1. Off to See the Wizard

Shadith rubbed herself dry, then dropped the towel and inspected herself in the bathroom mirror. It wasn’t a child’s body any longer. The breasts had grown large enough to yield to gravity’s pull, the muscles were more defined, though that probably came as much from her fight training as from maturation. She was even a little taller, having grown an inch and a half in the past two years. Her face was thinner,, the hawk etched on her cheek distorted by the change. She leaned closer to the mirror, turned her head, and laughed because the line drawing had acquired a bad-tempered sneer she hadn’t noticed before.

She’d cut her hair into a cap that fit close to her head and indulged in extravagant earrings to please the taste she’d discovered in herself for strong colors and wild designs, a reaction to the drab, shipsuits she’d spent so much of her lives wearing, whether it was her body or another’s.

She left the bathroom and dressed slowly, thinking about Aslan’s dinner invitation. More than dinner involved, she was sure enough of that to speculate about the offer she thought was coming. She’d enjoyed the past two years here, she was fond of her teachers, Quale had dropped by a time or two to pay her grinning compliments before he went off with Aslan, and she was gaining respect for her compositions as well as her performances. This was a very pleasant life, but… Always that but, she thought. The last several months she’d found herself getting restless, as if this peaceful existence were a waste of a precious and limited resource-the hours of her mortal life.

It wasn’t that she needed more meaning in her life. Breathing. Moving. The various modes of sensuality. Those were all the meaning she needed.

What she wanted was passion. She felt dimmed, cool. Even music had stopped reaching deep.

She thrust her feet into soft black slippers, smoothed the silky black dress over her hips, spun in a circle so the long skirt would bell out from her ankles. “While the body prowls howls growls, the soul revels and bedevils,” she sang.