"Oh Lyra, you couldn't write something on my report card could you?" a girl said, leaning over where the popular Meditia girl sat chatting to a fellow dorm mate with pink hair.

This scenario was watched at a considerable distance by Anthera as she took an amble walk during lunch. A poignant lesson on Winkelogy, the structure of the world and its hidden resources, had just ended and her head was full of ideas on minerals and their uses, but that name caught her ear and brought her to another reality that perplexed her as much.

Through the trees she could see the small gathering of girls around the first year and smiled to herself. One of the aspects of popularity was public ownership. It seemed a great creature with countless tentacles that clung and pulled and made themselves a constant presence. Some souls took it all in their stride, while others became hounded out of their skull.

Lyra enjoyed it.

"Of course," she said. Something was scribbled and the card handed back, now more than just a school record, a souvenir.

"Must try harder," the girl recited. "For trying you may be. Easy as it is by far, to try it more softly." She sighed. "Thank you," and off she staggered, overwhelmed by the profundity of it all.

Anthera paused, drew out her dark blue friendship book, considered the stars upon it a moment, and then selected a page. "Popularity is..." she wrote and then drew an octopus without eyes.

With the coming of Winter Break everyone looked forward to the dance festival before departing to their various home Winkels to be with family and Anthera was of that number. A mild sensation was caused when one of the first years had committed an act of vandalism, it seemed to Anthera's understanding inspired by an attempt to enhance popularity. Thus she added another image to her friendship book. "Popularity is..." with a sparkly rose floating next to it.

"At this rate my book will be full before the year is out," she thought with ironic satisfaction as she boarded the trans-Winkel express to all points east from Portangel early the next morning. She had danced at the festival with her dorm mates the previous evening, especially with Dolly Bloomen whose energy was endless and who repeatedly whispered her to bring back a bucket load of priceless grit.

Meditia Winkel was not too distant from Frangea, being two storm hops away and Anthera's home was on the south eastern edge of the great central lake. However as the main landing port was on a large island to the north the girl found herself obliged to double back aboard a fast cutter for the Malabona Concern was notorious for shifting its operations from hill to hill.

Brother Anjevy awaited her at the dock, shouldered her trunk with a grunt of welcome and led her to the family vehicle for the long climb up away from the salubrious coastal town to the misty heights beyond a treeline ripped to shreds by the mechanical beasts that alarmed her childhood.

She felt them first, a trembling in the ground, then she heard them, monsters drawing agony from the rock, and then rounding a dark, grooved corner of a recently made road she saw them.

Though the sun shone brightly the huge spotlight eyes seemed brighter as massive, multi-jointed vehicles snaked their way over torn up soil and fragmented rock. Huge tyres, any one of which could crush a row of houses if it inadvertantly escaped and tumbled down hill to the settlement below, gripped and slipped and tore through muddy tracks, bouncing their orange and yellow burdens to the next dig.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Impressive, sis," Anjevy said, glancing around him as they passed the edge of the latest quarry. "New seam of quartzine just discovered. Bit of a scramble to get it all out before a competitor jumps in for a claim," he explained all the frantic activity. Their car paused as a log cutter swept a line of hundred year old pines from the side of the road to widen it, dashing the great timbers into a trough where they seemed to scream in being crushed to splinters, pulped into paper and carried off to adorn some prefabricated cabin interior of workmen's temporary homes during the operation. The Malabona Concern prided itself on leaving nothing to waste. Except seedopal grit of course.

"Father's here?" Anthera asked when they passed the noisier part of the site and descended into a quiet valley where some greenery had survived and more elaborate buildings made of fresh timber stood in their own grounds.

"He is," her brother answered shortly. "At the lab."

The testing laboratory was always painted white and pale blue and stood out from the dark vegetation noticeably, but the family home was a more subdued affair.

It resembled an imitation country mansion, two storied with narrow windows and a fussy shingled roof. Anthera's mother stood on the square cut steps and hugged her as soon as she stepped out of the vehicle.

"Welcome home, sweet girl," she said kindly. "Father won't be with us for lunch, but you'll see him later. Poppy's just bursting to show you her latest set of dolls."

"Thought she might," and Anthera turned just in time to see her brother dump her trunk upon the wooden path and race off over the muddy ground towards the squat square building where technicians were busy determining the true value of the find, so eager he was to participate in the family concern. Mother Malabona sighed.

"I fear your brother won't be in for lunch either," she said, shaking her head.

Poppina did not mention dolls during the meal however.

"I got a ride on a big truck," she enthused, spooning pink blancmange everywhere but her mouth. She was five and prone to excitement. Her mother blamed the unsettled nature of their lifestyle, often uprooting themselves from a stable family home and living in temporary places while the elusive quartzine was pursued like some mysterious underground animal. She was not making any friends. Anthera remembered that from her own experiences until she attended Miss Plazenby's. It felt then as if everything stopped moving. The landscape remained the same from day to day, trees stayed where they were for months together in Frangea and a road remained a road. Whereas among the hills of Meditia a road would appear overnight where wilderness had been before. It would then degenerate into a muddy cleft, a waterlogged canal and by the time they left it was partly buried in landslides.

"Have you planted any flowers yet, Pops?" Anthera asked. She encouraged her sister to put down some kind of roots, fearing she would become as restless as her brother. The girl shook her head for answer.

"Not been here long enough for grass to grow on the front lawn," her mother observed with a shallow laugh.

"I noticed."

A clatter and Father Malabona entered with a couple of technicians.

"Anthera, there you are," he said in genuine delight. "Thought you'd be at the labs."

"Needed food," she replied and jumped up to give the man a hug. He smelt of the laboratory, a sort of bitter burnt smell from reagents used in the mineral assaying.

"So does Gigantor Five," he laughed brusquely. This was the name he gave to the great drilling machine, the principle component of the mining operations. It took five men to drive it, ten to steer and over a hundred to work around clearing out the rubble with lesser machines. The huge drillbit used seared titanica, a treated mineral obtainable only from quartzine following an elaborate baking process in specially adapted ovens. The process was said to literally sweat seedopals as a by-product but Anthera did not know the details for sure.

"Daddy, Gigantor looks as if he's going to eat the world," she said mournfully.

"Nonsense child. Only a small part of it." Though he laughed off the idea there was a look in his eyes that suggested his daughter was not the first to mention the damage being done to the land by his obsessive hunt for quartzine.