"Of course I offered to pay for the dress," Meresinth said, squirming impatiently in her seat, poking some pasta with a wooden fork. Esper was unimpressed.

"You are not paying for it may I remind you," she said. "It is the people of Arbornica, who saved and sacrificed to send you here, even if under a misapprehension. Will they really want this Meresinth Woodbine back in five years?"

"I doubt it,"came a barely audible response.

The girls were sat at a window table in the Squeaky Tomato down in Cherryball Flats during lunch, discussing the Arbornica girl's latest bouts of mischief. Since the dress-cutting incident she had set fire to a bench accidentally when toying with some nail varnish, trying to dry rude scribbles with a magnifying glass in the fierce Frangea sun. She had locked everyone out of the library and herself inside during a study evening, placing the key in a book and genuinely forgetting which book it was. Several papers of pupils ended up blank one time when she had substituted normal paper for the renewable type so that on one memorable occasion a girl was reading and correcting an essay on the very bench that was lately burnt, when the words she wrote disappeared before her very eyes. The wail of despair was something to hear, Meresinth said in her defence.

"If I recall rightly, you had your own doubts on being here," Esper reminded the girl. "You feared this place would change you so much your own family would reject you. Though I cannot for a moment believe that, still can such a fear justify the crazy antics you have perpetrated since we last spoke about this?"

"How much do you charge, by the hour?" Meresinth said, flicking a gooey pasta morsel onto the floor and sniggering when a waitress slipped upon it but managed to right herself before her loaded tray became a cascade of mixed food and drink.

"I am certainly thinking perhaps some professional advice might be in order," Esper quickly responded. "Or at least some authority closer by."

"Authority?"

"Miss Plazenby might tender useful advice."

"You'll turn me in?" Meresinth's usually merry face darkened at this prospect. Esper picked up a ketchup ball and squeezed it on her cheese fritters. It spluttered and gasped and wheezed in grand style before giving up the ghost. The girl signalled to the dancing waitress for a replacement.

"No," she said, listening to the satisfying squeak that gave the eatery its name as she coated her fritters with sauce. "I think there's more to your story than you've let on so far." As she crunched through her meal she stared at the girl opposite, waiting for a response.

Meresinth stared out of the window, watching passersby.

"Ooh, look at the big guy with the tiny dog," she said, sparking up with laughter a moment. Esper continued to munch away contentedly. The other girl sighed.

"It's complicated," she eventually said.

"What is?"

"Life. Life before Mount Syzywyg, before Frangea. Before even the Squeaky Tomato."

"You got noticed in Arbornica, for the clever and talented girl everyone here can see you are. The villagers gathered together and agreed to put up the funds necessary to send this wonder child to a distant land for the betterment of Arbornica. It's a mighty burden, a difficult prospect, but all you need do is your best. From what I can see, your best is pretty good no matter where you might be from. Think of all those funny phrases you invented that are still filtering through the school corridors. Every time I hear one I laugh."

"Perhaps it wasn't cleverness that got me here," Meresinth confessed. "Perhaps it was survival, the need to survive."

"What kind of place is Arbornica for you to say that?"

Esper took out her tablet and began thumbing through a Winkel World gazetteer.

"A place of hills and valleys, rivers and trackways," Meresinth said, anticipating her friend's research. "But mostly its trees, great forests that stretch for hundreds of miles with roads that seem like endless tunnels in the twilight of year round foliage."

"Sounds like Evernight," the other girl said, referring to another land renowned for its extensive forests. Yet she still looked at her tablet and read snippets of data on the land that gave birth to Meresinth Woodbine. "No I mean the people. The communities, settlements, the clearing where you grew up."

"Oh, those."

"It says here the population of Arbornica is small, scattered over great distances. Some centres have technology of sorts but little online communication. Aw, how sweet. Some remote districts talk to each other by means of hollow logs thumped by hammers. Barking, it's called."

"I know that," Meresinth growled, then slurped her drink. "Soon be time for getting back," she added, glancing at the clock over the door. It was of course a big round tomato with leaves for hands.

"Subsistence farming," Esper then said. "Working a poor soil between the trees, exploiting every inch of a natural glade to feed the community. Merry, that sounds harsh. Is that what you meant by survival? Listen, in some districts it says here winters can be terrible and people die, especially the old. Why not cut the trees down, clear the land, grow more food? Oh," and she looked at some further information on her tablet. "I see why."

"That's right," Meresinth said. "They're sacred. We live among the trees at their forbearance. They are not an inconvenience to us. They are a blessing, bearing fruit when we need it most. Providing shelter for those of us hardy enough to get through the snowy season. We accept not everyone will make it as the world turns and the year passes, and we honour those who departed with spring festivals of peculiar intensity, given what nature allows us."

"I'm sorry," Esper said. "All the more reason surely you should respect the additional sacrifices your community have made to bless one of their own with a better life."

"It certainly is better for me here than there," the girl said with a grim laugh. "I left behind a lot of young friends, girls and boys my age, who will face this coming winter while I bask in the sun of Frangea."

"It's what they wanted for you, surely?"

"Yes they did." Another grim laugh, louder this time. "I didn't mind the harshness of the life there. I'd happily go back if I could. Only I can't, even if I got expelled from here."

"Why not?"

"Because of the Wicked Witch of Arbornica."