Harrison's sleepover party, and everyone was asleep except Edith. She was laying flat on her back in her sleeping bag, staring at the texture of the ceiling, not caring about flattening her hair and trying not to think. Jenny Harrison was thirteen; most of the other girls there were twelve; Edith was eleven.

When Dawn knocked softly on Rico's door, he opened it almost immediately and grinned to see her. "There you are," he said in a quiet but relieved voice. "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten about me."

She grinned too. "It's been a crazy night, actually."

He motioned her in. "Duncan's in bed, so we can't watch the rest of the movie, but we can talk quietly."

They arrived at the fifth floor a few minutes later. Dawn knocked gently on Roe and Talia's door and waited. After a few moments, Roe opened the door and raised her eyebrows at them. "Come to apologize?"

"Uh, no," Dawn said. "We wanted to try to explain more."

Roe crossed her arms. "You're going to tell me Professor Lal is some kind of wish-granting fantasy creature?"

"What?" Dawn said in confusion. "That's not it at all." She tried to figure out how to explain what they meant to Roe, but before she could, Edie was talking.

"You're welcome," said Professor Lal. "It's the least I could do after all these years. Am I right to assume you are a friend of these two?"

Dawn nodded. Corrie straightened up and took Edie's arm possessively. "She's my roommate."

Professor Lal shook her head in amazement. "I doubt this is the last that you three will hear from the less human-friendly of us."

"What about the other statues?" said Dawn. "You said you've been watching for years... you knew the other students who were turned to stone?"