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her own, Mira slowly meandered through the courtyard, peeking over someone’s shoulder here and doing a little eavesdropping there.
    One man in particular caught her attention. Wearing quite a lot of metal plating, he leaned against the wall outside of the Darmen Exchange office. His eyes scanned the crowd, and Mira wasn’t sure which one of them was the fearful one. Still, the people entering and exiting the office paid him little attention, dangerous or no. He looked to be in his twenties, making Mira realize that she had not seen another person that age.
    Leaving the courtyard behind and walking through the gate, she turned left and strolled toward the edge of the forest.
    She came across a large piece of marble with dark streaks cutting through it. A path lay just next to it, and Mira decided this must be her path. Before setting down it, she noticed a slightly smaller granite rock nearby with another path, and a slightly smaller limestone rock with its own path. Taking a moment to examine this place, she admired all of the rocks and their paths. The rocks got smaller and smaller down to a hefty chunk of quartz and volcanic glass. The paths, some of them criss-crossing only a few feet in, looked so jumbled and bunched that they couldn’t possibly lead to different destinations.
    Tempted as she was to pursue every single path, surmising that each led to the schoolhouse of a different grade, Mira returned to the large white piece of marble, which was almost as tall as she was, and started down its narrow path. Leafy boughs hung overhead and stray branches vainly tried to stop her. The sounds of the forest, the birds, a babbling stream, the wind in the leaves, enveloped her.
    Walking farther in, and feeling the sanctity and contentment of her environment fully, a jarring and unpleasant sound suddenly invaded her peace. A pair of voices, shouting, carried themselves to Mira’s ear. Taking another twist of the path, the forest revealed a clearing, a frail-looking wooden structure, and two teens having a heated argument.
    “That’s not how you do it at all! Don’t you know anything?”
    “It would work if you would just listen to me and stop being such a baby!”
    Mira froze, trying to remain concealed and hoping to get away before being seen. But her first step in retreat landed on a crunchy leaf, which sounded like the cracking of bones.
    “Who is that?” the girl yelled.
    “I don’t know,” said the boy, still arguing, but he turned to see what it was. Feeling she had been caught, Mira emerged.
    “Hi. I’m sorry. Is this the senior schoolhouse?” she asked timidly of the approaching figures.
    “Yes, yes it is. What’s your name?” said a handsome, stringy boy of dark complexion.
    “My name is Mira Ipswich. I’m going to be going to school here,” she said. The boy smiled.
    “Oh, great! My name is Vern Porter. It’s nice to meet you,” shaking hands with her. “Who are you?” he asked.
    The question had come so quick and it caught her off guard, but Mira remembered the words she heard in the blackness of the tent: Your greatest strength can be in hiding your weakness .
    “Oh, you don’t want to know what I can do. It’s dangerous!” she boasted. The boy mustered a suspicious smirk. “Well you can’t be more powerful than Aoi here, or else they would have taken you away to the capitol a long time ago,” he said, referring to the tiny, black-haired girl with two sizable front teeth beside him. “She is as strong as her heartbeat.” But before Mira could even begin to ponder what that meant, the girl had already stuck out her hand.
    “My name’s Aoi Watanabe. It’s nice to meet you,” she said through a devious smile. Hesitantly, Mira reached out and took her hand, ready to say that it was nice to meet her, but her hand was crushed in the shake and something very different came out.
    “Oww!”
    “It’s pronounced “owie,” actually,” Aoi said, emphasizing the final vowel sound and