Lana paced her elegantly clean room in her mother's house. Everything was precisely where it was supposed to be; the decor looked like something out of a Home Decorating Magazine. That was the way her mother liked things.

Any moment now, her mother would knock on the door and open it without waiting permission to enter. Her mother's house, her mother's rules, and everything in it belonged to her mother--including Lana.

All through her Freshling years, Lana had done everything her mother demanded of her, meekly, obediently. Her mother was a tidal wave of force. She knew so strongly what she wanted for her life, and for her daughter's life, that Lana could not stand up beneath the tirade of orders. Lana had always been fluid, soft; she could not withstand the pressure of expectation. She had gone into dance because her mother thought she was good at it. She had stayed in dance because the teacher had told her mother she had talent.

After that, mother controlled what she wore, what she ate, who she spent time with. And when her mother had decided she would head to the Asphodel Academy for her schooling so that she could become cultured and admired among her mother's circle, Lana had packed up and gone to live in the dormitories.

At first she had been terrified to be alone. She had no skills to make friends because making friends had not been an activity Lana's mother approved of. Whatever playmates she had had before the Academy had been carefully selected and strictly screened for breeding, social status, and fortune. After all, for Lana's future, she must mingle in the Right Circles.

But how was Lana supposed to understand what were the 'right circles'? When she met Pearl, her classmate, Lana had admired the girl's ease from afar. There was something free about Pearl that kept drawing Lana's eye...and when the girl had struck up a conversation, Lana had not known what to say. At first she thought in terms of mother's approval: would mother like the way Pearl spoke, the way she acted, the way she ate, the way she dressed herself (and she did dress herself, with her own whims and fancies and no say of her lax father!)?

Lana suspected that no, mother would not approved. And there was something so delicious in that prospect--that Pearl liked her regardless of class or standing, that Pearl was hers alone. Her secret friend.

Every moment spent with Pearl, Lana was freed. She grew to understand what she liked. Grew to enjoy the gruelling dance regimen, and even grew to love performing without fear of what the audience would think of her. As it turned out, Lana danced her best when Pearl was watching. And through it all, she grew to love Pearl.

When mother brought her back home after her school exchange was complete, Lana's heart had broken. Her brief window into a life of her own had left her all the more chafed at her mother's incessant nagging, and controlling choices, and constant corrections. As summer break drew to a close, and her dance camp finished for the year, Lana began preparing to enter her Junior years. And for the first time in her life, she knew what she wanted:

To return to Asphodel Academy. To return to Pearl. To merely dance in the school's arts program, not to go into the National Naiad Dance Company, even though she had been selected from a vast number of candidates.

Lana knew she would have to fight her mother for permission to go. She would have to argue the merits with an ironclad case. But for the first time, Lana realized she was not weak. She merely had needed something to desire for her will to become solid as steel. She was more like her mother than she had ever thought possible.

She heard the knock on her door and stopped pacing. She turned to face her mother as the door opened, her resolutions tightly gripped in both clenched fists.

"Mother," she said, and never before had her soft voice been so firm. "I am going back to Asphodel Academy, and nothing you can do will stop me."