This is my first fic and I'm not a good writer so be gentle.

Disclaimer: it all belongs to Tamora Pierce.

September 18, 2008 AN- Have begun to revise the chapters that have already been completed before continuing. Nothing in the actual storyline will change, just correcting grammatical errors and a few lines here and there to make it flow better, shouldn't take too long and then I will begin updating again.


Daine Sarrasri stared out the window of one of the many classrooms at the university of L.A. only to see nothing but fog and rain. She gave a depressed sigh and was startled out of her daze by the professors' voice.

"Is my class perhaps boring you miss Sarrasri?" questioned professor Salmalin.

"No not at all I was just, um, thinking"

"Well lets have you thinking more on the lesson and less on the matter of whether you will have a chance to go sailing today," replied the professor.

He always seems to think I'm one of the rich kids who was able to come to this school because of a big fat check my mother wrote, which isn't true at all, considering my mother has been dead for years, Daine thought to herself before again being snatched out of her daze by her professors voice

"Next week I would like to have a 5 page essay on the mating habits of bats and their hunting patterns and what effect these have on the environment, see you all next class" as Daine packed her things and made to leave the room professor Salmalin called her over

"I need to talk to you," he says in a very serious voice "You need to pay more attention in class. Animal behavior is your major and I would hate to have to fail you. Your grades have been slipping lately and you seem to be rather distant I suggest you have your parents hire you a tutor or something, skip a few of your fancy yacht parties and maybe that way you'll have time to study. Are we clear?"

"Yes professor Salmalin" She replied looking at the ground instead of at him.

"Okay see you next class" He had already turned his attention from her to some papers on his desk. Daine left the classroom in a dark mood, if they had bothered to check her school records they would know her mother died when she was twelve and that she hardly lived in luxury. The others at the university, her "friends", though she tried to avoid them whenever possible, all lived in their mansions and million dollar apartments which was considered the norm at the school.

It wasn't technically the university of L.A. but that's what they called it, it was really possibly the finest school in the area, but it was private, set up by rich people a hundred years ago or something like that. Daine only got in on a scholarship. She reached her apartment building, a crumbling leaky building right in the worst part of L.A. the only thing she could afford with her two jobs.

As she got in her apartment Daine immediately shed the clothes she wore to school and put them with the other clothes that could be respectively worn outside in the actual world and put on some pajama bottoms and a spaghetti strap top. Her apartment was very small, complete with shoddy plaster and leaky pipes had old lumpy single bed, a table, chair, lamp, fridge, microwave, bedside table and an old loveseat, other than that and the obvious bathroom fixtures it was pretty bare. She sat down at her desk with her microwaveable dinner and started to ponder what to put in her essay.