"Oh Lyra, there you are," a voice sounded in Anthera Malabona's ears. She looked up from the book she had been reading and frowned, an expression made all the more formidable by the thick spectacles she always wore.
Anthera had found her way into the garden during a mid-morning break from lessons to quietly pursue her studies but others had similar ideas, among them the unfeasibly popular Lyra Bellicosa of Meditia.
That individual, a slim, dark-haired girl with a slightly vague expression on her face, had been sauntering distractedly along a gravel path, no doubt composing lyrics for which she was renowned, when an inevitable admirer had caught up with her.
"Could you sign my book?" It was a second year, several inches taller than the girl she had approached. She held out a pink and slightly glittery handbook, opened at a certain blank coloured page. It was one of those friendship volumes some girls affected at the school, memento moments incribed therein. A doodle, a word of kindness, or in the case of a much sought after Lyra composition, some rhyming, jingling witticism cherished by those who admired such things.
This was Lyra's calling. Hailing from the magical Winkel of Meditia, where land and sea mingled in sunshine and endless summer days of lazy plenty, islands glowing in deep blue waters and green hills velvet in texture sloped down to golden sands and pure white surf. Colourful settlements nestled in coves and billow-sailed vessels cut through emerald waves. It was a land of song and love, passions and play, with sea foam and dolphins, a hint of mermaids and sunken treasures. The great moon Serenity was known by the peoples of Meditia as Pearl for such it seemed when in full glory hanging above the vast expanse of an inland sea restless with fragrant breezes all year long. It was the place where poetry was said to have been born. And there, standing before Anthera's frowning gaze, was a living, breathing representative of the mystical land, Lyra Bellicosa. A first year at Miss Plazenby's Extremely Exclusive Seminary for Girls, just like Anthera herself, and also like Anthera, a native of Meditia.
"My pen speaks thus sprightly, tracing thoughts as it goes. What other words there might be, unwritten so no one knows. There, I hope that makes sense?" the girl recited what she had inscribed next to a spray of flowers on the chosen page.
"Oh, it's lovely. Did you just make that up?" The book was closed and deposited carefully in a shoulder bag. "Listen, we're having a gathering this evening in the Ochre Study, second floor, just behind the statue of Founder Moxol. Reading a few compositions and the like. You should come," and she leaned forward as if to kiss Lyra on the cheek but paused. "Perhaps you will like it," she whispered instead.
"I might indeed," Lyra replied with a smile. Anthera could not help gagging noisily in spite of herself and the sound attracted the other girl's attention. It gave her an opportunity to detach herself from her affectionate fan. "Hello Anthera. Did not see you there, dreamy thoughts lost in air." Then her heel crunched in the gravel as she turned back to the second year. "You might consider inviting Anthera too," she said. "Like me she comes from the lyrical land of Meditia." With that she skipped off and away.
The second year stood there a moment, appraising the recommended girl, who sat clutching her book nervously. Anthera had been described as rather pretty by her somewhat snobbish dorm mate Pirouette Wrangly, pitying in the same breath of praise the fact she wore spectacles. It was those eyes most people noticed about her, magnified as they seemed by the lenses that covered them. Her skin was olive and her thick hair a lustrous brown so that it was always a surprise to discern how pale were her eyes, a blue of a delicate, empyreal tint that glowed in magnified intensity.
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There was nothing requiring correction in Anthera's sight. She was neither long nor short sighted, astigmatic or simply prone to bouts of blurriness. She wore glasses in order to see better, not just more clearly, but in greater detail. She had eagle vision.
That vision was now in full effect as she watched the slightly undecided second year admirer of lyrical composition reach slowly into her shoulder bag to retrieve the pink glittery friendship book, smiling hopefully at the other Meditia girl. Anthera stood abruptly.
"Sorry," she said with a hesitant sniff. "Have to go, back to classes, learn stuff," and she scooted off.
Of course not everyone from Meditia learned to rhyme in their cradles, nor swim in the surf or climb rigging atop swaying seaborne vessels amid the cries of seagulls. Nor did they all, as they learned to walk, trip along damp sandy shores picking up seaweed and shells and sparkly pebbles.
Anthera's childhood memories were immersed in the booming sounds of great machinery throbbing in processing plants, the screech and grind of drills eating away deep into rock, the shattering explosions as boulders were crushed between massive wheels into choking powder. Her wanderings in the woodlands of youth were only after the trees and shrubs had been scoured off the land by great mechanical beasts, laying bare the bedrock soon to be devoted to destruction as mineral wealth locked within was crushed out of it, the residue discarded as unwanted slag. Hardly the playground of a romantic child.
The Malabona Mineral Concern was a ravening creature, not prone to lyrical musings on mines and dirt and noise. Only the assaying laboratory had a semblance of peace as curiously frocked technicians experimented with core samples and powdered rock to test its composition. That part of the process was Anthera's favourite location wherever her family found themselves as they exploited the mineral rich hills that soared above the sparkling lake. The delicate intricacy of the machinery there, so different from the huge lumbering monsters stripping the land outside the walls, drew her keen scrutiny, and some of the words of the technicians, explaining theories to the staring child of chemistry and mineralogy enlightened her upon the significance of what they were about.
Rarely did Anthera Malabona pause and look down on the tiny settlements in the valleys below, nestled peacefully amid trees that might be swept away in an hour if her father so decreed it. Nor did she much consider the wide blue sweep of the inland sea as it curved in hazy glory across the horizon to yet more hills that might claim her father's attention in future years once he had reduced the one they presently resided upon. Anthera had never asked what it was the Malabona Concern mined, understanding that such and such a mineral was useful in such and such an industry, that there was an insatiable demand for a dark blue powder, or plats of marbelline rock. All had to be pulled from the soil, sometimes with the pain of pulling teeth, for the nature of the business demanded it.
It made the Malabona very wealthy, so much so they could afford to send their favourite daughter to the highly exclusive school in Frangea Winkel a thousand miles beyond the unassailable storm barriers that divided land from land, where she would learn to be a leader in a world that always needed to be led, wisely and well.
Only, Anthera mused grimly, there appeared on her schedule, no lessons on how to be popular. That she realised she would have to find out how to do herself.