At first they wouldn’t even let me have my notescreen. I lay battling headaches and boredom and bouts of nausea as my muscles ached – and my heart ached, too. I wanted to talk to Rose. She hadn’t come to visit me, and I wondered if I’d scared her off. When Tristan finally brought me my screen I was so glad I could have jumped up and hugged her, except that my head hurt so badly I could barely move it. I hooked on a link to Rose immediately, but it was far too early. Her name just blinked unanswered on my screen. I assumed she was in her studio. She never brought her screen or her cell into her studio when she was painting seriously. I’d only been in Rose’s studio a few times, but every time I had I just wanted to sit there for hours. On the wall at the foot of my bed at UniPrep I had one of Rose’s landscapes. A large blue-black icescape which Rose always said was meant to be Europa. She’d seen some photographs of the glaciers, but this was her own composition. It was stunningly beautiful, the lights and shadows drawing your eye from one portion of the canvas to another.
