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Pursing her lips, she smoothed out the kohl darkening Megan’s deep blue eyes, then stood back. “So beautiful. How did you grow up so quickly?”
    Megan shifted under her mother’s ministrations. “Is Diaprepes coming?”
    “He should be here any minute. Nervous?”
    “No.” Megan shook her head and her brown curls danced around her face. “Well, maybe a little.”
    “I wonder what the oracle will say.”
    Megan looked up at her mother, surprised she didn’t know already. Maybe she was testing Megan’s precognition. “I have a hunch,” she said.
    “What?” Pleione reached a hand out, but Megan bounded through the door.
    “Come on,” she called over her shoulder. “We’ll be late.” She ran past the fountain in the interior courtyard among the heavy scent of gardenias.
    “Wait for me, young lady.”
    Megan lingered in the cool tiled foyer on the other side of the central garden of the family compound, waiting for her mother to catch up. Each of her mother’s sisters had an apartment as large as their own, and the elders of the sprawling maternal clan had rooms in the large house. Most of them still slept or kept to their rooms to honor the solemnity of the coming ceremony. They would be at the party tonight. Megan looked up and saw one of her grandmothers peeking from a third story window. She waved, but the elder woman flicked the curtain closed.
    Megan wondered if her friend Erythe would go with her to learn healing. She imagined Erythe’s strong square hands, her steady manner…probably not. Erythe’s talents lay in working with plants, or maybe she would join the government. Megan hoped someone from her group would accompany her. There were nine going through the Emergence Ceremony today. “An auspicious number,” the teacher said, a larger class than usual. The long-lived Atlanteans planned their families carefully.
    Her mother caught up to her. “Now, let’s have a little decorum, shall we?” She wrapped the train of her shimmering ocean blue robe over her arm and took Megan’s hand.
    Megan glanced back at the garden she had played in ever since she could remember.
    “You can come home any time you’re free from your training.” Pleione’s voice was quiet in her ear.
    “I’m ready.” Megan squeezed her mother’s hand. They stepped out just as a sleek silver craft set down on the landing lawn in front of the house. The bubble top opened and her father climbed out. Tall and commanding, Diaprepes shook out the folds of his deep purple robes. A thin gold band set with a simple crystal over his brow was the only sign of his office. He looked up and caught sight of the two. A smile broke out on his fair face, and Megan felt like the sun just came out. He held his arms out to embrace her, but she was suddenly shy of him.
    “You’re alone,” Megan said.
    “No need for a retinue, this is your day.” He studied her face for a moment. “Nervous?”
    “Only if you two keep asking.”
    Her parents laughed, and Diaprepes took Pleione under his arm. There they stood, the golden-haired Prince of Atlantis, regal even while standing beside his personal conveyance on this ordinary landing spot, and the High Priestess of the healing temple, an elegant lily exuding a power that sharpened the air around her. Today Megan would break from her orbit around these two powerful figures and find her own place in the world.
    “We’re going to be late,” she said, and slid into the back of the craft. Her parents settled themselves in front. Diaprepes closed the top, and Megan pressed her face against the window to watch the craft clear the trees. The square of the inner courtyard shrank, and the neighboring homes and gardens became a series of doll houses tucked away in the green folds of the hills.
    The craft skirted the verdant plain whose canals were like silver veins in the neat rows of crops and stretches of meadow. Diaprepes veered south and they flew past the three rings of stone walls and round