"Meresinth! What are you doing listening like that?" Anthera Malabona said, rushing up to the girl who was leaning forward with an ear clearly pressed against a door.

"Shush. How else to hear woodworms at work," she replied with a smirk. "Besides, I am about to invent a whole new language. Being from Meditia yourself you should know all about such things, for a good friend of yours enlightened me on matters."

"What do I care about new languages?" came the scornful reply, Anthera's eyes glowing with a giant's disdain from behind her thick spectacles. "This is the fifth year's wing and you shouldn't be here."

"Nor should you."

"I was delivering a note."

"Ah, see the sign on this door?"

"Study number four," came the quick reply after the briefest of glances.

"Did you not note the note on the notice board, neatly notifying of a committee of graceful tongues in grateful tones?"

"Why are you talking in that demented way? Oh, now I know who you mean as my friend. You've acquired the word disorder of Lyra Bellicosa. She might be from Meditia same as me, but we're very much not alike."

"I talk thus at this moment in time for I must don a pertinent guise to further my project of birthing a new means to communicate. The committee beyond this barrier has designated itself a critical board for the approval of words we schoolgirls must speak to identify our Plazenby credentials and scatter new meanings across the world." Meresinth made a benign face after this speech as if tinctured with the glory of language.

"Trendy fifths trying to impose slang speech on the lower years," Anthera said and gave the door a sour look.

"Your glance of bitterest gall methinks betrays a sympathy with my aim."

"Sympathy. It's a load of nonsense," Anthera swatted away such an idea. "What's wrong with plain speaking? You're beginning to give me a headache."

Meresinth grabbed the girl's wavering hand in an earnest grip.

"You are right," she said more simply. "That's why I'm here, listening. To make sure the committee is in session and then, well, watch and follow my lead."

"Hey, what-?"

Before Anthera could make further protest, Meresinth pushed the door open suddenly, pulling the girl in with her as she sighed loudly.

"Verily these labyrinths of learning are veritable caves of squiggly defiance," she said. "A soul can lose its body amid such windings. I fear mine parted five turnings back, eh, my dear shadowlove?"

The two first years paused in the doorway as five very tall and very annoyed fifth years turned their gazes toward them from where they sat at a table in the booklined study. One had a sheet before her and appeared to be reading a list of words for approval.

"See now," Meresinth said, taking all this in with fearless good humour. "What assemblage of froth-brained acolytes have we before us? This be not a neophyte besprinkled assembly cave of geometric perfectitude, glass-speaking the first year common room. It appears booky and frothy with wordpads, populated by knowing statues of animated matter, glass-speaking fifth years at study. We are lost shadowlove, lost and betrayed." She looked at Anthera then, whose huge eyes positively burned with shock at what she was witnessing. The girl was completely crazy!

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"What is the meaning of this intrusive, er, frothiness?" the head girl said sternly, a little befuddled by the strange dialogue.

"My shadowlove and I," came Meresinth's prepared response, "were deep in the otherplace musings as we wandered these labyrinths of learning, glass-speaking corridors of the school, when of a sudden we missed the world of familiarity."

"That will be the place you should be, glass-speaking, which, if anything might be agreed is far away from here, you little demon child."

"Otherplace?" one of the other girls said, puzzled. Meresinth pointed at her temple.

"The mind, a cavern of secrets and hidden treasures. Sharing thoughts is swapping diamonds, conversing is enriching the otherplace."

With silent glee she noticed the girl with the sheet scribbling something on it in pencil.

"My shadowlove and I apologise for our misstep, the breaking of your sacred boundary to exclusive thought, your bundles of kinship," again noting words being written as she spoke. "We shall render ourselves void," and still holding Anthera's hand, she began pulling the startled girl out of the study room with a bow of apology.

"Shadowlove?" another girl said, questioningly, looking at the others with a frown.

"Best friend!" Meresinth shouted and then slammed the door before running away.

When she was in more familiar territory in the east wing of the great building and several floors and stairways from the befuddled fifth years she paused and burst out laughing. Anthera who had tracked her all the way to this point paused too and stood before the tearful merriment of the other girl with hands on hips in an angry pose.

"What was all that nonsense about?" she asked exasperated. "We could've been killed. Did you see how big some of those girls were?"

"Did you quiz, I mean see the looks on their faces?" Meresinth laughed. "Sorry, it'll take me a moment to slip off that character."

"And slip into sanity I hope," the other girl retorted.

"Where are we?" and the Arbornica girl straightened from her doubled up position as if suffering from the cramps of hilarity, which indeed she had been, and looked round her. "I need a drink," she gasped.

"We're at the top of the stairs to the dormitories, away from the labyrinths of learning."

"Stop it!" and Meresinth clapped her hand on the other girl's mouth. "Don't you see? Speaking like that spoils the whole point of the performance."

"No I don't see," Anthera replied, slapping the hand away. "I've some Destiny Springs in my locker. Save us wandering like lost souls in search of refreshment," she huffed.

"Shush!" Meresinth warned again as they began walking towards Wonder Dorm. "I overheard Lyra Bellicosa mention some language committee the other day. She seemed interested in it but found it was some upper school fad, as you said, a trendy group of girls trying to influence speech at the school as a way of making their mark in the legends of Miss Plazenby's. Utter nonsense of course."

"Which is what you were spouting," came the sullen comment which was obviated by the friendly offering of the favoured mineral water produced from a natural source on the flanks of Mount Syzywyg, the clear and sparkling Destiny Springs water. Meresinth took a long and hearty swig, belched in unladylike fashion which made Pirouette Wrangly sat on her bed by the window glance up in annoyance, and then she continued to explain.

"Exactly what I was doing. In agricultural parlance, I was planting seeds which may bear some curious fruits before long. Wait and see." With that she finished off the drink, tossed the bottle in the auto-recycler and annoyed Pirouette even more by opening the window and perching herself happily on the balcony to enjoy the fresh air.

What came to pass bore witness to her prediction, for within days discreet notes appeared on the board that could only have one source. A sonnet to shadowloves appeared in the school magazine, and a course entitled glass-speaking for beginners or musings from the otherplace was offered as an informal study group. Even a diamond-swapping club was tentatively launched for anyone interested.

"You are a demon child indeed," Anthera said, as the two girls stood one morning just before class to gaze at the latest notices.

"Aw, see the two shadowloves, together forever," a second year quipped in passing, a spectacular looking girl with impossibly golden hair. Meresinth laughed, pecked Anthera on the cheek and raced off to her first lesson of the day. Standing behind her, a witness to all this, was Esper, a rueful look on her face.