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We're not afraid to grow close to each other here. Our friendships take root and bloom. We wear garlands in our hair, tell naughty jokes, laugh and shout, confess our fears and our hopes. We even belch without restraint. There's no one around to stifle us. No one to tell us that what we think and feel is wrong. It isn't that we do what we want. It's that we're allowed to want at all.
"Watch this!" Felicity says. She closes her eyes and in a moment, a warm rain falls from that perpetual sunset. It wets us through to the skin, and it feels delicious.
"Not fair in the least!" Pippa screams, but she's laughing.
I've never felt such lovely rain. Certainly I've never been allowed to wallow in it. I want to drink it up, lie in it.
"Aha!" Felicity shouts in triumph. "I made this! I did!"
We screech and run, slipping down into pools of mud and back up again. Coated in muck, we throw handfuls of it at each other. Each time one of us is hit with a great heaping mound of wet earth, we yelp and vow revenge. But truthfully, we're in love with how it feels to be absolutely filthy, without a care in the world.
"I'm a bit soggy," Pippa calls after we've thoroughly trounced her. She's covered in mud from head to toe.
"All right, then." I close my eyes, imagine the hot sun of India, and in seconds, the rain has gone. We're clean, dry, and pressed, ready for vespers or a social call. Beyond the silver arch, inside their wide circle, the crystal runes stand, their power locked securely inside.
"Wouldn't it be grand to show them all what we could do?" Ann muses aloud.
I take her hand, and when I do, I notice her wrist has no new marks, only the fading scars of past injuries.
"Yes, it would."
We sprawl out in the grass, heads together, like a great windmill. And we lie like this for a very long time, I think, holding each other's hands, feeling our friendship in thumbs and fingers, in the sure, solid warmth of skin, until someone gets the bright idea to make it rain again. "Tell me again how the magic of the runes works." I'm lying in the grass next to Mother, watching the clouds in their metamorphoses. A fat, puffy duck is losing the good fight, stretching into something else.
"It works through months and years of training," Mother responds.
"I know that. But what happens? Do they chant? Speak in tongues? Do the runes sing 'God Save the Queen first?" I'm being saucy, but she's provoked me.
"Yes. In E flat."
"Mother!"
"I believe I explained that part."
"Tell me again."
"You touch your hands to the runes and the power enters you. It lives inside you for a while."
"That's it?"
"The gist, yes. But you first have to know how to control it. It's influenced by your state of mind, your purpose, your strength. It's powerful magic. Not to be toyed with. Oh, look, I see an elephant."
Overhead, the duck blob has become something resembling a blob with a trunk.
"It has only three legs."
"No, there's a fourth."
"Where?"
"It's right there. You're just not looking."
"I am so!" I say, indignant. But it doesn't matter. The cloud is moving, changing into something else. "How long does the magic last?"
"Depends. For a day. Sometimes less." She sits up and peers down at me. "But Gemma, you are"
"Not to use the magic yet. Yes, I believe you mentioned that once or twice."
Mother is quiet for a moment. "Do you really believe you're ready?"
