Imagine you lost a terrible game with a bitter rival or four.  And imagine you were crushed for it, down to a speck of yourself with neither breath nor wit, your name all but forgotten.  And imagine how you would ache—you, a blinded husk too tight in your gaol to Speak a word.  What would you risk for regaining your voice?  Your self?  Weakness, frailty, blight, and all the poxes common to man?  You might seep, for the chance to someday flow.  Now imagine your wrath to find you'd escaped only into a new binding by a relative child.  Imagine how you would seethe.

  Rosemary O'Rourke is an Irish Catholic girl of just twenty years, and her life has just become difficult.  She won't be long for the convent when the Bishop comes by to see what the trouble is, and then who will she be?  Not an avowed novice anymore, in any case.  For now though, she generally goes about in the black robe of her station, a little white wimple hiding most of her hair.  A bit always manages to spring free though, and bright coppery red stands out against that background.  She moves fluidly, underneath, with a precise grace that bulky clothes do not disguise, and her smile is broad enough for theater.  Sometimes it even reaches her eyes.