I had never seen anyone be quite as scared as Plia was when I brought her to the little hall with the painting of the medery.

The little underwitch had gone so white that she was nearly the same shade as the snow in the painting, and that was before I brought her to the door that only I could open.

I would hate to see what she would look like if she had woken up to what I had that morning.

"Ire, I, uhm, I have somewhere really important to be that I can't remember right now. I have to go." She nearly cried as I waved my hand for her to step inside.

She was so pitiful that it somehow made her even cuter than she normally was. "I was scared of it at first too, it won't hurt you. Trust me."

"Mallory said you would say that!" She said as she backed towards the door, her eyes wide and looking like she would run at any moment.

I held my hand out to her. "How many times have I tried to trick you?"

"None." She muttered.

"And how many times has Mallory tried to trick you?" I asked.

She took a deep breath. "Almost every day."

"Right," I nodded and took her hand. "Why would I start now?"

Her eyes were closed, she looked like she was on the verge of real tears, but she let me slowly pull her into the room with the black box.

I had rarely seen anything braver.

"Because you've been being so nice to me that you know I would never suspect it if you decided to trick me." She said, her words coming out high and quick.

I could not blame her for thinking that way, I had once spent nearly three full days suspecting The Mother in Red of doing the very same thing.

"Fair. So how about this, if I trick you, I'm not, but if I do, I will bring you treats everyday for the rest of the time that we are moons here." I offered.

She sniffled, wiped her nose on the sleeve of her uniform jacket, opened one of her pallid blue eyes. "You will?"

"I promise." I said and hooked my pinky with hers.

I wasn't going to trick her, I knew that, but even if I was, I also knew that my finger was not in danger of being broken. She would faint from fright before she could ever summon the will to break my bone.

I closed the door to the little room behind us and gestured towards the black box that sat atop the tall desk in the center of the room.

"This is Gup. Precept Cherith made it my responsibility to take care of him." I said, surprised at the pride I felt in saying that.

I had become very tired of thinking of whatever creature Gup was as the thing in the black box upstairs and had decided to name after the only thing he had ever said to me.

Plia swallowed. "I don't know how to tell you this, Ire, finding out that you have been in here taking care of a box doesn't make trusting you any easier."

"No, Gup is in the box, listen." I said through a laugh as the sound of excited splashing filled the room.

"Mallory was right, it swims in blood doesn't it?" Plia whispered, her back pressed against the wall so hard that she would fallen through it if it was a glamor

I shook my head in disbelief. "No. Why does she tell you things like that? You have to stop listening to her."

"I can't. She's too charming. She crawls onto my bed when I'm full or sleepy. And at first I think we are just talking, but then she starts telling me that Azeralphane is going to come take my color or that there are monsters under the school." Plia muttered, her fear turning into something that looked like embarrassment.

I tried to keep myself from smiling, but I couldn't. "You actually think she's charming?"

It wasn't hard to see, if my heart didn't belong to Anna, who knows what Mallory's flirting would have done to me.

"Yes," Plia sighed and dropped her eyes to the floor. "Maybe, I don't know. There wasn't really a lot of time for me to think about those things before I came here. If she would stop trying to scare me, I might be able to figure it out."

I said nothing.

I wanted to say something, but nothing came out.

Anna and I had just happened. There really wasn't anything I could say that would help my friend because of how unlikely and perfect my own love had been.

"Alright. I have seen your box. Can I go now? It's almost lunch time." The little underwitch asked after a too long moment.

I took her by the hand again and led her to the box. "No, you have to hold him first."

"It won't eat my fingers or suck my blood?" She asked with a seriousness that told me she was actually concerned with those things.

"Not even a little." I said as I plunged our hands into the water.

Plia pulled back at first, but I held firm and laced our fingers together like Nami had done with me when I had first been brought to the little room.

"Mothers save me!" She shouted as Gup wriggled into the cradle we had made.

When she found that her fingers were uneaten and her blood remained in her veins, she let out a ragged sigh and settled.

"See? That's not so bad," I said as I watched her relax. "He knows my voice now. When he hears it, he comes up to the top and splashes all around."

She smiled a weak looking smile. "That's kind of sweet."

As soon as I saw the corner of her lips turn up, I felt all warm inside.

That was why I had caught her before she could pass through Precept Cherith's glamor and brought her there.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Waking up to a letter from The Mother in Gray had not left me warm at all.

To Underwitch Autumn Aubrey It had read. We will depart for my domain on the evening of your final Restoration class. You will be returned upon completion of your punishment or before nightfall the following day.

A letter was better than being dragged away from breakfast or waking up in a dark forest, but I would have liked it if none of them had happened at all.

Even with the reminder of the noose The Mothers had hanging around my neck, seeing Plia smile despite how scared she had been only a moment before made me feel better.

If I could be that brave when The Mother in Gray came for me, I had nothing to worry about.

"So, why do you have to do this? And why is it so slimy? And how do you know it's a boy if you can't see it?" Plia asked with no trace of fear in her eyes.

Before I could answer, two sharp knocks sounded from the door outside.

The little underwitch flinched, but it was not enough to break the cradle we had made.

Who would be knocking on the door of my little hall? Anna? Alexei? Precept Cherith? I did not know.

"Hold him while I'm gone. I will be right back." I said to Plia as I pulled my hand out of the black box.

She gasped. "Wait, no! Why?"

"Because he likes it." I said, the water dripping from my fingers leaving a trail as I went to the door and opened it.

None of the people I thought of were there to greet me.

Instead, Spring Tana stood at my door, and she looked just as displeased to see me as I was to see her.

"What are you doing in there? Mallory won't tell me." She demanded, her brows furrowed and her arms crossed.

I did the same and ignored how wet my dress was getting. "What are you doing here?"

"Asking what you are doing in there. Answer me." She said, practically staring a hole into the middle of my brow.

In all of the short part of my life that I could remember, words had never come to me quicker.

"I didn't tell you?" I asked.

"No." She said sharply.

"Then that means that I didn't want you to know." I said and shut the door in her face.

I felt so good that my first step back towards the little room was truthfully a skip. Then, just as soon as I took my second, all the good feelings left me.

Anger was all that was left, both at Tana and myself for being bothered by her so easily.

"I have to do this," I started as I returned to the black box and began to answer Plia's questions. "Because I have too much aura. This is supposed to make my ocean smaller or the keyhole bigger, I'm not sure which."

I found her fingers and closed the cradle around Gup once again.

"I don't understand what any of that means. Who was at the door?" The little underwitch asked, confusion evident on her face.

"Nobody. Can you feel that?" I asked, desperately trying to let go of the angry heat that filled me.

She looked even more confused. "Feel what?"

"I have to give him my aura, but I can't do that without blowing things apart, so I just let him take what he-" I started.

A single thunderous knock interrupted me.

Gup was free of my hand and I was out the door before I ever realized I was moving.

Swinging it open as hard as I could, my aura pressed against my channels is I prepared to unleash my rage on Spring Tana.

"Is there something you did not understand about having a door slam in your face?" I yelled as I stepped out to meet her.

The honey haired underwitch was not there.

Samsara was.

"Come. This will not take long." My familiar growled, evidently unbothered by my anger.

I shook my head in frustration. "What?"

"There is something I must show you that will render the dance you have been learning less useless" He said simply.

It wasn't his fault, but if I knew I could step on his tail without losing a leg I would have.

"You can't just order me around like this. I don't do it to you." I yelled again, my anger leaving me with the end of my words.

Plia appeared from Gup's room and shut the door behind her. "This sounds like something I shouldn't be around to hear. Thank you for letting me hold your slimy thing."

"No, wait. You're in luck. You get to do two things with me today. Sam has something he wants to show us." I said as I stepped out into the hall and let her leave.

Sam glared up at me and then Plia before finally standing and padding away. "So be it."

"Do I have to put my hand in something again?" She asked as we followed by my contemptuous familiar.

"I don't think so." I answered truthfully.

"Does he bite?" She asked as she put me between herself and my familiar.

"No." I answered and hoped it was true.

"Yes." Sam growled back at us as we passed by Precept Cherith's door.

My familiar had not been lying when he said that it would not take long. There was no need to crawl through hidden tunnels or climb the singing stairs to get to where he wanted me to go. All we had to do was turn left out of my teacher's hall and walk to the end of the one we turned on.

"What are we doing?" Plia asked after she found the courage to walk by my side again.

"He finds things that he thinks are interesting and shows them to me." I answered, minding my words as carefully as I could.

Plia nodded. "Oh, so he does act like a cat."

Sam let out a monstrous hiss but did not turn around.

He finally turned at the end of the hall and led us into a room that was filled with blankets. For a moment, I thought that I was back inside Underwitch Yume's maze. Then, I noticed the patterns.

What looked like sugar that had been spilled across a table covered each blanket from top to bottom and end to end in a dizzying spread of icy blue and black. If I looked at it long enough, shapes began to appear, but as soon as I focused on them, it was as if they were never there.

The blanket formed a single path that curved before a corner of the room and kept me from seeing any further.

"This is known as the dancing cloth. The Mother in Blue made it for her children, but what it depicts cannot be seen without the proper movement. So, dance." Sam commanded me and then left the room without another word.

Plia stepped back and gave him as much space to pass as the room allowed. "Is he always that mean to you?"

"I actually thought he was being nice considering how I spoke to him." I said with a sigh and turned back to the confusing thing that Sam had brought me to.

"I didn't know you could dance," She said as she looked around the blanket room. "This place hurts my eyes."

I stepped forward and performed Katarina's first step like I had been told to do. "I don't think knowing two and a half steps counts as being able to dance."

The blues and blacks blurred in the brief moment that I was moving and made the shapes that I could not focus on before. Then, when I stopped, they disappeared once again.

"It worked!" I shouted, surprised at how easy it was.

As quickly as I could, I stepped back to the start. Drawing a line with my pointed toes and using that momentum to spin forward, I watched as Katarina's first two steps joined together.

The shapes I had seen before shifted alongside me, and my jaw dropped as my ability to perform her dance ended.

"It's her! It's The Mother in Blue!" I cheered, knowing better than most what her silhouette looked like.

I spun on the heels of my sandals and found that Plia did not share in my joy.

She was bent over with her hands on her knees and looked like she would be sick.

"What's wrong? Did he do something to you?" I asked as I went to her and placed my hand on your back.

She shook her head in denial. "No. I just realized that you didn't trick me."

"And that has made you unwell?" I asked.

She sniffled like she was going to cry. "No. That means I don't get any treats."

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