Dawn came to Dogwood, a small town on Old Earth, and its first light fell through the windows of an attic bedroom in a house sitting high on Clover Hill. The bright shafts banished the darkness, but did not rouse them.
One of the figures was a tall and gangly girl with bronze skin and long black hair. She lay in a tangle of limbs and sheets, her mouth open, letting out short snorting snores with almost clockwork regularity. The light crept down the wall as the sun rose higher, and when it fell over her face, she gave a slightly louder snort and flopped over onto her stomach, her face turned away from it.
The other girl was shorter, with freckled pale skin and long, curly tumbles of fiery red hair. She lay like a posed life-sized doll, legs straight, arms folded over her chest, mouth clos
