Precept Seram's polite applause echoed down from where her bubble hung at the top of my place.

"Spotless, Underwitch Ire! Our time at Silkcradle seems to have been very beneficial for you. That is the third assignment you have completed today. If only we had another week in your first phase."

It had been, and then it hadn't, but there were two things that had made my last three classes better than any I had been to before.

The first was that I was no longer writhing in constant discomfort or forced to wear far too many clothes because of the dresses that Anna had gotten me. The only thing that hung from the silver hook on the wall was my cloak and jacket, and I was perfectly comfortable in my uniform.

The second was that there had been no sign of a single honey brown hair since Precept Seram and her new moons had returned to Lun. There had not been a single blue eyed glare thrown my way or any harsh words to admit my ears. It was winter at The Mother in Blue's school and I hoped that Spring would never come again.

I enjoyed her clapping so much that I joined in and applauded for myself.

"Yes, I am very impressive," I agreed with my teacher. "I will be back soon though. For my second phase with you?"

After what had felt like no time at all, my time with Precept Seram was ending. When the following week came, after two days off and what was hopefully a date that was so romantic stories will be written about it, I would not be coming back to my place in her classroom.

"After you complete your first phase with Precept Mon Zetta and Precept Cherith, yes, but your second phase will be much different. We will not be here, and it will not be static assignments you are asked to complete. You will be using what you have learned to solve actual problems. Keeping you here any longer would only slow your progress." She explained.

"Oh" I sighed, feeling somewhat sad at the thought of not being under the watch of her bubbles any longer. Still, I did not disagree with her.

I had taken a giant sphinx by the scruff of its neck and had only been able to do so because of what I had learned from her. If we had not taken the trip to the familiar place, I would have never learned how to make a werelight. Her assignments had made me stronger, but I had only ever learned how to do new things with my aura when there had been an actual need for it.

Precept Seram evidently heard the sadness in my sigh. "Do not worry, Underwitch Ire. With as much promise as you have shown during your first phase, you should be excited. Most new moons do not progress quite so quickly or reach the weights that are quite as heavy as those that you have."

Her voice shrank to little more than a whisper as the bubble floated down from the ceiling and stopped right by my ear. "Do not tell the others that I have said this, but I have a hunch that with time, you may prove to be the strongest sorceress out of all of your sisters."

I shuddered at her whispers.

Hearing the others being called my sisters felt very strange.

She had asked me not to repeat her words to them, but my pink haired precept had nothing to worry about. I wouldn't tell them because telling them would mean that we had actually talked.

I did like that she thought I would be the strongest. I was already ahead of Tana before she had stayed behind on Silkcradle, and my last week of Implementation had gone so well, that I was almost certain she would never catch up to me again.

"When we were away," I whispered to the bubble, remembering something that Vanda had said during our trip. "Vanda said that this was her last time as a new moon, what does that mean?"

"Hmmm," Precept Seram hummed as her bubble floated back up towards the ceiling. "I could tell you, but what would you learn? Underwitch Vanda seems to be the one you should ask that question too."

I opened my mouth to speak, but could not find words. The thought of going and trying to start a conversation with any of the new moons made me feel jittery with nerves.

Precept Seram continued. "All of you will be working much more closely together in your next class. It would be best if you tried to get to know the others before then."

Living through the lies that Underwitch Ire were built from, I found small comfort in the fact that I did not need to lie to my teacher further.

"Can't you just tell me, please? I'm not very good at making friends." I said, counting the ones I had in my head. Anna and Arthur didn't count, so I did not need to count very high. Truly, it was only Pyreme and Reese, and I had barely spent any time with them.

Precept Seram laughed. "Neither are the other new moons. They have been trying to work up the courage to ask you to lunch every day since we have returned. They all are very curious about what you did with The Warden while they were meeting with the familiars."

"No," I answered a little too quickly. "I don't believe that, not one bit."

Tana had made them all believe that I was crazy, and to my knowledge, they still did. Plia seemed more willing to speak with me, but I was not convinced that she was not simply trying to avoid earning my Ire.

"I would not lie to you about such things, Underwitch Ire. On my name and power, I swear that they are gathered in the covery, waiting for you to make your way towards the dining hall." Precept Seram insisted, her voice remaining light and polite.

I put my back against the wall and slid down, wrapping my arms around my legs and making myself as small as I could.

"Well now I'm staying here. I wasn't hungry anyways." I said to the empty sound of my stomach groaning in protest.

Precept Seram kept laughing. "Oh look at you, I have never seen you blush this way. Be brave, Underwitch Ire. The warden said you befriended every familiar he introduced you to. The others are sure to be much less difficult to get along with."

"No," I said as I reached up to pull my jacket off the silver hook above me. If I could just cover my head with it, I could hide from my teacher, the other new moons, and everything else that made me feel uncomfortable. "Will you tell me when they leave?"

"I cannot do that." Precept Seram laughed.

My jacket came free.

The curtain of my place parted and dozens of my teacher's bubbles came swirling in like a lather.

"As your teacher, it is my responsibility to push you towards what you are capable of." Precept Seram called down to me.

One of her bubbles caught my jacket before it could reach me. Two more floated down and pressed against my hands. Just when I thought they would pop, they snapped round again and sealed around my wrists.

"Wait!" I begged.

"There is no time to wait. I have one last assignment for you before you leave today. If you do not go now, we will not have the chance." She laughed, ignoring my desperate pleading.

By my bubble clutched hands, she pulled me up from the ground and balanced me by placing one of her workings against my navel and another against the small of my back with even pressure.

"I-" I tried to threaten her.

Before I could even mention my fireworks, she had slipped my jacket over my arms, buttoned it, and fastened my cloak around my throat.

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She smiled and waved from where she floated in the center of the room with nothing but joy on her face as she pushed me out of my place. Through the door, into the hall, and past Alexei, I was carried by her power with the same amount of effort that it would have taken for me to carry Benny.

I was not alone in being moved.

Vanda, her hands caught just like mine were, came stumbling out of the covery against her will.

"Wait!" Mallory shouted as she appeared in the hall. It was not her hands that were covered in pastel blue, it was her boots, and she was dragged into the hall on her back by them.

Plia had it worse than the rest of us.

She had been picked up by the collar of her jacket and cloak. Precept Seram carried her through the air like a scolded kitten and placed her on the floor not a step in front of me.

"If your intention was to embarrass me," Plia said to the bubble that had carried her as it floated away. "You failed. I would prefer being carried wherever I go. Come back and do it again. I feel so heavy."

The little Underwitch lost her balance as she reached for the bubble, but I caught her before she could fall.

She really didn't weigh much at all. I was slightly surprised that she managed to keep her boots on the ground at all.

"I would never embarrass you intentionally, Underwitch Plia. All of you simply needed a push, and now you are together. There is no need for hesitation. Go, eat and talk, but do not be gone long. I still have you as my students for several more hours." Precept Seram's voice called down to us.

Each and every bubble she had strong-armed us with gathered in front of her door. They mashed together and shifted from many small ones to a single shape that was big enough to swallow any one of us whole.

Alexei leaned against the opposite wall, unaffected by what was happening right next to him.

Evidently, we did not move quick enough for Precept Seram to be satisfied.

"Another push then. Go." She said in a serious tone.

The bubble popped.

The thunder clap sound that followed was enough to send the other new moons flinching away down the hall with a peal of high pitched screams.

The flood of frothy bubbles that washed up the walls and reminded me far too much of the high tide that I had almost drowned in not very many days before.

I ran after the others, moving just fast enough that only the back of my black laced boots became slick and shiny.

Through quick glances back over my shoulder, I saw the lather swallow Alexei and rise over the paneled glass of the windows.

The high pitched sound that spilled from my mouth was not a scream like it had been with the other.

Mine was a laugh.

Fleeing from some great danger felt far more fun when the threat of death or injury was imaginary.

My teacher's bubbles did not stop at the end of the hall. They came spilling out into the ghostly light of the singing stairs like a wave of fluid diamonds.

I would have ran straight down the opposite hall if Mallory had not reached out and pulled me down the stairs by my wrist.

"Why are you laughing?" Plia demanded as we took the stairs two at a time.

Seram's bubbles still wetting the back of my heels, filling up the staircase almost faster than we could run from them.

"Why are you screaming? It's just bubbles. Are you scared of getting clean?" I laughed aloud without slowing down.

We reached the bottom of the stairs and the final notes of an erratic rendition of Caerulus's lullaby.

"She's right, why are we running?" Mallory asked as she slowed. The others followed her lead, but I stayed on the last step.

"Watch. She was just trying to scare us." I smiled as I spread my arms and let the shining flood wash over me.

They were just bubbles.

There were a near infinite amount of them however, and there was only one of me.

I was not struck with some great force or carried away by an unstoppable current.

I did have to reset my feet, and that small opening was enough for my teacher's slick working to work its way under my shoes. When the heel of my black laced boots retouched the icy blue stair beneath them, I slipped.

When the rest of me hit the rest of the stairs, I kept slipping.

I crashed into Mallory first, moving with as much uncontrollable speed as a bar of dropped soap in the shower.

Plia was the next to fall victim to my sudsy slide. She landed roughly on top of Mallory and I, every boney point of her skinny body digging into me like knives.

Vanda tried to back away from the tangled mess that we had become, but the bubbles had already wet the floor underneath her.

She fell all on her own, without needing me to help her.

We slid to a stop halfway to the dining hall, and a long moment passed where we were silent in the chorus of soft popping beneath us.

"You are crazy," Mallory grunted as she tried to roll onto her side. She did it, but her momentum turned her all the way into her stomach, and her leg smacked into Plia's side. "Why would you stop like that?"

Plia spoke before I could answer. "She means crazy in a fun way. Not in a we are scared of you way."

I could not meet her eyes because I did not know exactly where her head was in the leathery mess of moons and bubble, but she did not sound like she was lying.

"Precept Seram is so prim and proper and polite, I think it's an act so no one remembers she can do things like this." Mallory grunted as she pushed herself up to her hands and knees.

One of Plia's elbows dug further into my ribs and I snapped my body away from the pointed pressure. Mallory's arms and legs slid out from under her and she was brought down to her stomach once again.

Vanda laughed. "This is nothing. She just wanted us to talk. My first year, there were these two moons, Win and Via, that fought all the time. She trapped them in a bubble and only let them out when they agreed to stop fighting. It took six days."

Precept Seram's spoke and it sounded so close that she might as well have been caught in our tangle. "It was five and a half, not six, Underwitch Vanda. And I am happy to say that the two of them run a successful acquisitions business in The City Above and were married this past spring."

All around us, the bubbles began to recede and not a moment later, they had begun their ascent of the singing stairs without leaving a single trace that they had been there at all.

"Hurry back, moons. Our time is short and would be much shorter if I had left you all alone." Precept Seram said through her working.

"Yes, Precept Seram." We all agreed.

"Spotless." She said in her cheery tone as the bubbles continued back up the stairs.

Mallory finally managed to sit up, and she wiped her mouth on the back of her sleeve. "It got in my mouth. Why is it sweet? Ugh."

I leaned up onto my hands. There were other moons in the hall, but none of them seemed bothered by what had just happened. Still, their presence and much more brought embarrassed heat to my face.

"I'm sorry. This was my fault. Precept Seram told me that I should come to lunch with you, that there were questions you wanted to ask, but I was being shy. If I had just come-" I started to apologize.

Plia waved me off. "Does anybody else think it's creepy that she listens to everything we say?"

Mallory buried her head in her hands. "I hope not. The two of you know how I get at night."

"We could have just as easily come to you, it's nobody's fault, but we do want to know about how you came to the meeting ground riding that big bear like a horse." Vanda said, meeting my eyes and giving me a small smile.

Mallory spat and held up a finger. "No. I have been wondering about something for way longer than that."

She brushed her short hair back from her face and crawled very close to me. "I wanna know what you had to do to get someone like Master Alexei to follow you around. Have you charmed him? Is he your knight? Could I borrow him for a night?"

"I. . ." I tried to speak.

First I get them swept away by a flood of bubbles, and not a moment later, I was going to be forced to lie to them.

If I could have wriggled my arms and legs and disappeared like the familiar Deebee could, I would have.

I couldn't, but fortunately for me, Sam appeared and proved to be a wonderful distraction.

Scampering straight into the middle of the loose circle of moons, he hopped towards me with his legs straight and his back arched.

"My Lady! There is trouble afoot. I shall not leave your side until I am certain that you are no longer in danger." He announced, his voice much higher pitched than usual.

For a moment, I thought Othersam had returned. It seemed like the playful, mischievous, side of my familiar that I had accidentally let loose had come to play.

But then I met his eyes, and saw that they were the same cold blue that had been staring at me in constant disappointment for as long as I had known the big blue cat.

His voice and movement were completely silly, but his eyes told me the truth.

I was in danger.

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