Vetta Mindal clattered down the wooden stairs in unwonted glee as she heard the hooter of the canal scurry waiting by the dock.

"Here she is, my little Vettel Petal," a big, jovial man said, giving the girl a hug at the bottom of the steps. "Let me look at you," and he held his daughter back for an appraisal.

Vetta was dressed in full uniform. A grey plaited skirt and white blouse with a tie in the school colours of sky blue and yellow stripes. Over this she wore a blazer, also brightly striped in the signature shades of the famous place of learning. Upon her short ash blonde hair was neatly poised a straw hat with a ribbon band around its crown that if the other parts of the uniform were not enough proclaimed her a pupil of Miss Plazenby's Extremely Exclusive Seminary for Girls.

Dark blue eyes looked up at her father from beneath the rim of the hat in excitement.

"It is so amazing papa, to think in a few hours I shall be whisked away to another land across thousands of miles to begin studying at such a marvelous school."

"Thousands of miles, hmn," the man mused thoughtfully as if regretting his decision to send his only child to such a faraway place. "It is for the best, my dear petal, for the best."

"Of course, papa. Education is one of the five well-springs of joy!"

"Indeed it is. Thank you for reminding me," and he picked the girl up and spun her around affectionately until the hooter on the canal scurry sounded again.

"We must be going," Vetta insisted and kissed her mother goodbye, the latter dabbing a moist eye with a spotted kerchief.

Large suitcases packed with essentials for the trip were wheeled by blue clad men, employees of Forster Mindal, to the waiting scurry and loaded with much grunting and brow wiping so that soon all that was required was for father and daughter to take their places in the water taxi's seats and begin the journey. The big men in their padded dark blue work clothes made a guard of honour as the young girl passed, doffing their caps respectfully.

"Safe journey miss," one said.

"Find joy and spread joy," another suggested as the couple walked across the gangway and took their seats. Vetta waved goodbye to the men and her more distant mother, still dabbing an eye discreetly so as not to upset her daughter unduly and then with a roar of engines the canal scurry departed the dock to glide along the arrow straight waterway south to Depperveld, the launch point that would take the girl away from her home land and into a whole new world.

Up to this point in her eleven years of life, Vetta Mindal had lived a quiet existence in the central district of Poldorama Winkel known as the Blessed Hub. In a land as flat as Poldorama the main activity of the population was the storing and distribution of goods in an out of the land, ready to be transported across the temporarily lowered storm barriers when opportunity arose. Thus huge warehouses were dotted about the country full of the produce from a hundred Winkels. These warehouses were connected by canals like a spiderweb of waterways, the largest, the Grandest Canal, dividing the country north and south where most of the traffic would be found for it was near a mile wide in places and almost six hundred miles long.

Between these great storage sites were wide grassy fields ideal for dairy cattle or flower growing, sometimes overlapping through inadvertence. Vetta's father owned a huge dairy concern on the western edge of the square district of the Hub with its cathedral like warehouses dominating the skyline and cows placidly munching flowers and grass in the spaces between. Thus he was responsible for one of the other famous products of Poldorama, cheese, being one of the great cheese merchants of the land. Only thus could he afford to send his daughter to such an expensive school in distant Frangea.

The canal scurry, so called because unlike most of the water traffic on the various canals that plied their business with leisurely motion it tended to scurry along at a reasonable rate of knots, weaving in and out of the huge cheese barges, some owned by Vetta's father, tourist floats, and giant multi-hulled expresses full of the world's goods as they made their way along the side canal towards the great waterway in the centre of the land.

Vetta had travelled to various parts of the Hub with the family on occasion, to visit parks on artificial hills and admire the view stretching for miles all around but this was an altogether more ambitious journey and she was thrilled to bursting point as she gazed out the windows at huge buildings at least fifty feet high drifting past in the distance and clusters of trees that seemed like giant broccoli marching across the land.

"Look at that tower papa," she once cried as they passed the sweeping scaffold of some communication building that seemed to soar into the sky.

"Ah, that reminds me my dear," the man said. "Please make sure your locator is updated for the new maps it will need so you know where you always are."

"At present papa, I am in paradise," the girl happily replied.

They swept into the Grandest Canal and there were even more amazing sights for the inexperienced girl to absorb. The vessels here were much larger and more sedate in their progress. Some even had great white sails like wings that helped them along, though these tended to be from the northern districts where the weather was more turbulent.

"It takes great skill to pilot one of those winged vessels," Forster Mindal said in admiration as they swept past the tall hulls and towering masts of the Frobern District based craft. "They don't often come this far south, so this is a treat for you my Vettel Petal."

"My day will be full of them I think papa," Vetta replied, eyes shining as she took in all the new sights around her. It was a long and full day indeed for night had fallen by the time they reached Depperveld. To ease the nerves of timid first time flyers the journey across the great storm barriers that separated lands would be done in darkness. To see the great roiling clouds of supercharged vapour, even in a time of abeyance was enough to terrify the hardiest of souls, let alone an eleven year old on her first trip abroad.

A great trans-Winkel flitter awaited them at the port near the settlement of Depperveld and there was the usual bustle as luggage was shipped aboard and everyone said their goodbyes.

Although Vetta had promised herself she would not cry at this moment of parting, the look in her father's eyes broke that resolve as she was given her clearance papers and was about to climb the steps into another world.

"Goodbye papa," she wept, hugging him once again and he just muttered, too overcome by the emotion of parting. Then she raced up the steps with her essential clutch bag as her only hand luggage, daring not to look back until she was at the top. Other passengers pushed past the school girl but she stood her ground, scanning the crowds on the portway, seeing her father's big bulky figure and responding to his slow heavy wave goodbye until the door closed, shutting him from view.

She was thrilled to be on this adventure of a lifetime, but all the same, she was terrified what the future might hold in a strange land, meeting many girls like her for the first time. What would they be like?