Ch 3

August 11, 2507. Sihnon. House Madrassa, bedchamber of Inara Serra.

The evening had been a dream. Inara had not celebrated her birthday since she turned twelve years old. Her father had woken her early and made her breakfast before he left for work. He kissed her forehead and apologized for not having time to take her to the market place for her present. He promised to take her that weekend. It was the last time she ever saw him. That afternoon her mother took her to the academy. Her father hadn’t sent her so much as a letter since.

But her eighteenth birthday had been a dream. She woke early and had morning tea with House Mistress Sato of the Madrassa House. Her heart had been in her throat. Applying for a seat in House Madrassa was ambitious. They kept forty girls at any given time. It was the most prestigious house in all of Sihnon, arguably the most prestigious house in the galaxy. It was the only house Inara had applied to be in. She knew no purer joy than she knew the moment that House Mistress Sato told her she had been accepted into the house.

After that, she had been floating on air. She had her final lunch with the girls at twelve noon exactly. Good-bye lunches were like nothing else. She had not attended one since Nandi graduated from the academy two years before. They girls gave her parting gifts. After that she and two third year girls-in-training retreated to her chambers and began dressing her for the party. As they meticulous curled her hair and applied her make-up Inara remembered how her mother had told her once that it usually didn’t take two hours for a Companion to do her hair in the morning. Usually, she was right. That day, she was wrong.

It was never hard to find a party at Sihnon. It was always someone or another’s birthday, or wedding anniversary, or some ball being hosted. It wasn’t everyday, however, that a Companion came to one to make her debut. Dressed in a red and gold, eighteen year old Inara Serra was taken to the Rim Restoration Charity Ball by famed Comp