I opened my eyes and rolled over. Judging by the light coming in through the window, I guessed it was past noon and going on 3 o'clock.

How long have I been asleep?

"About five hours."

I rubbed my eyes and sat up. "Where's Frank?"

"Gone, remember this morning?"

I sighed and fell back into bed. "I had been kinda wishing it was all just a dream."

"You'll get over it, Kate, don't worry..."

I didn't really have an answer to that. I miss him already.

I felt Tellka sigh. "Kate, believe me, you'll be okay. Give it a few days and you'll be back to normal. Now get up, we have some planning to do."

"Planning for what?" I asked as I sat up.

"What you're going to do with yourself."

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, Kate, you've got days and days worth of freetime ahead of you. What are you going to do with it?"

"Well...." I thought about that for a moment. I wasn't back home, where I would probably be busy helping out my mother with some of the things around the house, so I actually did have a lot of free time. And I already knew that there wasn't much to do around Windia, not that I had found anyway. "And I'm not going back to the Colluseum anytime soon..."

"You don't have to. I was thinking of an alternative for you. Something new, different." Tellka appeared beside my dresser. She was looking down at the two bags of zenny and the picture of Frank next to them. She flicked her hand at the first bag and looked up at me.

"What do you really want to do?"

I shrugged. "I don't know..."

Tellka sighed. "I mean, you basically have enough money to do whatever you want, for a little while atleast."

I looked at Tellka for a moment. "Are you going to go back into fighting?"

"Did I ever quit?" Tellka raised her eyebrow at me. I shook my head.

"I guess not."

Tellka nodded. "You know, Kate, we need to find something for you..." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "How would you like the chance to learn?"

"Huh?" I blinked.

"You know," she shrugged. "Get an education, learn about math and history, like the things I know about."

"I could learn stuff like like what you know?"

Tellka nodded. "Only a lot more, and a lot easier then I learned it." This time there was a slight grin on her face. "I mean, you could even learn things I probably don't know about."

"Well..." I gave her an odd look. "Like what?"

Tellka shrugged. "You could learn to read."

"And write?" My ears perked up. Tellka nodded. I thought it sounded like a pretty good idea. I had always wondered what it would be like to be able to read and write. I already could a little bit, but not much. Mom didn't know anything about it, and Dad taught me just a little bit, but I thought it would be pretty neat if I could learn a lot of it myself.

"That'd be great!"

Tellka's grinned widened. "Right, I'll go talk to Carrie about this." And with that she left the room.

I jumped up and hurried downstairs to hear what was about to be said.

*****************************************************************

"I'M WHAT?" I felt a lump rise in my throat and tired to swallow it back down.

"School! What a grand idea! How come I never thought of that before?" Carrie smiled widely. Apparently she was oblivious to my obvious signs of panic.

"School? What? I ... wait a minute. Whoa... no, no, wait a minute." I shook my head and put my arms up in defense. My tail twitched wildly as I took a shaky step back. "There is no way you're going to..." I tried to back out of the kitchen, but Tellka was behind me already. She cut off my only means of escape. The feeling of helplessness crept its way into my mind. My ears dropped in defeat as I slowly gave in to their idea. "Okay," I muttered. "Okay... now what?"

Carrie turned to me, a smile still plastered on her face. "You're going to love this, Kate! You get to meet new people, and have new experiences, and..." I sat down as she began to ramble off every single fact about public school out there. Lunch, bells, classes, periods, lockers... "Tellka..." I grumbled quietly, "you annoying little..." I sighed. "Remind me never to take advice from you again, okay?"

Tellka's grin was her only reply.

e-mail author, talonr@hotmail.com