The Two Women Getting Along? Or not...

The sun had already tucked itself in for the night, leaving the sky draped in a cozy blanket of twilight, when Seraphine decided it was the perfect time to bestow yet another Ethos lesson upon Clara.

The garden, vast and serene, bore witness to their training—or, rather, to Clara's increasingly creative methods of nearly toppling over.

Seraphine moved with the grace of a swan on a still lake. Clara, on the other hand, was more like a particularly determined duckling attempting to mimic her moves with a 50/50 chance of success or spectacular failure.

From the sidelines, Calix and Mariella observed with the careful attentiveness of spectators at a high-stakes comedy act.

It wasn't that they doubted Seraphine's ability to teach. Oh, she was plenty skilled, but Mariella was firmly convinced that if left alone, Clara might either break a bone, break Seraphine, or, worst of all, develop an inconvenient admiration for the so-called saintess.