Meri Greenleaf

There was something about dance mixed with the trailing light of their daggers that caused Dray to lose all track of time and fall into a meditative state of tranquility. They let their fear, worry, and irritation fall away as they focused on the whirling motion of their long skirt and their lit blades.

Dray strode over and shoved on the door to no more avail than Adair's effort. "Solei Celeste, what did you make?"

Sol all but whimpered. Use of his full name had that effect. "A mistake?"

- excerpt from "Is This Closet Mine or Yours?"

Etri reached out to grab them as they ran past, catching Adair’s shoulder and Blythe’s wrist. Between the span of one breath and another, they were in the place outside of time that Etri considered a secondary, if lonely, home.

Blythe's heart pounded against her rib cage at the sound of a voice where no one had been. At least she had an answer to her earlier question: his voice was nothing like his twin's. It was soft and almost lyrical- whatever his accent was, she couldn't place it, and had never heard anything like it.

Blythe could only assume that if Adair was holding a paintbrush, the jar in his other hand must contain paint or ink. Then again, it was Adair. It could just as likely be grape jam. And to think, she'd finally got herself unsticky from Sol's glue fiasco this morning. With some trepidation, she held out her hand.

The crisp snow crunched under Etri's feet in a sickening way reminiscent of the rough gravel floor of the Sanctuary's acolyte quarter. His skin burned every time he sunk into a knee-high drift, the pain a constant reminder of the flames that waited for him should they be caught.

"I'm a Protectorate. What little I have in me of Artisan isn't even worth talking about." Wysta already knew this and Blythe was getting fed up with the insistence that she was something she wasn't.

It was pretty, really, the way the molten glass exploded across the room. In places it dripped, in places it pinged. A droplet hit Blythe's hand and she brushed it off before it could harden, then brushed a few more off her shirt as it was smoldering. The glassmaker gasped and snatched her hands away before she could clear off the rest.