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Elise Schwarzer walked back from the mailroom at St. Astraia's school for girls, clutching the letter with obsessive excitement. She knew who it was from, and though she had mixed feelings about hearing from him, she couldn't contain her excitement. Of course that meant it was equally obvious to the blonde girl who ran up and started walking alongside her. Elise panicked a little. She couldn't let Alfin see the letter. She tried to tuck it under her coat but didn't quite manage it in time.
"Elise! Did you get mail? I never get any mail," Alfin pouted fetchingly. Elise looked at her with a frown, dubious. "Princess Alfin, surely you get a constant stream of correspondence of all kinds."
Alfin's pout deepened. "Well, yes, I do get announcements and petitions and all that sort of thing. But real mail? A letter... from a certain someone, perhaps?" she teased, and was rewarded with a deepening blush spreading over Elise's cheeks. It was quite pretty against her pale skin and dark purple hair, as well as the black St. Astraia uniform. Alfin was clearly pleased with herself. "Come on, Elise, you have to tell me who he is!"
Elise wavered. Alfin was nice, generally speaking, but she loved to tease. And because she was the daughter of the Emperor of Erebonia, Elise didn't really feel she could refuse if Alfin asked her something -- particularly if she asked directly. Elise had been at St. Astraia's for not quite two months, and Alfin had taken a shine to her almost immediately. Elise was still learning just what she could and couldn't say to the princess, and when and how she could turn down Alfin's requests. Alfin had already been able to drag out of Elise that there was someone she had feelings for. But Elise herself didn't completely know what those feelings were, and part of coming here, away from him, had been to try to figure that out.
At length, Alfin's enthusiasm got the better of her and Elise sighed and handed her the letter. Alfin squealed endearingly, took it, and read the envelope aloud.
"Addressed to Miss Elise Schwarzer... very formal, polite, I like it, I like it... and it's from... Thors Military Academy?" She looked over the envelope at Elise approvingly. "Very nice, Elise!" Elise blushed all over again, dreading the next part as Alfin looked back down at the return address. "Wait... he has the same last name as you? Elise, what's going on here?" Alfin looked up again, one part titillated and eager, another part accusing.
Elise sighed heavily and said, "Can we go sit down somewhere? It's a long story." Alfin, momentarily appeased, followed Elise to a nearby cafe table. One nice thing about going to school in the capital was that in Heimdallr cafes were thick on the ground. It was always easy to find a nice place to sit and talk with someone.
As they sat down, Elise noticed that Alfin still had the letter. She held her hand out to the princess, who pouted again but relinquished it, then waited eagerly for her to go on. Elise sighed again and said. "So, here's the thing... he's my brother."
Alfin's eyes widened and she said breathlessly, "Ooh, scandalous, do tell!"
Elise ran her fingers absently around the edge of the envelope. "I found out three years ago that he's adopted." Alfin tapped on the table with her fists excitedly. "Oh! This is so exciting! It's like a romance novel!" Elise was taken aback, and stammered for a moment, trying ineffectually to stop Alfin's momentum -- to no avail. "I see, so here is a trusted person, someone you've known for years, and now you find that your latent feelings for him can be consummated after all! But, torn by the tempestuous tides of emotion, you fled here to Heimdallr, while he chose to go to Thors, and now you are biding your time, trying to understand your own deepest urges, hoping he'll come to see that you're meant to be!"
Elise immediately regretted having told Alfin. Partly because of her overwhelming excitement about it (which Elise already knew meant she'd never hear the end of it), but also because Alfin's overdramatic retelling was surprisingly accurate, if you scaled it back a little. Fortunately, at that moment, a server appeared to take their order. Alfin smiled up charmingly and ordered an iced tea. Elise shook her head politely at the server. Alfin said, "Oh, come on, Elise, I'll buy." Elise sighed, looked down and nodded. She wasn't getting out of this, was she? She smiled up at the server ruefully, and said, "I'll have an iced tea as well, thank you." Alfin clapped her hands excitedly. "So... tell me more, Elise! He must be really handsome."
An image of her brother Rean, as she'd last seen him, came unbidden to Elise's mind, and she blushed. "He is," she said. He'd been dressed in his Thors uniform, and it suited him, the deep red jacket set off against his dark hair. She had so many other images in her mind... how he'd looked in her first memories of him, a little snub-nosed boy with unruly hair who had wanted to protect her... the way he'd grown into himself when he came back from the long time in the mountains, training in the way of the sword with Master Ka-Fai. But that last glimpse of him, climbing down the mountain towards the train station to leave for Thors... that was the one that had stuck with her.
Alfin said, "You shall have to tell me all about him, now. How much older is he than you? I mean, I assume he's older. Is he tall?" Elise looked down at the letter, half-listening, tracing Rean's handwriting on the envelope. So familiar, and yet now so foreign. "Yes, he's tall. Maybe not the tallest person his age, but... tall enough. He's two years older than I am."
Their iced teas arrived, and Alfin took hers graciously, handing a few mira to the server, who bowed slightly. Everyone around here recognized the princess on sight, but also knew she didn't want a lot of formality. Alfin began to sip her tea as Elise took hers from the server, smiling up at him. Alfin said, "So, go on. Is he shy? Talkative? Good at sports?"
Elise sighed. She definitely wouldn't ever hear the end of this. On the other hand, she kind of did want to talk about him. And Alfin was her closest friend so far at St. Astraia; though she could be a bit much at times, she really was a good person and meant well. Elise decided to go ahead and tell her more about Rean. "Well... that's the thing. He's very quiet. He's always been pretty reserved, and acts good-natured and helpful all the time. But as he's gotten older... he's gotten more distant." That last time he'd gone away to train with Ka-Fai, he'd been particularly closed. When she'd first found out he was adopted, she'd been so confused... and now she was worried that she'd driven him away by the things she'd said when she'd been reacting and coming to terms with it. At first it had made her feel she didn't really know him (though she knew that was silly -- he hadn't known he was adopted, after all, had he?), and she might have said some things that had hurt him, then, pushing him away. And then it had dawned on her that it meant he wasn't really biologically her brother, and she'd started to notice what a kind person he was, how handsome he was... and that had only confused her further. She'd tried to talk with her mother about it once, and that had only made it worse -- she'd teased Elise about her feelings for Rean. But then at that point Elise had never known what to say to him, and so the rift between them grew even more. When he chose to go to Thors, she became certain that she'd pushed him away. She'd decided then that she had better go someplace on her own, to make her own way, to figure out what to do about him, if anything.
Alfin sighed, leaning her chin on her hands. "Oh, poor Elise... pining away for him, waiting in the wings... who knows what other young ladies he might be meeting at Thors. Or..." she got a devilish gleam in her eye, "maybe young gentlemen, even." Elise went from cross with Alfin for making light of her situation to surprised at this turn of the conversation. She hadn't guessed that Alfin would be into that sort of thing. She filed that away for future reference.
"Well, I'm sure I don't know," she said, a little more coldly than she'd meant to. After all, she didn't want to think about all the people Rean would be meeting, who would make him forget all about her. Though the fact that he'd written to her did seem to be evidence to the contrary...
Noting Elise's mood, Alfin sobered up a little, reining in her delight. She seemed to realize she'd crossed a line and hurt Elise's feelings. She sipped at her tea, and eventually said, "Well, Elise, I'll be praying for you." Elise nodded, smiled tightly at the princess. She knew Alfin didn't mean any harm, but sometimes she could be a difficult friend to have. At any rate, she changed the subject, and they finished their tea together on a lighter note, chatting about their classes for the week. Elise excused herself when it was polite to do so, almost vibrating with the need to open Rean's letter and learn what he had to say.
Finally she got back to her room and threw her bag on the bed, pulled out her letter opener from the desk, and carefully slit the envelope across the top. She unfolded the letter with shaking hands, forcing herself to stop and take some deep breaths.
"Dear Miss Schwarzer," the letter began. So formal! "Oh, Rean," Elise said to the empty room, looking up at the ceiling. "At least you are writing to me, after all. But 'Miss Schwarzer'?" She looked back down and continued reading.
"I'm sorry it has taken me so long to write. Things have been so busy here... and I didn't know if you wanted to hear from me. But mom and dad told me you were at St. Astraia's, and it's only a short train ride away from Trista... I thought it would be silly not to see you. Only if you would like to see me, of course! So I'm writing to tell you about Thors and what I've been doing here, and to ask if you'd like to visit, or if you'd like me to visit you."
Elise's heart raced. He did want to see her! But it was a long letter, she realized, as she unfolded it and saw there were several pages of his somehow-elegant-but-cramped handwriting. What was it all about?
"If you do come visit me, I thought you might want to hear a bit about Thors and my classmates, so you know what to expect. My situation here at Thors is a little unusual... the way it's been done until now, there are separate classes for nobles and commoners, two classes of nobles -- Classes I and II -- and three of commoners -- Classes III, IV, and V."
Elise paused. It was true that most of the students at St. Astraia's were nobles, with just a few wealthy commoners, usually daughters of top merchants from Celdic's grand market and senior people from the Reinford Group and the Roer Institute of Technology. Having been brought up the daughter of a baron, Elise knew a little about the divides between commoners and nobles in Erebonia, but her father Teo was always a very casual person. She never got the feeling that he had any issue with the less well-off people in Ymir that he oversaw. He seemed mostly fatherly towards them, treated them with respect, and everyone loved him for it. Actually Ymir had been a really nice place to grow up, she realized as she thought about it. It had taken her a little while to get used to just how many people lived here in Heimdallr... Ymir really was a small, out-of-the-way place. She'd found herself adjusting and coming to like the bustle of the big city. But she had seen people react to each other here in ways that told her that nobles and commoners didn't get along elsewhere in the Empire as well as they did in Ymir.
So, based on her new experiences, it wasn't surprising to hear that Thors segregated students by class. What *was* surprising was the next sentence: "I'm part of an experiment, Class VII, which has a mix of people from different backgrounds from all across Erebonia, and beyond, actually." Wait, didn't they skip a number there somewhere? Elise wondered for a moment, but gave up and read on.
"None of us know why they're doing it, but it sure makes for an interesting time, I can say that. So let me tell you a little bit about everyone."
Elise skimmed over the lengthy three paragraphs describing the other members of Class VII. She tried to pretend she wasn't looking for competition, but as she read, she also found herself genuinely curious about them. The commoner students were quite varied: Elliot was shy, and an accomplished musician... Emma was also shy, but brilliant, and apparently Class President, as well as liking to write... Machias turned out to be the son of Imperial Governor Regnitz who oversaw Heimdallr. Elise had seen the Governor in passing when going with Alfin to minor functions, and he seemed nice enough. Apparently Machias was very into chess, and was very academically competitive with Emma. Fie was young for a Thors student, but apparently quite capable as well as a little mysterious. She was in the gardening club and took naps in very strange places. Alisa was probably the best at technology of the group because she was from Roer, though she also liked lacrosse. Elise wasn't sure what it was in Rean's letter that made her think it, but she felt like maybe he'd had some kind of problem with Alisa... though it didn't seem important enough for him to give any details. Gaius wasn't technically Erebonian -- he was an exchange student from the Nord Highlands, skilled with a spear and interested in painting. She could tell Rean admired Gaius, from the way he described him. Elise had to admit to herself that she was curious about Gaius' people, too... in some ways they sounded a little like the people in Ymir, with the difference that the people of Nord were nomadic. Her father and Rean loved to go riding and hunting, and Rean said Gaius and his family did too. Nord was famous for its horses, and she thought she remembered one of the Schwarzer family's horses being from there.
Rean was one of three noble students in the class. Laura was from Legram, the daughter of Viscount Arseid, the master of the Arseid school of the sword. She'd heard of the Arseid family, partly due to Rean's enthusiasm for talking about swordsmanship, once going on for at least an hour about the differences between his (and Master Ka-Fai's) style, "Eight Leaves One Blade," and Viscount Arseid's school, which was apparently quite different. Laura was a student of her father's, and also apparently a member of the swimming club. Rean definitely admired Laura's swordsmanship, and Elise had to admit to being curious about her. She wondered how Laura balanced the art of the sword with the responsibilities of the daughter of a noble. Legram and the Arseid name were much more prominent than the Schwarzers were.
And that left Jusis: apparently the second son of Duke Albarea, from Kreuzen Province. Surprised, Elise did a quick mental calculation and realized that made him second in line to inherit one of the four great noble houses of the Empire. She hadn't heard of him before, though she had heard of his older brother Rufus. Rufus was well-liked even here in the capital, though she'd never met him in person. She wasn't too surprised that Jusis was in the riding club, as it was a typical aristocratic pastime. She had rather thought Rean would have joined the riding club too, and didn't know why he hadn't. She knew he really enjoyed it.
Rean also described a few of the other students - a stuck-up noble from House Hyarms; Towa, the Student Council President; George and Angelica who were really into mechanics and worked on battle orbments for the students to use in combat practical exams. They'd also built an orbal motorbike, which sounded pretty exciting. Then, something caught her attention: "And then there's Crow. He's friends with Towa, George, and Angelica. He's... a little different." Different how? Elise wondered. "He doesn't seem at all dedicated to his studies... he's always gambling, sometimes even with real money, which is against the rules of the school, I'm pretty sure..." Elise giggled a little at Rean's lawful tendencies. He was pretty careful about following rules, or he had been, anyway. Maybe he'd learn a thing or two from this Crow person. "And he conned me out of 50 mira the first time I met him." Now she laughed out loud. Rean could be pretty gullible, she thought. "But... I find that I like him anyway." Elise thought to herself that she kind of liked Crow, too, from the description, even if he was apparently a slacker.
Then Rean went on to describe instructors and classes, which all sounded pretty standard to her. At Thors they covered some of the same topics that they did here at St. Astraia's, though there was always a military slant on it. And of course they did combat training, and that wasn't a part of Elise's studies. She thought to herself that she ought to find a fencing partner so she didn't completely lose her skills from when she'd trained with Rean and her father. But she'd been so busy. Then Rean called out Class VII's homeroom teacher:
"Instructor Sara does combat training for everyone at Thors, and she's... tough on everyone, when it comes to that. We have practical exams where she programs a battle shell so we have to literally fight like our life depends on it. Class VII has these new fancy battle orbments, called ARCUS units. They allow us to tune into each other in combat -- it's pretty amazing, actually, how much you suddenly just *know* about what your link partner is doing. The school seems keen on us testing them out by pushing ourselves to our limits. I guess it's both making us better and helping them develop the technology, and I definitely don't mind becoming a better swordsman, so I'm not complaining too much.
"But Sara is our homeroom teacher, too, and... she's a bit unconventional. She's a terrible flirt, for starters." Elise felt her face flush. Really? That seemed inappropriate. "And she's a little too fond of drinking. But I think she just likes to tease us? She was the one who encouraged me to go ask Towa if the Student Council had anything that needed doing during our free day." Elise sighed. It was so like Rean, not to join a club because he didn't feel like he fit in, and then instead to go and do errands for someone all day long. He was always so eager to help people out, to please people. He was a strange combination of loner and lackey, and apparently Instructor Sara had read him like a book. Even if she was a little unusual, it was clear from Rean's description that Sara was an effective combat instructor and seemed to have a plan for how to help her students grow as people. Case in point: her groupings of Class VII for "field studies", which Rean described in some detail.
Field studies were apparently another part of Class VII's strange experiment, alongside the mixed-social-class group and the ARCUS testing. The class had been divided into two groups, and Rean's group had been sent to Celdic last month. The manager of the Celdic grand market had given them a list of tasks to do, prepared in consultation with Instructor Sara. The second field study was apparently coming up: Rean's group was just about to leave for Bareahard at the time he was writing the letter. Elise flipped back to the beginning of the letter and saw that Rean had written it two days ago, so they must have already been there and come back. She wondered how it went, because Rean had expressed some concerns:
"The next field study in Bareahard worries me. I think Instructor Sara is purposely throwing people together who don't get along so they can get over it -- she's changed up the groups from the last time. But I think she's worked out that somehow I'm the one who gets them from being at each others' throats to being able to work together. Last time, when she divided us into two groups, Jusis and Machias got stuck together in Group B, and that group didn't do very well with their assignment in Parm, at least not as compared with what we did in Celdic. We encountered some real trouble between the nobles' Provincial Army and the merchants in the Grand Market... if we run into something that tough again, and those two can't put their differences aside, I'm not sure what will happen. Machias hates nobles... he's barely forgiven me for not telling him my whole situation when we first met... and Jusis seems to love to provoke him. The two of them can't even form a combat link using our ARCUS units, and that's going to be critical if we get into a tight spot. I guess I'll just do my best, and I'm still optimistic. I just hope it will go well."
And that was basically the end of it. The last paragraph was him asking how things were going for her at St. Astraia's, and saying again that she'd be welcome to visit if she had time. Elise was grateful that Rean felt like he could share his feelings and experiences with her. Reading this letter really made her feel like she had her brother back again... she could almost hear his voice in her head, and it brought back all the good feelings they'd had towards each other, growing up. She still felt a little strange in the background, knowing he was adopted, and knowing she was starting to have romantic feelings for him, but still... it was nice just to feel good about him for a while. She carefully folded the letter up and put it back in the envelope. She hesitated for a moment, and then quickly stuck it under her pillow. Then it was time to get ready for her evening study session, so she did her best to put him out of her mind as she rummaged around her desk for her notes.