It was a rather chilly day in Rome, the 28th of October in the year 69. It seemed it would be a hard winter, given the layers of clothing that people were already wearing, and the tension in the air. Instead of the loud conversation that so often occurred in the marketplaces, there was hushed murmuring among small groups of people. Even the children, instead of running through the streets as they usually did, stayed close to their parents. Trouble was brewing, trouble probably to do with the emperor. The people had expected it for a while; this was the third emperor in ten months. But even so, it felt like a civil war was brewing, and there was nothing that the people could do to stop it.

Aemiliana Secunda crouched in a corner of the library next to her schoolroom, shivering and crying. Shivering because her older sister had pushed her into the fountain, in the freezing cold, windy forum. Crying because she was supposed to be at home serving her father and her adoptive grandfather, and couldn't go home to change clothes without getting beaten. She positively loathed being cold. The slightest chill was enough to make her sick, let alone being sopping wet in the middle of winter. She was trying to read a book for her medicine classes, the works of Hippocrates, but she couldn't even focus on the pages, much less actually remember what she was reading. All in all, she was not a very happy person.

On the contrary, her older sister was having a grand time. Aemilia walked through the marketplace arm-in-arm with her friend Nona, deliberately ignoring the tension in the air. Both girls had a fair idea of what the tension was about, and they both knew that they'd always escape the worst of it, being practically royalty themselves. ((OOC: I'm not exactly sure what these two girls are hoping to accomplish, but it's something to start with. I'll write for Vitellius and Gaius Aemilius after someone else posts.))