"You've a button missing on your blouse," Danique observed as Pinky Ponsonby entered Dorm Sensation at the end of lessons for the day. This revelation made the girl shudder and rush to the nearest mirror.

Pearly star flowers were the fasteners of choice for this particular pupil, although hardly school regulation buttons, and the pink-haired girl could see that indeed one of the shiny little things was conspicuous by its absence. A tuft of silver thread mournfully told a tale of its demise.

"No point searching for that thing," Danique said, giving the carpet a cursory glance in the off chance its opalescent glitter might catch the eye.

"No need," came a satisfied reply and from a drawer Pinky withdrew a velvet box, opened it, frowned and replaced it with another until a satisfied smile resulted in her withdrawing a string of buttons that coiled endlessly on her bed. "I have spares."

"Shall I call a house maid to do the sewing?" came the helpful suggestion from Petal Mara as she wandered over to look at all the glitter upon the crimson bedspread.

"No need," came the assured response yet again and Pinky pulled out from another drawer a strange contraption that resembled a stapler, if such a useful device were ever made from amethyst and silver with rainbow glass grips. Danique and Petal watched interestedly as a pearly star flower was selected from the supply chain, inserted into the jaws of the device and then there was a kind of crunch, ping and whirr.

"All perfect again," Pinky declared and so it was. Where the missing button had revealed an imperfection the damage was mended by the brand new replacement which matched all the others.

"That's a very useful device," Petal said, examining the heavy button stapler and almost sewing a button on her finger by accident.

"One of the many essentials to make life as smooth and care free as possible," the other girl stated with knowing certainty.

A girl appeared from the bathroom just then rubbing her hair with a towel. She had such a tanned skin the frizzy halo around her head seemed that much paler and glowed with an inner light of its own. Without acknowledging anyone she wandered over to her bed with its untidy pile of sheets and cloths, shifted a bundle out of the way with a bare foot and plonked herself down to continue rubbing at her damp locks. Above her head hung a heavy bronze shield with gilt embossing like a trophy from some barbaric war. It had been a war she had only partially won.

"What?" came a snarl when she realised everyone was watching her. "Never seen a Mangoria girl without her braids before?" she sniffed, and tossing the towel upon the carpet at her feet she began vigorously with a dexterous play of nimble fingers to knot her hair into woven strands that would eventually be folded and tangled in an elaborate weave for which she and her people were generally much admired.

"I believe," Pinky said stiffly, "that is one of my towels."

"Uh, sorry," Soo Toglak replied. "I'll put it back in a minute."

"It appears to be the maroon shade. A thirty second drying, and then located between the burgundy and the cerise."

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"I just grabbed it without thinking," Soo mumbled as a particularly intricate knot was ventured with one closed eye. "Tumbled the others about as I did so I imagine."

"No matter," the other sighed. She then reached for her tablet from the bag by her side, slid through a few screens and produced a colour schematic showing a rainbow of towel squares all aligned according to shade. "I took the precaution of numbering the colours so that disorder may be anticipated and a quick realignment achieved."

With a delicate gesture she picked up the discarded hand towel between finger and thumb, noted its number with a knowing nod and disappeared into the bathroom. A mild scream could then be heard which made Soo snigger, and then Pinky returned after a slight delay, her cheeks a little rosy but otherwise she maintained a calm demeanour.

"All dried, pressed and ordered as before," she said, still a little stiffly. "Please ask permission next time when a need to dry oneself is too urgent to use one's own towels," she instructed the offender.

"I'll do my very best, Captain Coordinated," came the less than respectful reply.

"Do you have a crib sheet for all your items?" Petal Mara hopped in, applying her peace making skills to the situation.

"I do indeed. The idea is to ensure when the unexpected happens, such as a barbarian pillaging the towel racks, a quick solution is available and order restored."

"I tried that with my hair once," Danique Ferale said, grabbing a fistful of her abundant dark mass of hair that looked like a storm cloud on a wild night. "Strategic hairclips here and there, but kept losing too many. Found one the other day when I set aside an hour to brush my hair. Found a brush I lost a week ago as well, the green-handled one with a locator pin that had failed for some reason." She tousled her hair again so that it swelled to enormous levels of disconcerting chaos. Physicists in search of dark matter would do well to examine the neighbourhood of Danique's lustrous locks for the inexplicable missing mass that governed the galaxy's rotation.

For answer to all this Pinky held up her tablet again which showed an assemblage of scissors from tiny nail clippers to great shears and even a multi-bladed eight-wheeled harvester. This made Danique shudder and move away to her own corner of the large dorm room.

"There is a place for everything," Pinky said. "And everything in it's place. We are taught this where I come from as soon as words of less than one syllable are comprehended."

She was a Perfectine of course. Being perfect was a heavy responsibility but Pinky Ponsonby resolved to shoulder that burden, with perfection. Every waking moment of her life had been dedicated to the art of refinement, in appearance, actions and surroundings. It all had to be perfect.

Which is why a certain aspect of the universe looked down on Pinky Ponsonby and thought here was a challenge to the laws of entropy, the principles of decay and the random improbabilities of existence. It was as if great unseen forces were gathering to oppose a little pink-haired girl and her formidable life philosophy to smooth wrinkles wherever they appeared, to level the tilted incongruities of life and purify speckled beliefs. A war was brewing, made up of many tiny battles in the trials and tribulations of day to day affairs. A broken pencil resharpened, a rain splash washed clean or a missing button replaced. It was not the fact these things kept happening, but that they were resolved so effortlessly that made the Imp of Entropy mad with frustration.

Everything, it was insisted by the rules of nature, should decay, and stay that way, a random assemblage of disassociated particles. It had always been thus. How dare a pink-haired girl reverse the great arrow of entropic decay with glittery gadgets, ordered schematics and an aggravating insouciance!

Thus the great unseen forces that shaped the universe took up that challenge of Perfecta life style choices, knowing what a formidable task lay ahead, and plotted with glee all the possible ways things that might go wrong were certain to do so. Pinky Ponsonby, in her mission to make the world a perfect image of herself, was to shoulder a far heavier burden than even she realised.