good dreams?

He knocked tentatively on the door of the hostelroom- it was really just a closet, but that was all they could afford for a hundred gaea. "Penny? Miss Penny?"

The door opened a crack, and a blue eye stared out. "Oh! Callum!" The door opened the rest of the way. He could see the cracked and peeling white paint on the walls behind her, and the tiny scrap of space between the bed and the wall. "Come in!"

He rubbed the back of his neck, nervous, and stepped into the tiny room. There was nowhere to sit but on the bed. "I brought you a capella," he said, holding out the palm sized swirl of charmstone. "I thought it might- you might- well, your hair. The villagers are starting to talk, about how pale you are and, well. Corwin says I should let you work the charm on your own."

"It's lovely." She took the capella and turned it over in her hands. It was a fine one, pale and luminous, and carved with a perfect snailshell spiral. "You didn't need to get this for me just so I could fix my hair- a few gaea would have done just fine."

He shrugged, uncomfortable. "I was just doing some charmwork over in the square- someone was generous, that's all." It had taken him hours to earn enough gaea to trade for the capella, but she didn't know that. "Miss Penny, could I- could I watch you do it? I haven't learned any changing charms yet-"

"Of course!" She smiled brightly, and the capella brightened in response, the charmstone reacting to her power. Penny sat beside Callum on the bed and closed her eyes. The colors of her hair shifted, melting away- from brown to black to white, then to red and all the colors of the rainbow. The shifting stopped at a deep violet, and the capella flickered.

Penny opened her eyes, and the purple melted away, leaving a completely unremarkable brown in its wake. The capella flickered again, and its light dimmed until it looked like a pretty bit of soapstone.

There was nothing special about her hair now, but Callum still wanted to touch it.