VETTA LOOKED at the new paperwork she had been given with a sigh. More information to get to grips with. Then she realised her name was not upon it anywhere. If by chance in the coast breeze she might drop it like she did her hat no one would know it belonged to her but she also realised she had no means of writing her name. Thus she approached a small knot of girls standing by a waiting vehicle and summoned the courage to speak to one of them, a tall girl with dark straight hair partly braided.
'Please, I am sorry, do you have something available I might write with?' and she held up a sheet meaningfully. The girl turned, slightly startled, for she had been lost in her own thoughts. Without comment she dipped into her small shoulder bag that glittered a little in the sunshine.
'Here you are,' and the girl offered her a pencil from a bundle in her outstretched hand.
'You are very kind,' Vetta said. 'You have pencils in three different colours. That is amazing,' and she chose the lemon-coloured one.
'Well, I suppose I am a little extravagant,' the girl replied with an amused smile.
'Did you see that red-haired girl that came right up to me?' Vetta then said, feeling the need in all this newness to make conversation. 'She came up really close and I was nearly frightened. Yet she was only being helpful, asking if I knew where I was supposed to go. I confirmed I did and she went away immediately to confront others. She seemed nice, but she did bustle about rather energetically.'
'Full of vitamins that one,' came a slightly casual answer.
'Vitamins are essential for good health which is one of the five wellsprings of joy,' Vetta declared with happy conviction.
This curious answer made the girl look with more considered scrutiny at the newcomer.
'So what was it that brought you all the way here from, uh?' and she made a questioning face.
'Poldorama,' came the eager response. Vetta fired up with the thrill of a storyteller. 'It was so interesting how it happened,' she said, waving the lemon-coloured pencil about in an uncharacteristic show of animation. 'My father looked at me one day and said, 'dear Vettel Petal' - he calls me that even though he knows my name is Vetta and not Vettel, so he can rhyme it with petal.'
'Thought it might be something like that.'
'Oh yes, he's so creative sometimes. 'Well, Vettal Petal,' he said, 'under that waxy surface,' meaning my skin, 'you're as pale as a Subba cheese' - that's a very pale cheese, one of the forty two varieties he makes. 'Well,' he said, 'mother and I got to thinking you need a bit of adventure in your life to put colour in those waxy cheeks of yours, so we're selling off a quarter of our stock and sending you right across the world to Frangea to learn directly from that Miss Plazenby everybody's talking about.' There! Don't you think that was generous of him?'
'A quarter of his stock? You mean he beggared himself to send you here? That's certainly generous.'
'Generosity is one of the five wellsprings of joy,' the girl said proudly and the other laughed.
Before she could find out any more from this helpful girl with the braid in her hair a shout went up and everyone, first years and veterans of the school, were commanded to climb aboard the various waiting vehicles for the start of the journey.
A surge of excitement filled Vetta just then as she climbed the steps and sought a seat among girls who were yet unknown to her but whom she would share friendship with over the coming months, each and every one of them.
After all, as she well knew, friendship was also one of the five wellsprings of joy.