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Lienna had scarcely finished her sentence when another student approached, looking meek and out of place. One look at his kicked-puppy demeanour made Lienna write him off entirely as neither threat nor asset, content to keep her attention on people who might possibly matter until he opened his mouth. 

Lienna nearly did a double-take at his casual drop of the name “Fraldarius,” her shock coming out a second time as a raise of her eyebrows. [i]That[/i] was [i]Lord[/i] Kellen Fraldarius? Her first intuition was right; something bad [i]must[/i] have happened in Fraldarius for that pipsqueak to carry the title of Lord. Hells, he could hardly carry the jacket he was wearing. His insecure posture and the poor fit of his uniform only emphasized his diminutive figure, and although he was still taller than Lienna was, he looked more like a lost child than a lordling. 

She nodded in acknowledgement of his greeting, but she was a little too much at a loss to come up with a reply before a crowd of new students started filing through the door. Probably for the best; “impressive” wasn’t the word she would have used for Gautier—except maybe that it was impressively cold, dark, and shitty—but whatever term she might have come up with to describe her desolate homeland was probably better left outside of polite company. 

Then it was time for introductions. Again. The first one to go did nothing for Lienna’s rapidly souring mood. She’d seen plenty of his type among the Gautier soldiers in Hima, and most likely, her long-disappeared father had probably been one of them: nothing but crude jokes and half-truths, a walking hazard to poor and desperate girls hoping to run away from Hima on somebody’s arm. All they usually ended up with was one less meal in their stores and another mouth to feed growing in their bellies. The way this one carried on, there were probably as many blonde, red-eyed children running around the slums of Leicester as there were fatherless redheads in Hima. 

The next girl spoke like a benevolent queen from a storybook, and paired with Auberon’s repeated introduction to match, Lienna was quickly losing interest. Goddess this, Goddess that – did Auberon see the same Kellen she did? And did Clarissa not hear her House Leader just now? If this was the best the Goddess could come up with to safeguard the future of Fódlan, then maybe she’d have been better off seeking a rich husband on some other continent altogether. Then again, that was one point in Gautier’s favour: it was far enough removed from the world that she wouldn’t really notice if the rest of Fódlan went up in flames, and as long as her own bed wasn’t on fire, she wasn’t too concerned about it. 

No one from the Empire deigned to speak up yet – maybe they were so accustomed to having their names and titles called out by heralds before them to remember they had to do it themselves – and at the risk of letting this charade run on too long, Lienna opted to go next. Granted, she wasn’t quite sure what to say. The others listed their titles. Should she? Did she have any? And what of likes and dislikes? She had a list of dislikes a mile long, but it had been years since she gave much thought to things she [i]liked[/i]—her primary concern had always been things she needed. Ultimately, she’d have preferred to wait until the end, but the pain in her stomach was quickly turning into hunger, and no way was she waiting for [i]Kellen[/i] to drum up some courage. 

Hasty decision made, she stood as smoothly as she could manage, her posture stiff as she did her best to emulate the form of the others in the room. [color=baa7c7]“I am Lienna Orhneaht, future Countess of Southern Gautier, and also a bearer of the Minor Crest of Gautier,”[/color] she began, taking Auberon’s cue to mention her Crest. [color=baa7c7]“I like hearty meals and warm fires, and I dislike the cold. I hope we can all form lasting bonds this year, for the good of Fódlan’s future.”[/color]

She nodded to her classmates to conclude her introduction, sitting back down about as smoothly as she stood. Fine, it was the same ‘for the good of the continent’ line everyone else was parroting, but the rest of it was inoffensive enough, and it was more polite than saying ‘I hope to make friends I can count on for favours later.’ 

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