You can picture the scene. A library rises like a sandstone sanctuary out of the late winter slush. Its parking lot resembles murky pavement soup, as do the parking lots of all the other buildings on the street. A few old candy coloured town houses at the corner of the residential area cast a friendly glow into the rather dismal scene. In the distance a slice of Lake Michigan can be seen, cold and hard as iron. The scenery was capped by a hat of increasingly dark clouds. The invisible late afternoon sun was beginning to wane when the first of them arrived, and her name was Rhyan.

The girl didn't bother to pick her way around the slush. Her thick boots that she always wore on her paper route kept her feet quite dry. A flashy red newspaper bag hung empty from her shoulder. Her entire body was bundled up in heat preserving winter clothes . Needless to say she swished loudly. The clothes hid a pretty figure that she hardly ever showed outside of here house. She wore a pair of fluffy mittens and a matching hat, both red. The hat hid brown hair, cropped short.

She had finished her paper route slightly earlier than expected, and decided to check for a book she was waiting on. She hoped she would get home before the storm hit, not that it would bother her much. The tiny patch of nose and eyes visible was the only uncovered part of her body. She clomped up the library steps and entered, swishing loudly.

The door had barely closed when the next one of them arrived. A dark SUV pulled into the parking lot, sending half melted snow flying everywhere. It was rather difficult to tell with the winter grime clinging to it, but the vehicle was almost brand new. The door opened narrowly and a tall read haired girl slipped down into a pile of slush her eyes had unfortunately missed. Her clothes were not nearly as well equipped for the weather as Rhyan's had been, and she kicked her feet to shake of the heavy snow, her socks already wet. She was dressed nicely, lady like it would seem. It helped her to disappear in a crowd, and she liked it that way. In fact, the only extraordinary thing on her was her long straight red hair which reached down to the middle of her back. One looking at her from the outside would say she looked like a rich, snooty, upper-class model. That was part of the reason for her social isolation form almost all of her peers. The other part happened to be that her father was one of the head executives of one of the nations largest software companies. Being rich can put a person on a very icy pedestal from which it is most difficult to descend, especially if you are beautiful as well.

She abandoned her vain attempt to keep her socks dry and locked her car (the normal way, she never liked the beeping noise her car made when she used the remote), shut the door, and proceeded on into the library. She was searching for a book about horse care, as here horses were her whole life, and another book more secret that she doubted she would ever have the courage to check out. It mattered little to her that she was a "Steiner," as her father would say. Nicole was terribly shy. As she walked into the library her eyes barely left the ground. Had they, however, she would have noticed the clouds looming lower and thicker.

The wind was picking up as the third member of the unknowing party arrived, and though she made no noise, she was the loudest thing on the street.

Mackenzie Pantoufle came striding confidently up the sidewalk. She would have turned heads had there been any. She had a tendency to cast a delightful exuberance on any scene, like a child. Her appearance didn't make her any less eye attracting either. She had a round happy face, granted to her by her mother of almost direct Chinese lineage, and startlingly nonChinese green eyes adorned her face. Tendrils of her straight black hair that had pulled themselves free from her bun fell jovially around her face, as though delighted with their freedom. She was not quite thin, which made her seem infinitely more friendly. And as if all that weren't enough, she also wore a scarf and mittens of the brightest yellow imaginable.

Mackenzie was like many of the people who stick out in a crowd. She was friendly and talkative, yet forever searching for something she couldn't name. It was this searching feeling that she never could quite shake that led Mackenzie to the library that evening. Buddhism hadn't quite fit with her, and Hinduism was way off the mark, but she had an inkling of something that might strike a chord with her, and tonight she was going to have a look.