First Trip to the Conservatory
by YFNR

Author's note: I write stories with a bondage slant, not bondage scenes spliced together with a little bit of story. If you want nothing but descriptions of sex with whips and chains, then I am not the author for you. This story is definitely single-X, a story about two young people who were just getting acquainted as it began.

---------------------------------------------------------

THE PLANET ERICPOTSDAM, Mid-24th CENTURY AC (After Colonization)

During the 23rd century A.D. on Earth, a semi-religious group known as The Followers of Eric Potsdam saw an opportunity to carry out the hijacking of Planet CBQ 4960, which they named after their founder. These Followers dynamited the warp gates that were the only way to reach the planet, cutting themselves off to guarantee their own way of life and to avoid the plagues that were then raging on Earth. That way of life was built on three fundamental ideas:

Everything in moderation, including progress.
People need real work, important work that needs to be done, in order to be happy. Computers steal work.
Men are happiest when they are in charge of their women. Women are happiest when they are under the control of their men.

And so the Followers of Eric Potsdam established a way of life based on his version of an ideal society in the year 1900, before computers took over so many jobs and left so many people with no real work to do. And unlike Earth in the year 1900, female slavery was an accepted part of Eric Potsdam's ideal lifestyle.

This is an independent story set on the planet Ericpotsdam, giving a different viewpoint about the interesting societies that developed there after the planet was hijacked and cut off from Earth and the spreading galactic colonization of mankind. Just for perspective: this one is set several decades after the marriage of Sindrelaine and Tollis deta Sia, in locations several hundred miles north of their home. But you do not need to read any of the stories about Sindrelaine and the people around her in order to enjoy this one.

First Trip to the Conservatory

Jaine

There are rescues, and there are rescues. I never thought that I would be rescued by being chained to my seat in a railroad train.

My born name is Jaine Krug. I was born and brought up in the Trekinnen Valley, but I am too young to remember the days before the annexation, when the Kingdom of Trekinnen was independent. So I am a lifelong citizen of the Kingdom of Danitz. The story I am about to tell took place when I was just 18 years old.

My parents are working people. Mom is a secretary to a lawyer, and Dad is a harness maker, mainly for horses. We live in Piyeburg, a town which was shot up pretty badly during the Trekinnen Civil War. My parents' original house was burned down. A new place to live cost more than my parents could really afford, and they were left with a modest home and big mortgage payments. War damage is not covered by insurance.

My parents were delighted when the Royal Danitz Army marched in and ended the civil war, which was being fought to settle which branch of the Trekinnen royal family would rule the country. (Neither branch won, of course; we got annexed instead.) My parents couldn't afford high ambitions for themselves or for me and my brother. They were content to live in peace.

I have always been interested in music. I have been told that I could sing in tune and on pitch when I was three years old. During my school years, the best part of each day for me was music lessons. I sang solos in the choir, and I played the piano and the flute and the piccolo, and in my senior year I was the student director of the band. I planned to join the Piyeburg Music Society after school, and keep up some sort of involvement with playing and singing. I thought that it would be a lifelong hobby.

I didn't expect anything very special to happen to me at my high-school senior class awards assembly. I thought that I was there mainly to direct the band for one last time, playing our alma mater. But without me knowing about it, my music teacher had nominated me for a Muenster Prize, and I won. No girl had ever won a Muenster Prize before. It was the most glorious shock of my life.

The Muenster family is quite rich. Many of the members are detayana senior nobility. The prizes they have endowed include a four-year full-ride scholarship to the Carnegie Conservatory. Only five of these prizes are awarded each year to students in the entire Trekinnen Valley. All of a sudden a glorious future was opening up for me. I could make music my career, not just my hobby.

Of course it would mean living for four years away from home. The Carnegie Conservatory is located in Deerak, in the kingdom of Steineren East. I would be a long days' train ride away from my family and my friends.

Still, it was too good of a chance to pass up. My parents helped out by buying me some nice new clothes and a large, sturdy suitcase with wheels. On the first of September that year, bright and early in the morning, I said my tearful good-byes to my family and to a couple of my closest friends on the train platform at Piyeburg Union Station. I wasn't about to trust my flute and piccolo to the tender mercies of the railroad baggage handlers, so I hauled a small suitcase and a couple of other bags onto the train. A few minutes later, right on time, the train pulled out and I started my journey.

A tall, slim, rather handsome dude got on at the next stop. He was dressed mainly in blue denim, both jacket and pants. The blue of the denim went well with the blue of his eyes. He walked right past my seat, looking me over with those eyes and giving me a grin that almost turned my brain to mush. I had to look away. If I had looked directly back, I couldn't have helped giving him a most improper invitation.

He found a place one row behind me on the other side of the aisle. I watched him heave his heavy suitcase easily into the overhead bin. There were muscles concealed under that denim.

About an hour later I decided that I was hungry enough for a midmorning snack. I stood up and pulled the bag of food that my parents had packed for me down from the overhead bin on my side of the aisle. A few moments later I heard the train brakes engage as we began to slow down for our next stop.

I fished a candy bar out of my bag of food and began to eat it. Moments later the handsome dude was standing right alongside me in the aisle. He asked "Uh, excuse me, miss. We may have some sort of emergency going on here. Where are you going, if I may ask?"

He seemed to be polite enough. His expression was worried, not wolf-on-the-hunt. He was keeping a polite distance away from me. I decided that I could give him a straight answer, so I told him that I had won a Muenster Prize and was traveling to the Carnegie Conservatory. I wondered how he would react. Did he like music too?

I will never forget his response. He said "Holy smashing whamblefeltzer", and he ran away from me down the aisle. Was he allergic to music, or something? Did he think that students at Carnegie have some sort of strange infectious disease? Whatever it was, it had inspired him to leave his suitcase behind.

The train sat in the station for about fifteen minutes before getting underway again. A minute or so after that, the handsome dude was back. He had some sort of gadget in his hands, a flat metal rectangle, about three by five centimeters, with a 25-centimeter chain dangling from one corner. The chain was semi-rigid, like a bicycle chain; it could bend forward and back, but not up and down.

He said "We have an emergency, all right. Stand up, quickly, now!" I couldn't understand what the emergency was about, but from his tone of voice, it was urgent and important. I stood up.

He snatched my right hand. He pressed the edge of the flat metal rectangle against the inside of my wrist, and he flipped the chain around my wrist and pressed it against the other end of the rectangle. There was a "click" and the loop of the chain around my wrist was attached to the rectangle.

He pulled both of my hands behind my back, using the strength of his arm muscles against me. He fumbled for a moment, and I felt the rest of the chain wrap around my left wrist and click into place. At least I knew what the gadget was at that point. It was an unusual set of handcuffs. I hadn't expected this at all.

There was a crank handle mounted on the top of my seat. He spun that crank handle a few times, and pulled upward. The crank was on the end of a metal shaft which slid up from the seat back. He pulled a large V-shaped cushion out of that seat back and tossed the cushion into the overhead bin.

He said "Sit!" and pushed my shoulders. I fell back onto my seat. My handcuffed arms fit neatly into the V-shaped slot that opened in the seat back when he took the cushion out.

He pushed the crank handle back down. A metal pin poked downward into the seat back slot in front of my wrists. He spun the crank at the top around the other way to lock that metal pin in place. All of a sudden I couldn't escape from my seat.

He stuck his face close to mine and demanded in an intense tone of voice "Where are your travel papers?"

I started to answer "I have every right to be here! What are you -- "

He interrupted "We don't have time for explanations now! Where are your travel papers?"

So I told him "They are in the seat-back pocket right in front of me." I tried to add "What is the meaning -- ", but he waved me to silence, grabbed my papers, looked through them, and then walked off with them! I felt a surge of panic.

But that panic only lasted a moment. He was back from the seat he had been occupying just a few seconds later. He had picked up his own travel papers and held them with mine.

Before he could sit down, a man in a uniform was standing in the aisle alongside us both. The uniformed guy ignored me and asked my handsome dude for "Tickets, Documents!".

The handsome dude handed over our travel papers and explained "We are both students at Carnegie Conservatory. She is first-year, and I am second. I am escorting her across." I wondered what we would be crossing that I would need an escort for.

The man in the uniform looked over our papers. He glanced at me completely impersonally for just long enough to make sure my appearance matched my photo ID. He did something to our tickets with a punch and a seal embosser. Then he said "Make sure she stays secure at all times," and he went on down the aisle of the car to check other people's paperwork.

The dude collapsed into the seat alongside me. He breathed an enormous sigh of relief. He gave me a lovely grin and said "Hi. My name is Mickl. I'll bet you really, really want to know what just happened." I certainly did.

- - - - -

Mickl

My name is Mickl Pedersohn. At the time this story happened, I was starting my second year as a student at Carnegie Conservatory in Deerak, Kingdom of Steineren East. Sending me there was a strain on my parents' finances. We couldn't have afforded it if I hadn't had a scholarship that covered about half of the costs.

Summer break had ended. I took the interurban trolley to the mainline rail junction closest to Biddleton Falls, my small home town. I changed there to the through express train that would carry me back to Deerak. While walking down the aisle of the through passenger car, looking for a seat, I couldn't help but notice a really pretty girl sitting alone. She had a round face, and a cute flat nose, and black hair - really black hair - held back from her face by a white headband and flowing in a loose wave down past her shoulders. Her dress was red, a shade that could have been called either a dark pink or a pale maroon, with polished silver-colored buttons. It fitted her closely above the waist, and the skirt reached halfway down her calves.

I thought for a split moment about sitting next to her, but I decided that that would be rude. There were unoccupied seats farther back in the car. Besides, I was sure that she couldn't be riding that train very much longer. She was traveling alone, and we would soon be stopping at Trebohr. No unescorted girl or woman in her right mind would stay on that train past Trebohr. So I settled into an empty seat one row behind her, on the other side of the aisle.

Sure enough, as we approached Trebohr she stood up and reached for her luggage in the overhead bin. That pose pulled the front of her dress tight. There was a very nice body hidden under that red dress. But then to my surprise, she didn't take her suitcase down. Instead she dug into a bag that was packed full of food, pulled out a candy bar, sat down again, and began to eat it.

She had rearranged her luggage to get into the food bag. Another glance at that luggage revealed a small case that had been hidden before, a case which could easily contain a flute or a clarinet. Could she be traveling all the way through to the conservatory? Didn't she know what would happen if she tried to do that alone on this train?

I walked over to her and I asked what was going on. It was obvious that she didn't know what would happen. She said that this would be her first year at the conservatory. I realized that somebody else had probably bought her tickets, and that that somebody must not have realized how this train was routed, or what that would mean for a girl who rode it.

As soon as we stopped, I sprinted off of the train. I dashed into a store across the street from the station and bought an interesting design of wrist shackles, the first usable item that I found in that store. Buying, and paying, and getting change, all took time. I sprinted back onto the station platform just as the locomotive whistle blew two short toots, the "starting up" call. I ran down the platform to match speeds with the train and swung on to the last car. Then I had to scramble several cars forward to get back to the pretty girl (and also to my own luggage and travel papers. Thank goodness I did not miss that train!).

A few minutes later I was sitting next to that pretty girl, and my shackles were pinning her wrists behind her back. It was time for explanations to begin.

I started "Let's see, now. You know about the Nation of Bohringen, don't you? And about the unusual laws and customs there?"

She answered "Isn't that the place where all of the women are slaves?"

"Not exactly. They consider some of their women to be free, and some to be slave. But the country is run by a group who call their beliefs the "True Faith of Eric Potsdam". And according to them, all women have to be kept locked up at all times, whether slave or free."

"Gee, thanks, just what I would always want: to be told that I am free even though I spend my life chained up. But what do Bohringen and the True Faith believers have to do with me? I am not going to Bohringen. The Carnegie Conservatory isn't in Bohringen."

"No, you are not going to Bohringen. But that is because you are in Bohringen already. This train is routed through Bohringen on its way to the Steineren kingdoms. While we are in Bohringen, we have to follow their laws. And until I grabbed you, you were violating one of those laws. You were 'Indecently at Liberty'."

"Indecently at Liberty?"

"If you had walked down the main street of your home town without any clothes on, you would probably have been arrested for Indecent Exposure. The True Faith believers think that it is equally indecent for a woman to walk down Main Street, or ride a train, without being restrained in some way. You would have been arrested, and probably kicked off the train and hauled off to prison. A responsible man - your father, for example - would have had to come, and pay the fine, and retrieve you, and take you back out of Bohringen in chains. Expensive, and time-consuming, and Lord only knows what it would have done to your scholarship."

She gave me a look of near-total disbelief.

At that moment our express rolled past a small-village station, a stop only for local trains. Fortunately the post office for that village was right across the street from the station. I was able to say "Look there, flagpole in front of the post office." Sure enough, that flag displayed a large white diamond on red, with Eric Potsdam's initials in the middle written in his handwriting. The flag did not look at all like any flags that are flown in Trekinnen or anywhere else in Danitz. A family group happened to be passing by the front of the building. Mother and daughter were handcuffed behind their backs and wore leashes and collars. The leash leads were held by father and son.

I could tell that Jaine was scared at that point. I couldn't blame her; she was under the control of a guy who was almost a total stranger. She was probably thinking that if I chose, I could drag her off of the train with her hands cuffed, put her into a hotel room, and do whatever I pleased with her body. By Bohringen law, she was right. That thought formed the basis for a very brief lovely fantasy for me, but I decided not to mention that fantasy to her. Besides, I could never have afforded that kind of interruption to our journey on my tight student budget.

In a strained tone of voice, she asked "Bohringen is a rather small country, isn't it?"

I answered "Skinny would be a better word for it. It's squeezed between the Kingdom of Tippin and the Great Ocean, and much of it is less than 80 kilometers wide. But it stretches along the coast for over 650 kilometers, and we are going through it lengthwise. You are going to be wearing those cuffs until late this evening." I decided to be just the tiniest bit sadistic, and I added "Let me know if your nose itches."

- - - - -

Jaine

It seemed that I was a captive of a young expert in psychological warfare. After a comment like that, I knew that sooner or later my nose would certainly itch. Asking him to scratch it would give him permission to touch me, and he would probably put his hands in places much more sensitive than my nose. I resolved to grin and bear it in silence if my nose - or any other part of my body - began to itch.

I did not have my hands to defend myself, and I couldn't escape. I decided to retreat within a shell of unresponsiveness. I settled back in my seat and stared at the back of the next seat on the train. My dude pointed out some interesting scenery that went past outside our window. I ignored both him and the scenery. He took the hint for a while and lapsed into silence.

About an hour and a half after we left Trebohr, our train pulled into Cindimund, which was a larger rail junction city with a multiple-track station. My dude suddenly became alert and said "Now there is something you really should take a look at." I was prepared to continue ignoring him until a sound came in the window:

dohnk - dohnk - dink - dink - dohnk - dink - dohnk - dink -

Cowbells! Two cheap bent-metal cowbells, the kind sometimes played by band rhythm sections. They were tuned - if that is the word for the semi-musical sounds those things make - to a low and a high pitch. What could be making those sounds on a railroad station platform? I had to lean toward the window and look.

A string of narrow baggage carts was parked on the platform. The carts were just wide enough for a single row of suitcases. Apparently they had to be maneuvered through some tight clearances.

Five young women were standing one behind another at one end of this string. They were all wearing dark brown sea-cotton dresses with mid-thigh-length hemlines. The first one and the last one had short sleeves and fabric lapels on their dresses, and their hands were free. The three in the middle had metal collars on their necks, with no lapels or sleeves on their dresses, and their arms were strapped hand-to-elbow across their backs.

Each of these women wore a sturdy leather belt, about 8 centimeters wide. Straps from the belts supported metal hoops, which were suspended around each of the women several centimeters from their waists. The hoops were linked by bulky hinges. The first hoop carried a vertical rod in front supporting the cowbells that the lead woman was hitting. The last hoop was connected to a drawbar from the first of the baggage carts.

The cowbells had set a rhythm. Moving in perfect synchronization to that rhythm, five left knees came up. Five right feet pushed back. Five left feet swung forward, and the string of baggage carts began to roll.

The sound of the rhythm changed. The young women were wearing straps studded with spherical harness bells around their right ankles. The leader continued to beat the left-foot rhythm on a cowbell, but the harness bells supplied the alternate beats:

dohnk - sching - dohnk - sching - dohnk - sching . . . .

I noticed then that the left ankles of all of these young women were linked by chains running along the file, with little slack between ankles. They had to remain perfectly in step, or they would trip each other.

Of all the things I did with music in high school, my favorite was leading the marching band. I worked hard on improving our marching, but that band never could march as precisely as these young women. Nobody could possibly improve on their drill. As they moved out of my view toward the baggage cars near the head of the train, I knew that someday I would want to go out on the platform and watch the way they marched during the suitcase loading/unloading procedure as they maneuvered those baggage carts into position. I might have to let this dude named Mickl lead me on a leash when I did that. Could I really trust him that far? I didn't even know his last name yet.

At least I had an answer to that problem. I turned to him, and smiled, and asked what it was.

- - - - -

Mickl

That was the first smile that Jaine ever gave me. I didn't want it to be the last.

I returned her smile, and told her "Pedersohn". We began to chat and become acquainted. She was a very easy person to talk to.

I told her about my dream of becoming a professional orchestra string player, preferably a violinist. Perhaps with luck I could even become a conductor. Fortunately my parents were willing to support my dream. Biddleton Falls, my home town, had good interurban trolley service; I had been able to go to lessons in the nearby big city during my high-school years. The city happened to be Piyeburg, her home town.

None of the other teen-agers in Biddleton Falls shared that kind of dream. I had been something of an outcast among my peer group. The attitude was: why travel for an hour each way to get to and from a boring music lesson when you could spend that time playing basketball instead? I never even tried to date a girl. Who would want to go out with a weirdo like me?

Then I went off to Carnegie Conservatory, where I met girls who appreciated my dream, because they had similar lifetime goals themselves. But the student body was mostly boys, and I was surrounded by upperclassmen who were better musicians than me. I felt outclassed. Besides, my hometown experiences had taught me to be shy around girls. Once again I had never even tried to ask a girl for a date.

"And now," I told her, "I have had the most glorious stroke of luck in my entire life. I am riding next to one of the prettiest girls - if not the prettiest girl - in the entire freshman class. I am getting first crack at you, before any upperclassmen have a chance. You can't say no and walk away, because you are chained to your seat and the keys to your chains are in my pocket. If I can win your trust, then maybe I can persuade you to stay by me and be my girl. So you can believe that I won't do anything to double cross you or hurt you. When you are with me, you are safe."

She answered "I'm sure glad to hear that I am safe with you and that I can trust you. Because I have to trust you now. I need to go and use the rest room."

- - - - -

Jaine

I hadn't really needed to go right then. I could have waited for a while longer. But his lines about trust and safety gave me an opening that I couldn't pass up.

He spun the crank on the top of my seat around a few times, and pulled it up to release my arms from the seat back. He walked me down to the rest room with my hands still cuffed behind my back. And then he went right into the rest room with me.

It wasn't exactly like the ones on trains that run within Trekinnen. To be sure, there was an aluminum toilet, and a cold-water sink with a tap that stayed open only as long as somebody pushed the button down. But it wasn't quite as cramped as most train toilets in Trekinnen. There was enough room for a bench seat so that a second person could sit facing the toilet. And there was a one-and-a-half meter length of chain dangling from the ceiling, swaying with the movement of the train.

Mickl could have secured my wrists over my head to the ceiling chain, and disarranged my clothes himself, and then watched me do what was necessary while he sat on the bench seat. The rest room was obviously designed to allow that possibility. Instead he pulled the ceiling chain out of the way and put it on a convenient wall hook. He released my hands completely for the first time in over two hours. He slid a knob marked "Lock" through a slot that was provided for that purpose around the end of the door. That locking knob could be used either on the inside to keep the rest of the world out, or on the outside to keep a captive in. He said "Ten minutes". Then he closed the door. I heard the extra click as he twisted the locking knob.

I was waiting for him with my clothing all re-arranged when he unlocked and opened that door. He was wearing a special grin as he took my right hand and put the cuff chain back around that wrist. He was obviously enjoying controlling me. I reached behind my back with my left hand to let him finish the job, and I realized that I was wearing a special grin also. I wasn't worried any more. He had shown by words and actions that he could be trusted. Being controlled by him was fun.

Being fed my him was also fun. He provided lunch from a hamper with his baggage. He popped grapes into my mouth one at a time. Between each grape, he held half of a mixed-meat submarine sandwich to my lips and let me take another bite.

Our train rolled on westward through the afternoon. We continued to chat. He told me some of the things he had learned about the lives of Bohringen women, and I learned more by looking out my window.

Bohringen women do not live in restraints all the time. Sometimes they are penned into back yards surrounded by tall spike-topped metal fences, where they can work in their gardens, or watch their small children, or otherwise occupy their time.

I saw one woman who was confined in a rather small cage in front of her house. She couldn't stand up or lie down. She had to stay kneeling with her head bent forward and down. According to Mickl, this is one way that Bohringen women are punished by their owners, or their husbands, or their fathers.

Bohringen women are allowed to participate in sports. The obvious game for women in restraints is soccer. Most of the players have their arms strapped wrist-to-elbow behind their backs. The goalies at each end of the field wear chest harnesses which are leashed to wires that are stretched taut over their heads, about three meters above the playing fields. The wires run across from sideline to sideline about one meter in from the end lines.

Bohringen women are allowed to swim. Long stretches of that railroad line run right along the shore line of the Great Ocean. From time to time I saw people enjoying a day at the beach. The usual swimming costume for a Bohringen woman includes a bikini, a sturdy belt to strap hands wrist-to-elbow like the soccer players, and swim fins. I would guess that they don't need to use their arms to swim, because the fins must give them enough thrust through the water.

Bohringen women can play beach volleyball. I saw several games in progress. They play three on three; each team has one woman leashed by an ankle to a stake on the left side line, the second to a similar stake on the right side line, and the third to a stake behind the back line.

Bohringen women enjoy watching their men at sporting events. I saw several boy's or men's baseball and soccer games in progress. Cables about three meters high ran between posts along the sidelines to provide convenient anchorages for girl's and women's leashes.

Bohringen women help with fishing. Much of the wealth of Bohringen comes from the fishing banks that lie just off its coastline. I saw several boats well off the coast with men handling fishing nets and lines, and something bulky under each bowsprit. Then just as the sun was setting, our train stopped at a coastal town where the station is right along the waterfront. I saw the boats of the local fishing fleet up close as they came in for the night. The bulk under each bowsprit is a woman, stretched out and held there like a figurehead in a treated leather body sack that covers her from the neck down and that keeps her helpless, but reasonably warm and dry.

Mickl told me that several fish species living on the Bohringen Banks can be processed to make a very high-quality grade of lubricating oil. Schools of prime-quality lube-oil fish have a characteristic smell that can be noticed in the air close above the sea by a well-trained fishing-boat figurehead. She is placed as a figurehead because that puts her low in front of the boat's wake, which makes it easier for her to smell the fish, and also to see the fish in the water below when the sun is high in the sky. She tells the fishermen when to cast their nets.

- - - - -

Mickl

Soon after sunset I fed Jaine supper. The food came from her food bag, which seemed fair since my food hamper had provided lunch.

After that her stomach was full, the lights in the car were rather dim, and she was no longer worried that I might attack her. She relaxed, her eyelids began to ease gently downward, and soon she was asleep leaning against my shoulder.

Somehow she reminded me of one of the songs that I heard during my history-of-music lessons. The Carnegie Conservatory has one of the very few functioning recorded-performance players that was brought from Earth to Ericpotsdam by the original settlers. It is kept sealed away in a a cold dry vault and only used once for a day or so every ten years, to cut second-generation phonographic recordings onto ordinary record player discs. The resulting phonographic recordings are then played by students and faculty who wish to study the music of Old Earth. The original player and recordings have probably survived for more than two thousand years because they have been sealed up so much and used so rarely. Besides, the playback uses something called a "laser" which doesn't make the recordings wear out.

I changed the words of that song in my head just a bit to match what was happening. Our train crossed the border out of Bohringen into a very narrow strip of the Kingdom of Paulentz which was on our route before we reached Steineren East. I let Jaine sleep until after we had stopped at Port Paulentz. Then I woke her up by singing my words to that old song:

Lady in Red
is sleeping by me
in this seat.
There's nobody else,
just you and me.
It's where I wanna be.
I hardly know
this beauty by my side
I'll never forget
the way you look tonight,
Lady in Red.

I released her from her seat, and then from her cuffs. I handed her travel documents back to her, so that she could cross the last international border before reaching Deerak on her own recognizance. I didn't want any Steineren bureaucrat to conclude that she was just my slave and therefore not worthy of a Carnegie Conservatory education of her own.

The city of Deerak is only about 25 kilometers from the Paulentz-Steineren East border. After we arrived, Jaine had to pick up her suitcase from the baggage handlers. Then I got us both a taxi for the last lap to the Conservatory. When we checked in, I saw to it that she got a room in the girls' wing of the same dormitory where I was staying. And over the next few days, I helped her make the transition and become a full-time music student at the Carnegie Conservatory.

And that is how we met.

The End

Copyright© 2012 by YFNR. All rights reserved. I welcome your comments. Email me at yfnr@hotmail.com