As they drove, Rachel and Conner gave Diana and Bryce an explanation about Angelina, and Pretty And Pink Foster Care, and their history with the "foster care" organization. Diana and Bryce turned out to be a pretty good audience-they listened intently, and they gasped in all the right places. When Rachel and Conner had finished their story, both Diana and Bryce were speechless.

"I don't believe it," Diana said, looking Rachel up and down. After hearing the truth about her, she was starting to see her friend in a different light. "I can't believe you and Lanie were boys."

“Maybe I’m pregnant?” she whispered in my ear before nibbling on it.

It took Rachel all day to finish her homework. Since yesterday was so busy with her and Lanie helping set up Jenny's funeral, she hadn't had time to work on her homework. But, after hours of hard work, she finally finished her assignments.

Rachel laid on her bed and sighed. What she really needed right now was a nice, warm bath to relax. Unfortunately, her dorm's bathroom didn't have a bathtub, so she couldn't exactly fulfill that need. Plus, she'd already taken a shower that morning, so she didn't really feel up for taking another one.

The next day was Sunday. Lanie slept in late that morning, but when she woke up, she decided to just go ahead and take a shower. While she was soaping down, she heard Rachel come into the bathroom.

"Hey Lanie!" said Rachel. "Conner's here!"

"Oh, shit," said Lanie. "Tell him I'll be out in just a minute!"

"Okay."

“What happened next?” Lord Radon asked. I looked up from my barely-touched sandwich and tea cup. He was watching me intently, chin rested on his fists while Sheena gave me a completely different expression. Her lip was curled in an expression of disgust, her fists were clenched, knuckles white. I watched her as she glared and my confusion grew.

“Er…” I said, looking away from Sheena and feeling my pulse quicken. “I don’t…I don’t know. I woke up in a field, miles away. Naked, mind you. I walked to the nearest town and-”

Mirror Changed – Chapter 02
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~Jayde~

I didn’t really know where I was. I felt that I should know, but for some reason it was just out of my reach. I stood on a barren path of sorts. Rather indistinct. Looking down I saw that I had nothing on, but it felt natural to be that way here.

Where ever here happened to be.

Could I be dreaming? Since I rarely remembered my dreams I had a hard time telling. However there seemed to be very little of … well anything where I found myself. Wasn’t that a hallmark of dream logic?

From that point on, it seemed like all anyone could talk about at school was the fact that Conner Hawkins was now dating that girl Lanie Evans, who'd just came in out of nowhere and surprised everyone with her charm and her good looks. Heads in the hallways turned whenever they saw Conner and Lanie walking together. Both Conner and Lanie loved the attention and soaked it in. Neither of them had been particularly famous at school before, so it felt great to be treated like celebrities.

“Lyra you’re scrubbin’ it, not resurfacing it! Goddess be good, move on!” Sophia said from overhead. We were in the servant kitchen, just outside the large dining room; our preceptor felt that it had been neglected in the past few days thanks to the summit preparation, so I, and several other girls, had spent the first part of the morning scrubbing the tops, bottoms, and sides of every single table. After that, we’d moved the tables, mopped and waxed the floors, wiped down the walls, and even dusted the rafters using a set of long ladders that I didn’t even know we had.

Farming was back breaking work. I was often up before the rooster crowed and kept in the field till the sun set and the moon had risen. The delta is flat, flat as a board and there is nothing in the way to block the sun, all the trees had long been cut down to make way for the farmers to plow. The strong rays of the Mississippian sun blistered me by day and the bone cutting wind froze me by night. 

I slipped back into the apartment that had been my sanctuary for these incredible months of change, and suddenly, so very suddenly, wasn’t. Life was just coming at me too quickly.