Hesounded so cold, detached. No one should think of themselves that way.The three of them sat in silence for a few minutes, before Macha, withtears in...her eyes asked her master. "I don't understand why you justdidn't have Aislin become your apprentice. I can tell that, she...I meanhe has the ability."Ina frowned. "I tried to do just that. As a member of the Council ofElders, I petitioned for my grandchild to become a Wise Woman. However,it was against tradition. Your grandmother and a few. Biting her lip, she paused, just long enough to steel herself, recalling her interview with Ms. Singh just last week… “I want to be…” she couldn’t bring herself to say the word, ashamed to admit her darkest fantasies. Fortunately, the exotic dark skinned woman seemed to understand, gracing her with a sympathetic smile, her brow arching minutely. “I think I understand, Ms. Saunders. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s why we offer our services. Now, I’m going to need more details.. "Oh, and a 'hope you're doing fine and I'd like to hear from you' from my mother." I take that to mean things aren't going any better," Scooter said casually, knowing she was treading on touchy ground.When she'd hiked for a month with Crystal over two years before, it frequently had been a topic of discussion, although it had rarely come up this summer. Relations between Crystal and her father, Pete, had been deteriorating for years, mostly over Crystal's active, outdoor lifestyle. He'd been. She was so busy busting the curve in all her classes that no one noticed she was developing curves of her own. But college… College was when people took the opportunity to re-imagine themselves. She could shed the brainiac label and blossom into her own particular brand of attractiveness. She could reinvent herself as a campus beauty. College would be different. College wasn’t much different. Turns out it wasn’t so easy to reinvent yourself as a campus beauty when you were at a place like LSU,.