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“The weather in the Plaza was always perfect, and even compared to the rest of the Carter Lane campus, it was a beautiful space. A full acre of ground, lush with bright tufts of native grasses. Tall yucca, hidden patches of prickly pear, pink bitterroot and bright blue flax and a hundred other wildflowers all clumped together. Spring buttercups and balsamroot bloomed side by side with midsummer lupines and paintbrush, and the sunflowers and snow asters that didn't bloom until September out in the fully real world. It never changed. The Cross Worlds Plaza wasn't quite Otherside, but wasn't exactly the human world either. Like the name suggested, it stood in between. In the center of the Plaza stood a stone circle. The boulders were different colors and types of rock-- rough pink granite from the Eastern Court territory in Maine, smooth white marble from an Alabama quarry in Southern Court land, warm orange Texas sandstone from the Summer Court, and dusty Michigan limestone representing Winter. There was basalt from the Northern court in Washington, and even a chunk of onyx marble from California, from the site of the former Western court, which had been snuffed out before I was even born. At the heart of the circle stood a stack of three wide, flat stones-- shale and slate from Idaho and Montana, topped with a thin, shiny disk of Wyoming obsidian.” — Reena McCarty