Shadow School

Liora had been talking to her shadow for as long as she could remember - though "talking" implied a conversation, and shadows, being properly educated at the Academy, never talked back.

They did other things, of course. When she felt sad (an emotion that arrived in careful, measured doses, pre-approved by the Department of Emotional Regulation), her shadow would pat her shoulder. When she was frightened during thunderstorms, it would hold her hand with fingers that felt like cool silk. When she laughed-those brief, bright moments before remembering that excessive joy was unseemly-her shadow would clap its hands together in delight.

A perfect companion, really. Responsive but never demanding, present but never intrusive, emotional but never overwhelming. Everything a properly disciplined shadow should be.

This morning, Liora had whispered her usual greeting: "Good morning, Shadow." She'd been doing this since she was small, despite Mother's gentle corrections that shadows were not pets to be addressed directly. But her shadow had always responded with a cheerful wave, a little bow, sometimes even what appeared to be a curtsy.

Today, nothing.

She tried again, louder this time. "Shadow?" Her reflection remained perfectly still against the bedroom wall - not the warm stillness of patient attention, but the cold stillness of absence. Like looking at a photograph of herself rather than a living extension of her being.

At breakfast, she deliberately knocked over her juice glass (a shocking breach of table manners that would normally have sent her shadow into apologetic fits of handwringing). Her shadow merely mimicked the motion exactly-no embarrassment, no personality, no... there-ness.

"Mother," Liora said carefully, "what happens to shadows at the Academy?"

Mother's smile had that particular quality that all adult smiles possessed when discussing shadow-related matters-bright and empty as a newly cleaned window. "They learn proper behavior, darling. Discipline. Order. They become the companions you need them to be."

"But what if-" Liora began, then stopped. How did one explain that one's shadow had been replaced by a perfect stranger wearing its shape?

At school, she watched the other children's shadows with new attention. Marcus Chen's shadow sat with its hands folded precisely as Marcus did, never fidgeting, never showing the restless energy that had once made it drum its fingers during boring lessons. Sarah Kim's shadow no longer tried to catch dust motes in sunbeams-it simply existed, a dark mirror with no will of its own.

When had they all changed? How long had she been the only one still accompanied by a shadow with thoughts and feelings and delightful small rebellions?

And now, apparently, she wasn't.

The bronze bells began their evening song, and Liora's shadow detached itself with mechanical precision - no lingering goodbye, no backward glance, no acknowledgment of twelve years of whispered conversations and shared secrets. It simply... left, marching away with all the other perfectly trained shadows toward another night of lessons that would ensure tomorrow's compliance.

Liora stood alone in her bedroom, shadowless and somehow lighter - the way one might feel after losing a limb, she imagined. Empty. Unbalanced.

But also, for the first time in her life, utterly alone with her own emotions-emotions that crashed over her in waves she had no idea how to navigate. No shadow to siphon off her sadness, to metabolize her anxiety, to bear the exhausting weight of feeling. Just Liora, drowning in sensations she'd never had to process alone, burning with grief that had nowhere to go but deeper into her own chest.

She looked in the mirror and saw only herself - no dancing companion, no silent confidant, no other half to make her whole. Just a twelve-year-old girl with tears streaming down her face, experiencing grief in its full, terrible intensity for the first time in her life.

Her shadow had graduated, she realized with the cold clarity that comes with loss. It had learned its final lesson at the Academy: how to stop being hers entirely.

But as Liora stood there, drowning in emotions she'd never learned to swim in, something else began to surface through the overwhelming tide of feeling. Something that felt almost like... hunger. A wild, desperate need to understand what had been taken from her, from all of them.

Outside her window, the bronze bells fell silent. The perfectly ordered streets of Luminspire stretched into darkness, every citizen tucked safely away with their newly disciplined shadows. Every citizen except those whose shadows had vanished entirely - people her mother warned her never to speak to, who walked the night hours with strange, unsteady gaits and eyes that burned too bright.

Liora wiped her tears with shaking hands and walked to her bedroom door.

For the first time in her life, she was going to break curfew.

The hallway stretched before her like an invitation to chaos, and Liora Chen—drowning, burning, gloriously, terrifyingly alive with her own untamed emotions - stepped into it.