Petal Mara carefully folded and packed her clothes as she prepared to leave Miss Plazenby's Extremely Exclusive Seminary for Girls. She was going home to Greenvale for the storm barriers had receded during the holidays and everyone was excited to visit their various Winkels across the world.

"Missed all that greenness?" Soo Toglak said as Petal paused, fondling a favourite sweater, lost in thought.

"Oh, yes!" came the slightly dazed reply and Petal smiled at the bronze haired girl on the other side of her dormitory bed. Soo was from Mangoria, a land of great open spaces and wide grasslands dominated by herds of horses. She was an expert rider, spear thrower and fierce huntress, very much the opposite of the softer nature of Petal who came from a land of rolling green hills, lush valleys and crystal streams. Her family owned large farms across Greenvale so they could afford to send their daughter to the expensive school in the warm and pleasant land of Frangea. "I suppose you miss a good gallop across the plains of Mangoria?"

"Can't wait. I feel lazy sitting in classrooms learning to construe sentences in dead languages or daubing colours on canvas."

"Education is important, especially for girls," Petal replied, clicking shut her third suitcase, grateful there was a porter to carry all her stuff down to the airport on the coast. "Have to keep the boys in their place," and her cheeks tinged a little at mention of the forbidden word.

"Boys!" snorted Pinky Ponsonby, unimpressed with such creatures. "They're so stupid they do not know the difference between a hair grip and a hair clip." Hailing from Perfecta Winkel, Pinky, known for her pink hair, was obsessed with all things designer fashion and cutting edge style. Winter colours were her main occupation at the moment, wishing the school would issue a less gaudy tie pattern to match the season. Perfecta girls often petitioned the head mistress on changes to the school uniform and Pinky was no exception.

"Is Greenvale a nice place?" came a slightly muffled voice from the corner of Dorm Sensation where five first year girls resided. Upon a bed, flicking through some slightly odd looking magazine as she nestled her head in a cloudy mass of black hair was Danique Ferale. Unlike the other girls she was making no preparations to leave for home.

"The most beautiful place in the world!" Petal enthused and the others laughed. "No really. The hills curve gently up and down, the valleys are full of little woodland glades and mossy river banks perfect for fairy dances. Flowers fill meadows as far as the eye can see and blue mountains sprinkled with the purest white snow gleam on the horizon wherever you look."

"Sounds as if song might burst out at any moment," Soo suggested.

"Bird song!" Petal continued, unfazed by this slightly cynical comment. "The birds of Greenvale are the most melodious in the world. Half the melodies you hear people sing derive from Greenvale birds. Even the frogs croak in harmony."

"Sounds nice," Danique acknowledged, turning another page of her magazine without looking at the girl with soft brown hair, softer brown eyes and an enthusiasm for the beautiful things in life so intense she could barely breathe sometimes.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Greenvale?" Lyra Bellicosa said as she entered the dorm just then. "A land of green and gold and grey, where some make money and some make hay, where tears are soft and laughter gay. If though your debts you do not pay, barons fierce your skin will flay." Lyra was a born word juggler who often broke into lyrical phrases and impromptu rhyme.

"Oh Lyra, our land barons are not as bad as all that," Petal retorted with a smiling shake of the head.

"Barons who flay your skin off?" Danique discarded her magazine and sat up. "I've not heard that before about your home Petal. Do enlighten us, as Lyra might say."

"Shed light upon the shadows of your world, reveal to us the nature of such a land that can produce a Petal Mara and a fierce baron too, so Lyra might say," the Meditia girl countered, wanting to add more poetic refinement to Danique's request.

Petal began packing a fourth suitcase as she looked at the expectant faces of her dorm mates.

"Well," she said, gathering thoughts to herself in story telling fashion. "Greenvale long ago was parcelled out among warring tribes led by the lord of the most powerful family in each tribe. They built forts to protect their territory and these eventually became great stone castles sat high upon a hill. Really they are the most picturesque of buildings, often overlooking a turn in a river or dominating the crest of a ridge. The warrings stopped eventually and agriculture dominated the minds and activities of the people. My father inherited his original farm on the land of Baron Airan so pays him rent but he was so successful we own many farms on different baronial estates. The land barons simply own the land these days and there's rarely any disputes between them or with their tenants. We've got councils to resolve things now so no one rides out to war or anything."

"Imagine a baron mustering his men for a raid on a rival castle in a fleet of electric cars," Soo Toglak laughed, knowing horses had been phased out of Greenvale as a means to travel whereas the economy and geography of Mangoria made them ideal in her Home Winkel.

"Wouldn't he have tanks and armoured cars and things?" Pinky murmured. "Sieges would be deadly affairs."

"Please!" Petal protested at these violent images. "The castle walls are beset by climbing plants not ladders and the barons tour the land in open topped cars where people cheer and throw flowers. There, I'm done," and she shut her final suitcase and piled it on top of the others to await transfer downstairs.

"Well I hope you have a nice time either way, throwing flowers or scaling castle walls for the exercise," Danique said and flopped back down on her bed to resume reading her magazine. She had made no move to pack or anything.

"Are you not parting whence you came?" Lyra said.

"Not going home then?" Soo translated.

"Nope," came the short answer. "Evernight can do without me for a while I think," and Danique Ferale said no more.

"I wonder what our invisible girl is doing now?" Soo said, sitting upon a bed which looked as if it had never been slept in, which was in fact the case. Dorm Sensation like all the first year dorms, accommodated six girls to the room but one of the girls never claimed her place, leaving a mysterious vacancy. Everyone expected her to turn up eventually but the delay caused all sorts of rumours.

"I wonder who she is?" Petal mused.

"Will she ever appear?"

"Was she kidnapped?"

"Is she still alive?"

"Enough!" gasped the gentle Greenvale girl. "I do not want to hear any awful theories on why she never appeared on the first day of term."

"Funny that," Danique muttered, face hidden by cloudy hair and the gaudy cover of her magazine. "I would have thought you of all people would know what tragic fate had struck the invisible girl." This was the inevitable name they had given to her, for want of a better.

"Why so?" and Petal's big brown eyes squinted inquisitively.

"I overheard one of the mistresses say she was a Greenvale girl too and something terrible had happened to her."