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sparkling in his eyes had returned now, and she was happy about it.
    “Come on, tell me. I’m curious,” Colton demanded.
    “It’s called Pentimento, and it's kind of forbidden by the Beasts. It's a beautiful, but dangerous art.” Iris said, remembering the first time her father told her about what Pentimento was, and how it had changed her life and the way she thought about the Beasts forever.

9
    When Iris was about five, a long time before her mother died, her father used to lock himself in the basement for hours while her mother braided her hair in front of the mirror. Iris wasn't blessed with good hair. It was naturally a bit stiff and hard to comb, blonde but not golden. Golden was always adored in The Second. Her hair grew much better in her adolescent years, if they had only waited and seen what this girl could do when she grew older. Her mother thought braiding Iris’s hair camouflaged its defect, and made her daughter look stylish. Iris didn't care about her hair. If the world didn't like it, they'd better just look away. What piqued her curiosity was what her father was doing downstairs.
    She might not have been that interested if everyone in the house hadn’t been so secretive about it. Whatever Charles Beaumont was doing would be a great threat if the Beasts had known about it.
    Iris had seen her mother fight with her father about the matter before. She’d be protesting that this hobby of his was going to expose them to the Council's wrath. Thus, the Beasts’.
    “It’s the only thing that makes me happy,” Charles used to tell her mother. “And no one will ever know about it. My father did it and my grandfather did it. It runs in the family. I don’t care if the damn Beasts don’t allow it.”
    “No one said they didn’t allow it,” her mother had explained. “I don’t think anyone even knows about this Pentimento. I just have a feeling that it breaks the Beasts’ first, and only, commandment.”
    “I know what the first and only commandment is, mother,” Iris had tiptoed in and raised her hand, as if she were in class. “Can I recite it?”
    “And here we go with the Beasts’ bloody commandment,” Charles rolled his hands, and his eyes. “How can they teach this to the kids in school?”
    “I'm in kindergarten, daddy,” Iris had felt obliged to correct him. “Will go to school next year.”
    Iris's mother had shot Charles a look of guilt, then knelt down and held her daughter gently by her arms. “Please do tell your father what you have learned, Iris.”
    “The first commandant is,” Iris straightened her back and made sure her top button was closed, then coughed to clear her voice. “'Thou shall not question the Beasts.'”
    “Good girl,” her mother rubbed her daughter's hair gently, avoiding Charles protesting eyes.
    “In The Second we can live in prosperity and enjoy our lives under the sovereign of the Beasts. We are a nation of freedom, like no other,” Iris saluted her mother like soldiers do. “Every individual is free to think and do what he pleases, as long as they abide by the law,” she turned to her dad and rose a warning forefinger. “Never question the Beasts.”
    Charles sighed and ruffled her hair, as he had no choice to object. “How do they teach this to kids?” he mumbled, and climbed down the stairs to his double door basement.
    “Don’t be long,” her mother had told Charles, then turned back to Iris. “And because you've been a good girl, I'll now comb your hair, then braid it the way you like it.”
    But then, Iris's mother got a call while doing her hair. Iris couldn’t resist the curiosity of climbing down to the basement. To her surprise, her father had kept the door open.
    Iris tiptoed into the room. It was full of books and paintings of all kinds. She wondered why her father still had some paper-books, when nobody used them anymore because they were available digitally everywhere.
    Still, there was no straight law against owning old