"Everyone stand!" Elsa's booming voice called across the hall. All the Novices stood respectfully and bowed their heads. Tarrin endured a short little speech from Elsa, where she invoked the blessing of some Goddess on the meal, but Tarrin didn't listen to her. He was more interested in hearing her voice stop than he was listening to her speak. When the Novices began to take their seats, he realized that Elsa had stopped talking. He sat down with Dar, and when he saw several people reach for platters of beef, or pork, or a bowl of potatos, he knew that it was time to eat.

He graciously let everyone else take what they wanted off the platter he was eyeing, then he reached out and took the entire platter. "Anyone else want any of this?" he asked pointedly, holding it out. When nobody answered, he pushed his own plate away and set the platter in its place. He looked at the small-handled fork by the plate with a bit of annoyance, and instead used the large serving fork that was on the platter. It had a handle large enough for him to use. The knife too was too small, but the claw on the index finger of his free hand was more than capable of being a substitute for a knife. The razor-sharp tip of his claw neatly sliced up the meat to his liking, then he used the serving fork to get it to his mouth. Someone poured fresh, chilled milk into a pewter mug that was beside him, and then that person moved down to do the same with Dar's mug. He was more interested in the food, however, and he managed to finish off the entire platter of roasted ham, which had enough ham on it to feed five. Dar gave him a rather wild look as he pushed the platter away and took a drink of milk. "Do you always eat that much?" he asked.

"Not always, but I'd been moving without eating much before I got here," he replied. "I'm just catching up on missed meals."

"I can understand that," he said, going back to his own meal.

Tarrin could almost feel the energy of the meal surge into him as he sat there drinking his milk and waiting for Dar to finish. Now that his body had more raw material to work with, he was very certain that he'd not look even half so thin by dinnertime. He was looking forward to the studies with Sevren; he was curious just what his body was capable of doing. This ability to restore lost body tissue was most interesting. But then again, he felt that he should have known it would do that. Something in the back of his mind, he thought it was the Cat, told him that he could grow back missing limbs, except for his head, and even regrow lost teeth and claws. It was part of the regenerative capabilities inherent with his kind.

And, he realized, it was the reason they didn't age. The regeneration healed them of the effects of time, repairing any damage brought on by the marching of the seasons. That was only logical, he realized calmly as he sat there. The effects of time were not natural; well, they were natural, but they were not the natural state of his body, and that was how his regenerative ability maintained him. An older him did not fit into his body's imprint of itself, and so it was corrected by regenerative healing.

Tarrin was only seventeen. He hadn't lived long enough to be able to appreciate the profound concept of living until someone killed him, maybe for thousands of years, but he was wise enough to know that he wasn't old enough. It was something that he would have to think about in the time to come, something to ponder.

After the meal, Dar took Tarrin around the Tower. They went to the Library, the scribing chamber, out on the grounds, to the huge garden behind the Tower, then they walked along the highly polished black tiles of what was known as the Heart of the Goddess, a massive open space in the exact center of the Tower that ran from the base right up to the top. While they walked, they talked. Dar was an earnest young man with high goals and ideals, but they didn't include what his family wanted from him. He was an accomplished artist, and he wanted to pursue that, while his family thought it was frivilous. He also wanted to learn. He was wildly curious about the world, and he almost didn't want to leave the Tower, to leave the vast Library, which was one of the largest and most complete in the world. They strolled along the black tiles around the edge, near the wall, as Dar confided certain things to Tarrin that he knew the young man had not told other people. Dar and Tarrin seemed to just connect, and he realized that he already considered the young Arkisian a close friend. The Cat in him liked Dar just as much as the human did. In the base of the floor, in a huge design, was the shaeram, the geometric star-in a star-in a circle design that was the symbol of the order. It was done much differently than the medallions he'd seen, and that pointed some things out to him. The medallions were a four-pointed star with concave sides inside a six-pointed star. This symbol resembled that six pointed star, but instead of a star it was six individual triangles laid out corner to corner, third point out, all contained within the circle. Each triangle was a different color. They were red, blue, a shade of purple like violets, orange, yellow, and a lighter shade of purple that was obviously a different color. The circle encircling them was green, and the concave four-pointed star within was white. The design had to be about fifty paces across, taking up about three quarters of the floor.

Tarrin felt…strange. There was something in this vast chamber, but he couldn't quite put his claw on it. It hovered right on the edge of his consciousness, almost like something that rested just at the edge of his vision, a sound that was so faint that he couldn't tell if it was real, the phantom of a scent in his nose. "Do you feel that?" he asked Dar quietly, almost reverently.

"Sometimes I do," he replied. "There's something in this place, but the Sorcerers won't tell me what it is. I think it has something to do with magic. Not many people come in here, so I like to come in here alot and think."

Tarrin advanced into the huge open area, still trying to understand the extremely vague sensation he was feeling. His pads made no noise on the black tiles as they crossed the boundary and set foot on the green of the surrounding circle of the symbol. Tarrin felt that unusual sensation more strongly as he advanced into the middle of the huge room. He looked up into the soaring void that rose up over them, an enclosed area that went up so high that he could just barely make out the ceiling so far above. Tarrin put a paw out in front of him, because he could almost see a something coalescing in front of him. As he moved closer, it seemed to be more distinct.

When his paw crossed the invisible barrier above where the green circle ended and the red triangle began, something strange happened. A faint, ghostly radiance appeared around Tarrin's thick fingers, and it swirled and eddied like water between and over them. At the touch of that visible light, Tarrin's fingers tingled angrily, pins and needles that were almost painful, yet seemed to go through his fingers as well as around.

"Amazing!" Dar murmured, standing beside him. "It never did that to me."

Tarrin put his entire paw in, feeling the tingles, watching the light ghost up and around his paw. It was almost like water; whatever it was was definitely flowing, from the floor up towards the ceiling so high above. "Put your hand in," Tarrin told him in a wondrous voice. "Don't just put it in, feel what's there."

He did so, closing his eyes. After a moment, while Tarrin put his other paw in and played with the swirling, smoky radiance, Dar's eyes snapped open. "I feel…tingles," he said. He put his other hand out, and then tendrils of ghostly smoke-light started wisping out from under Dar's hands. "Incredible!" he whispered as it became stronger. "I can feel it!"