Disclaimer: I do not own Circle or Magic. Tamora Pierce does. I borrowed Faerena from Kuro-neko16 (a very good friends of mine) but the rest or the character's you don't recognize are my own.

Daja Kisubo sat in the horse drawn carriage, looking down at the letter from her sister saati Sandrilene fa Toren with a small globe of light illuminating the page in front of her. She read the letter for what seemed the umpteenth time, listening to the light snores of her two students Niamara and Jorality Bancanor and the quiet grumbles of her own teacher Frostpine as he steered the stubborn horse down the trail.

Dearest Daja,

I am so glad you are coming home. While It's not quite lonely here, I miss my sister saati quite a bit. You know how I told you about how we added onto Discipline? Well there is a large reason for that: We have six new students here. One is Larks younger sister (believe it or not) Lamari Serreven, you'd like her a lot. She has magic in writing/poetry and her work is beautiful (Tris'd like her a lot too, don't you think?

Then there's my own Brother. I'm SO happy, I thought I lost him along with my parents in the smallpox epidemic, but I guess his own nursemaid took him somewhere else. Anyway his name's Carter and he's a telekinetic, which is quite useful at the table (for the boys at least they are quite lazy, except maybe for Rayne, but I'm rambling again). You can easily see that we are siblings. Oh gods I'm so happy, and I can't wait for you to meet him.

Then there's Kurelliss Latot, she is quite feisty but she is so sweet. I'm pretty sure you will like her as well. She has the power of music. Her power is amazing. She can alter the sounds of every instrument and many of them at one time. Like this past spring equinox, at the party, she decided to turn up the tempo. It was a lot of fun, there was none of the traditional dances, and because no one could do them fast enough. I think Briar would enjoy it.

Then there's Turret Hakor whose power resides in shape-shifting and in waking me up at five o'clock every morning. Kurelliss always gives him a piece of her mind when she hears about it (which she always does), but he never quite stops. In which case I'm always exhausted which is never a good thing because I'm in the process of teaching two students and it doesn't help when you're yawning every five seconds in the middle of their meditation. (Daja chuckled softly at this. Turret sounded like quite the character.)

Vereya Moriat is one of the sweetest girls I've ever met (ONE of them- you are another). Her power resides in the healing of animals. Which also enables her to talk to them, which you have to admit, is pretty neat. Unfortunately she is quite infatuated with Rayne Sheas, who picks up on it considering he's an empath. He tends to stay in the (newly added) tower, because he doesn't have such great control over it. So he randomly get's visions of him kissing himself at mealtimes, which sometimes drives him crazy. But considering that he sit's next to Vereya and she gets these feelings whenever she's near him, it get's a little tense.

Then there's me. I've been spending quite a bit of time out in the garden, so my hair is much lighter than it was the last time you saw me. Kurelliss is convinced my hair is borderline blonde now, but you can never really trust her with colors considering she thinks her hair is auburn when it's plainly a fiery red, but it looks good on her. And I also got taller, of which I'm really happy about.

Anyway, my newest student Talia fa Pamone want's to go for a walk now, but I don't trust he alone just yet, she's very small quite like I was but she's also very shy, and she's new here. And plus I don't want her to get lost (remember the time Briar got us lost because he was reading the map upside down?) But I hope to see you very soon, so you can meet all the nice people I've gotten to know while you were away.

Love, Always, your sister saati

Sandrilene fa Toren

Daja Smiled looking over the second paragraph. She was so happy for Sandry. It must be a relief to know that someone from your family was still with you even after six years of not knowing, the having them show up one day on your doorstep. Now Daja folded the letter up, looking forward to having her own family reunited once again.

"Move faster stupid horse." Frostpine's voice rose ever so slightly causing Daja to chuckle again. "When are you going to leave the poor beast alone Frostpine? It's had a rough day." Daja crawled toward the brawny dark skinned man who was shifting his hold on the reins impatiently. "And stop moving your hands so much. Do you really want the horse to get loose?" Frostpine sighed. "Your right. I just want to get back to Winding Circle." He settled his grip on the reins calming the nervous horse. "We'll be there tomarrow." It wasn't a question, but a statement.

"I know, but I want to have as much time as possible to clean up the mees Kirel most likely made of my forge." Daja laughed loudly, then quickly cut it off when she heard Jory stirring restlessly. "I'm sure it's a pigsty, but give the beast a rest. And yourself too. If we're going to be cleaning we want to have lots of energy." She moved back to her sleeping space, leaving Frostpine to tether the horse and do the same.

She feel asleep thinking of her family.