Róisín proceeded up to the school dutifully alongside her classmates, staying in the thick of the crowd where she seemed like little more than a red mop at shoulder height among her peers. While the rest of the students she stood alongside were won over with the titanic display of magic keeping the coastal rains at bay, Róisín looked up at the swirling, magic-controlled clouds with distaste. If there was one thing that she associated with Republic mages, it was arrogance, which is all she saw when she looked up at the sky. Wizards who think that they know better than the wind and the rain. Half the bloody reason that the war started in the first place.

As they arrived, some porters tried to relieve Róisín of her belongings. The bags and books and clothes and things she let them take; they could be replaced easily enough, and Róisín would probably lose the books before long. However, she kept a tight grip on her father's spear and her grandmother's cauldron, hanging the latter from the lugs of the former. Those, they would have to pry out of her fingers before she let some mage's toy take it off to devil-knows-where. Besides, the spear was a symbol, not only of who she was, and where she came from, but of what she thought about this place. For these mages, the war was practically already forgotten. They wanted to get on with their frivolous lives. For Róisín, the war would never end. It took her father from her, and many more friends and relations besides. Until that was made right-- which it never would be-- she kept the spear to remind others, and herself.

Shuffled into a hall to listen to a speech, Róisín's mind wandered as she quickly lost interests in the mealy-mouthed platitudes being offered. She thought about Pebblebook, and the time she had spent there. She had arrived by horse a week beforehand, and had arranged to stay with an old Fennish woman that lived in the coastal hamlet. She was raising three rambunctious grandchildren, as both of her sons had gone to fight in the war and never returned. The last week had been merry, as Róisín traded songs and stories with the caillech, and helped her with her cooking and mending, and chased around the wee ones and taught them about plants, birds, and bugs. It perturbed Róisín that none of the weans could speak a lick of proper Fennish, and so before she departed she made sure they could all swear in Fennish at least half as well as she could.

By the time the talking was over and the students seemed to be mingling, Róisín was in hell. Her uniform itched horribly, and the boots made her feet hurt. She desired very little else other than to rip these demeaning vestments off, but concluded that she would probably be worse off mincing about like a red-haired nymph. Her eyes wandered to where they had said there was food, and she saw a fair handful of students loading up plates with what was on offer. They had the right idea, she figured, and made her way over to do the same.

A few students were standing about gabbing in front of the part of the buffet she desired, so she shouldered past them. "[color=009A49]Make a space.[/color]" She barked as she pushed through.

Rather than bother with a plate, Róisín dug into the spread with her bare hands. She carved a meaty hunk off a roast pig and stuck it in her gob, chewing on it as it hung from her mouth. She took her gran's cauldron down off the spear and started to pile food into it; roast, potatoes, eggs, fruit, rolls, sweetmeats, all got thrown in. The amount of food available was honestly somewhat overwhelming, it stunned her how well these soft Republic types took care of themselves. She was lucky if she had seen so much food across all of the years she had spent in the rebellion. It was little wonder that they seemed to be in a hurry to forget the war; from here it barely seemed like the war had ever happened.