The Problem With Pink Hair and Cat Ears

She had seen Awenholt, the capital once before, when she was very young... or rather, she had been in it once, which wasn't exactly the same thing. What she remembered was just a collection of very small bits and pieces. Buildings that were impossibly large and rising everywhere. A lot of different, loud noises. A lot of unfamiliar and exotic smells. All this while being carried on someone's shoulders and still not being tall enough to actually see anything.

She had wanted to fix that. Had promised herself she would, all the way from home. She’d walk every street, visit every market stall, every corner of the city that had been nothing but blurry noise and other peoples heads the first time.

The carriage came to a stop at a wide market plaza near the inner gate. A sprawling, noisy square full of stalls and morning crowds and the delicious smell of things cooking. It was the last major square before the gates which made it the perfect place to stop.

It was far enough from the academy that she'd have a proper walk. The kind of walk a normal person took rather than someone whose legs existed exclusively to carry them between one carriage and the next.

Elayna was already reaching for the door.

"My lady."

Vaelithra was already outside.

She always was. Everytime, by the time the carriage had rolled to a full stop she was simply there. Standing beside it, slightly ahead of where the door would open, white hair catching the morning light. Elayna had never once beaten her to it. She had stopped trying to work out how it even happened. One moment Vaelithra was inside the carriage. The next she was standing in the street looking like she had simply been there the whole time, pale eyes already moving across the crowd in the careful, unhurried sweep of someone making sure the immediate area was safe, a force of habit she had developed after she’d started accompanying Elayna out in public.

She extended a pale hand out.

Elayna took the offered hand and stepped down as she adjusted her bag.

"I'll be fine going alone." she said, before Vaelithra could open her mouth. A preemptive measure. She had learned.

Vaelithra opened her mouth anyway.

"You said that before the Thornback."

"And I killed the Thornback." Elayna countered.

"You did," Vaelithra agreed. "With a broken arm and two broken ribs."

"But I did kill it, alone."

"The arm and the ribs were broken before you killed it. As was, if I recall correctly, a not so insignificant portion of your left lung."

"That healed."

"With magic. Immediately. Because it needed to." Each word was delivered by Vaelithra in the same calm tone.

Elayna felt this was beside the point. "The outcome was the same."

"The outcome was you nearly drowning in your own blood," Vaelithra said calmly, with the serenity of someone recounting a mildly inconvenient afternoon. "While telling me you were fine."

"I was fine... Eventually." Elayna defended, with a soft pout.

"Mm."

That single sound managed to contain an entire argument Vaelithra had apparently decided not to have out loud. Elayna recognized it immediately. It was one of her least favourite sounds.

"Sooo," Elayna said, with the careful confidence of someone constructing an argument they fully believed in, "since I can handle a Thornback on my own, a city will be no problem at all—"

"The market district," Vaelithra countered, with the same easy, placid tone, her voice never raised itself. "Last spring, I seem to recall that an Ironsteed nearly stepped on your skull after you tripped. "

Elayna immediately tried to defend herself. "The cobblestone was uneven."

Vaelithra countered quickly. "It was perfectly even. I checked afterward."

Elayna opened her mouth. Closed it.

This was the problem with a sword tutor who noticed everything, forgot nothing, and had a habit of quietly verifying things after the fact that no reasonable person would even think to verify.

Behind them Mira descended from the carriage with brisk efficiency — smoothed her skirt, straightened her collar, and within the same breath reached out to fix the small capelet sitting slightly crooked on Elayna's shoulders. The conversation and the tidying happened simultaneously, with neither of them acknowledging Mira's tidying.

"Elayna," she said. Not my lady, just Elayna, the way she'd quietly established she could get away with years ago when they were both young, and after, never once considered the alternative. Her hands moved to the brooch at Elayna's collar and adjusted it a fraction.

"We left early enough. You have plenty of time."

"I know." Elayna said flatly, with a small crease between her eyebrows.

"Which means," Mira continued, tucking a loose strand of lavender hair back into place while holding eye contact with the intense focus of someone who was making sure they were being heard, "that there is absolutely no reason. None. That you would not be able to arrive on time. Looking presentable. Like the dignified young lady I know you are capable of being."

"I am dignified." Elayna said confidently while raising her chin.

"On time, Elayna." Mira said, firmly.

"I will be." The crease between her eyebrow came back slightly stronger.

"And you'll write," Mira added, and something shifted slightly in her voice that was less stern older-sister, more just— "the moment you arrive at the dorms. Not after dinner. The moment."

"I'll write. I promise."

"And eat something proper Elayna," Mira continued, with the tone of someone who had saved this for last deliberately. "Don't just randomly gulp down whatever it is they're selling out here."

Elayna had at that precise moment already located a meat skewer stand approximately thirty or so feet away. She decided this was probably not relevant information to share.

“Of course,” she said, eyes going back to Mira.

Mira looked at her with the expression of someone who knew exactly what "of course" meant in this context and had chosen to accept it anyway.

A short silence settled between the three of them. Not an uncomfortable one. The kind that happens when everything important has been said and what's left is simply the fact of leaving.

Vaelithra turned her attention from the crowd back to Elayna. Her all-white eyes, lacking iris's and pupils revealed nothing on their own — they never did. But her face couldn't lie. Not to Elayna. Not after so many years. She could read every small thing, every change. The almost imperceptible tightening at the corner of her mouth. The slight set of her jaw.

"Little blade," she said quietly. "Be careful."

Not be safe or stay out of trouble. Just becareful. Coming from someone who had spent the bigger part of Elayna's life making her as dangerous as she possibly could and still, somehow managed to worry deeply about her walking through a city on her own.

Then Mira pulled her into a hug that was tight and completely unrestrained, all that stern older-sister composure gone in approximately one second. Her arms came around Elayna tight enough to lift her clean off the ground, which she did. Elayna's feet left the cobblestone and her ribs registered a complaint.

"M-Mira—"

"One moment," Mira said softly, into her hair. The way someone says ‘just a little longer’ to themselves on a cold morning before they have to get up. She was apparently not ready to put her down yet.

Exhaling softly Mira finally put her down, and looked at her with a resigned, but happy smile.

Vaelithra's arms came around her a beat later. Carefully. The way someone holds something they'd very much prefer not to break.

"Practice every day," she said, looking down at Elayna after the hug.

"I will," Elayna assured. "You know I will.” She added with a smile

She pulled back. Looked at them both once and gave them the smile that meant I'll be fine and I mean it this time, and then turned toward the outer streets.

She was already following her nose toward the skewer stand before she'd consciously decided to.

Behind her, Mira stood with her arms folded and her chin slightly up, pressing her lips together tightly.

And beside Mira, Vaelithra stood perfectly still, hand resting on her hilt with her thumb moving slowly and unconsciously back and forth along the pommel.

Elayna didn't look back.

She wanted to, but she knew herself well enough to know what would happen if she did. She'd see them standing there and she'd want to go back, and she'd tell herself just for a moment that she should ask them to come after all, and then the whole point of this walk she wanted to be her own would be gone. Vaelithra would have a respectful but knowingly "This is for the best" ready, and Mira would definitely be insufferably kind about it, which was somehow worse.

So she walked on.

The wide roads received her immediately. Loudly and slightly overwhelming. Rough cobblestone underfoot, uneven in some places. Vendors shouting loudly over one another. The rich smell of livestock, smoke and something cooking over an open flame nearby that made her stomach make a decision well before her brain had any chance to.

A corner stall, the one she’d spotted earlier. Run by a broad, very cheerful man with his hairy chest on display, who took one look at her and broke into a large grin that had clearly never once in its life been insincere.

"Buy one get one free for the little lady!" he announced, with the energy of someone who considered this an excellent deal. "You look like you could use two! Still growing, yeah?"

Elayna was eighteen years old and a trained swordswoman.

"Thank you," she said, with great dignity and humbly accepted both skewers with her head down and both hands palms up, like a knight being given the sword treasured by its kingdom.

They were smoky and hot and extremely good. She finished the first before she'd gone twenty feet. The second lasted slightly longer, and by the time she'd worked her way down to the stick and was picking her teeth with it she was feeling, very positively about the outer streets of the capital so far.

She was doing this — picking her teeth with the stick, eyes drifting excitedly across the storefronts, when a blacksmith's window stopped her.

Not a grand establishment. Just a very solid, practical storefront. The kind that knew its customers came for function and practicality rather than presentation and bragging rights. Swords and armor arranged in the window with no-nonsense efficiency. She was about to keep walking when something near the center of the display caught her eye and held it.

A claymore. Large, straight and double-edged. With a solid-looking crossguard and a blade that caught the morning light in a shine that suggested someone very skilled had spent a very long time on it.

She stepped closer without deciding to.

Both hands went to the glass. The stick fell from her teeth and hit the cobblestone. She didn't notice.

It was, she thought, an exceptional piece of work. The balance would be... She tilted her head studying the proportions, they would be right, she thought. Exactly right, perfect even. The fuller held its line perfectly, the narrowing was exact, purposeful for such a large blade. The edge geometry exactly what it should be, no unevenness to it. The crossguard was simple, broad, sturdy, and without ornament. It wasn’t there to impress. It was only there to keep the wielder’s hands intact.

There was something else too, something in the way the light sat on the blade that wasn't quite natural, a faint trace of mana within the blade, but whatever enchantments were laid on it she couldn't make out from outside the glass.

For a storefront on the outer streets of the capital, this was... this was truly something. "This is absolutely amazing!" she thought.

Inside, the blacksmith looked up from his bench.

He took in the small figure pressed against his window. Both palms flat on the glass, lavender hair, pointed ears, small nose approximately an inch from the windowpane, staring at his display with an expression of—

Hm? He squinted slightly.

He'd assumed, when he saw her, that it was probably just a child. It was the size mostly... she barely cleared the windowsill. But that wasn't a child's expression. That was the expression of someone doing something very considered and serious.

She was studying the claymore.

He watched her tilt her head. Watched her eyes move along the blade with the focus like someone reading something very important.

...Huh?

His claymore, which was the one he'd spent the better part of a month on. Good steel, careful work and a private mage paid very handsomely to lay enchantments on the blade that most people walking past would never even notice, and wouldn't know the value of even if they did. He'd put it in the window because he was proud of it, and because the right buyer — someone who understood what they were looking at, would pay very well for it.

He had not expected that a potential buyer would be approximately five feet tall, cute, and someone that had just dropped a stick they were picking their teeth with.

Elayna straightened. She retrieved the stick from the ground, and set it aside. Then she turned back to the window and looked towards him, she raised one hand and gave him a very firm, deliberate thumbs up through the glass. Nice.

The blacksmith stared at her.

With a small, satisfied smile she nodded towards him. Just once. With the certain and heavy gravity of someone conveying professional respect to a peer. And then she walked away.

He watched her go. Then looked back at the claymore. Then back at the small lavender-haired Elf already disappearing into the crowd.

She knew!? He thought, not fully believing it.

He went back to his work feeling, obscurely, rather pleased about it.

The inner gate was less a gate and more a passage. A tunnel bored through twenty meters of solid stone, wide enough for three carriages side by side, tall enough that she had to crane her neck to find the ceiling. The walls on either side had been carved out into deep alcoves. Guard posts which had been built directly into the stone itself, and proper ones by the look of it with narrow doors and small windows.

They’d made a functional home inside fortified stone, eating and sleeping and passing their shifts inside the wall itself, which she found both very practical and quietly awe-inspiring.

Several guards stood at the entrance. They glanced at her uniform. One nodded her through without a word.

So she walked in.

The noise of the outer streets cut off almost immediately, and was replaced by the cold hush of enclosed stone. Her own and others footsteps suddenly very crisp and loud around her, the air noticeably cooler against her face. She could see the other side from here, a bright rectangle of wider streets and taller buildings waiting at the end of the passage. She walked toward it slowly.

She then emerged into the inner city and stopped.

Everything was wider and bigger. Everything was taller and longer. The cobblestone had smoothed out beneath her feet without her noticing, the streets opened up on either side with a deliberate purpose the outer roads hadn't had. The buildings rose much higher here, built from Grimwood and smoothly carved stone rather than common timber and cracked cobble.

She stood there for a moment, just looking and taking the city in.

There were still crowds, still vendors, still the bustling, loud noise of a well-inhabited city going about its morning. The streets were wider and more even to walk on, buildings rose high and strong with the steadfast confidence of things built to last. People here moved like they had somewhere specific to be and knew exactly how to get there. They didn’t bump into each other as folk did in the outer parts, it was as if everyone here had learned to weave through the seas of crowds as if they’d done it thousands of times — and they probably had.

Elayna found it slightly intimidating and exciting.

She had meant to walk through it purposefully. Efficiently. Like a very serious student on her way to the most prestigious academy in the empire, which was what she was.

She had not accounted for the bakery.

The smell came first, something warm and buttery that drifted out onto the street with what she could only describe as malicious, deliberate intent. She stopped without deciding to. And quickly after she pressed her face to the window with a feeling of resigned inevitability.

The display inside was... frankly unreasonable. She saw small, layered pastries dusted in powdered sugar. A wide variety of exotic-looking fruit tarts arranged in careful rows. And then, in the back corner, she spotted a miniature shortcake that she was fairly certain—no, it was most certainly looking directly at her.

Eat something proper, Mira had said.

Elayna considered this. A pastry was, technically, food. Food was proper. That calm logic was perfectly sound.

She went inside slowly, carefully, as if uncertain that some magic barrier might hinder her from entering.

She later emerged with a small paper-wrapped pastry in one hand. Something flaky and almond-filled that she'd pointed at without knowing its name.

She took a bite, and thought that the pastry was absolutely excellent.

She became aware somewhere around the third turn, that she was also holding a shortcake... a miniature shortcake.

She looked at it. Small, carefully made with cream between two thin layers of fluffy sponge with a big, colorful berry on top. She had a very clear memory of deciding not to buy the shortcake. She had a considerably less clear memory of the moments immediately following that decision.

She took a bite and let out a high pitched sound. It was amazing.

... One more thing won't hurt, she told herself as she quickly took another bite, and kept walking.

The inner city continued to offer her things she didn't really have time for.

She had walked past several noticeboards already, large wooden boards fixed to walls and posts throughout the city, covered in postings of every variety. While taking careful glances she had been very disciplined about not stopping at any of them. She was being efficient. She was going to be at the academy within reasonable time.

The one that stopped her was positioned near a corner where two wide streets met, and it stopped her because the top posting was large and the first three words were SEEKING PARTY MEMBERS in bold letters that were difficult to walk past.

She stopped. Just to look.

It read of an expedition deep into the northern province. To the Whiterock Reaches. The objective was recovery of raw Caeldrite ore. From deep-vein deposits in an abandoned mine shaft which partially collapsed. Expected duration was three to four weeks.

Elayna read on with great interest.

Known heavy monster activity in surrounding cave systems. A report of a large Iceback. Confirmed tracks from one survivor. Base pay guaranteed. Exceptional yield of Caeldrite will be rewarded handsomely.

Then her eyes drifted to the requirements section.

Combat rank: Advanced minimum, Expert preferred. Experienced extreme frost field operatives only.

And no first-year academy students. This line was slightly larger than the rest.

She read the whole notice twice.

A broad-shouldered man nearby glanced over. He had a weathered face, the kind of worn-in look that came from spending years outside city walls rather than inside them. He took her in at a glance. Small, cute. Lavender hair. Academy uniform, first year yet to have had the ceremony going by the absence of a badge on her chest. Cheeks slightly puffed with cream at the corner of her mouth, holding a shortcake in one hand.

Reading the Whiterock quest posting.

Can she read? he wondered, with some not mild amusement. Does she know what that says?

He watched her eyes move through the mission description with focused attention. Watched her reach the requirements section. Watched her read the notice again. The expression on her face when she finished wasn't disappointment exactly. It was more like the face of someone updating a plan rather than abandoning one.

Huh, he thought. Maybe she can read.

She wiped the cream from her mouth with one finger, finished the last of the shortcake in one decisive bite, and walked off with the look of someone having made a final decision and was comfortable with it.

She memorized the contact's name anyway. Then reconsidered somewhere around the next intersection, that by the time she reached Advanced rank and had become a second-year student. This posting would be long gone, the ore recovered, the Iceback either dead or thoroughly unbothered and the whole thing would be entirely irrelevant to her life.

Well... that's just how things are.

She had better things to think about anyway. Like whether she'd end up with an Orc in her class. Or a Dragon-kin. She'd heard Dragon-kin were rare but not unheard of at the academy, and if there was one she was going to introduce herself immediately and ask approximately everything she could think of.

She knew she was nearing the academy by now, she was excited but at the same time a bit sad at not getting to explore the city further, which was also proving to be a heavy task for her legs.

Nobody had mentioned quite how many feet it would require just to barely enough see of it, just to feel like she'd even been here. There had been a lot of walking, and she'd still only scratched the surface, but she didn't regret a single step of it.

There had been a dress in a window somewhere in the inner city. Deep blue and simply cut, that she had walked past with great discipline and was still thinking about it. There had been a vendor selling hats she'd only glimpsed from a distance that she wanted to look at for fun. She wanted to go back to the blacksmith where she'd seen the claymore.

She was going to come back. She was going to come back many times and explore the city properly. It had nothing to do with her wanting more shortcakes or more swords or pretty dresses.

Nothing to do with that at all.

Still... None of it had prepared her for what stood at the center of it all.

Awenholt’s Imperial Magic Academy stood proudly in the heart of the capital, untouched by the rest of the city.

The academy didn't announce itself the way she'd expected. There were no high towers dominating the skyline, no obvious landmark you could spot from across the city. It was more that the road simply ended in front of something so incredibly large that it took a moment to understand what she was even looking at. Buildings that weren't tall so much as simply colossal. They were wide and stretched incredibly long. Heavy with permanence, spreading across the grounds in every direction like something that had always been there and had simply allowed the capital city to grow up around it. The academy walls enclosing it all were the height of a small cliff face, thicker than—

She glanced at the walls.

They were thicker than she was tall. Which wasn't, she acknowledged privately, exactly the most impressive standard in the world. But still... very thick.

The gates of enchanted titanium stood wide open today. The gates made her feel like a mouse walking through a door. She stopped in front of them for a moment.

Diana walked through these, she thought. She stood here, maybe exactly here, on her first day. And now she's almost a Master swordsmage before turning twenty-three.

The thought of the person she'd long admired felt slightly overwhelming in her chest. She let it sit there for exactly as long as she could afford, which was not very long at all because she was probably going to be late if she didn't move.

She adjusted her bag and walked through.

As she walked inside the walls, the first thing she noticed was how alive it was.

Gardens and enormous trees spread across the grounds — very ancient-looking trees, appearing to be wider at their bases than market-fountains, their shadows easily stretching past the walls. And past the trees and gardens the campus opened up in every direction, building after building connected by enclosed, elevated walkways with windows running their whole length, the smallest structures in the campus looking like they'd be the size of a duke's manor at the very least.

She was looking at some of the open training grounds when she noticed them.

A small group of students were currently training on a large field of sand. They looked to be just a few years older than her, though with the variety of races at an academy like this it was impossible to be certain exactly how old they actually were.

She slowed her walk slightly, watching them.

One of them. A Human man with a lean build was casting something ranged, something aimed at a dummy. A wind slash from the look of it, the kind of spell that required both the correct sword form and good control to make the attack work. He wound up, feet solid on the ground, committed to the motion, swung his sword horizontally—

The slash landed in the ground about a foot to the left of the training dummy’s torso, taking the dummy’s hand off at the wrist.

Elayna watched the hand lying in the sand. Then looked at the dummy. Then back at the man who cast the spell.

Hm, she thought. Was he aiming for that? If he was aiming for that. That was actually quite impressive. Redirecting at the last moment like that and aiming for just the hand—

She watched him throw his sword down on the ground.

M-maybe he wasn't aiming for that.

She kept walking. Or started to. Then quickly stopped again, because further along a young Elven woman was running sword forms and the footwork was... she watched for a moment. Fast, it was really fast. She had very clean weight transfers with a quick and good rhythm, the kind of speed and technique that came from real, diligent training rather than natural ability.

She's good, she thought. Actually very—

Her back foot.

It was slightly too far out on the pivot, making her unstable for a fraction of a second. Not by much and barely noticeable. It was the kind of thing that wouldn't matter against most opponents but could matter enormously against the right one. It was the kind of thing that opened up a quarter-second window that someone who knew what they were looking for would walk right through.

She knew what she was looking for because she had been corrected for that very exact error approximately three hundred times, most of them with a hard training stick across her ankle every time she got it wrong.

When Vaelithra decides something matters, she thought, watching the young woman pivot again, she makes sure you remember it.

She turned away after deciding it probably wasn't her place to correct her seniors on her first day. Besides, maybe they were working on their weaker points... They were both seniors after all, they probably knew what they were doing.

She kept walking. The campus was enormous in the way of places that could have passed for a small city. Self-contained, self-sufficient, with everything a person might need and several things they probably didn't, all of it built on a scale that suggested nobody had ever once said "Well. That's probably big enough."

She passed a library, a courtyard, something that might have been a forge, and a garden that had no business being as beautiful as it was in the middle of a combat-focused academy.

And then further in, she saw the dormitories.

Four of them, lined up along the inner grounds. They were very large and very orderly, five stories each. She'd read enough about the academy to know they were sorted by year, two years per building, except the last one which housed the seventh years still living on campus alongside the professors and staff. Math wasn't something she'd worked out carefully, or was good at, but she knew there were roughly two hundred students per year, so that'd make around fourteen-hundred students in total.

She was going to be sleeping in one of those buildings tonight. Eating in them. Waking up in them. Living in them for the next seven years or so, surrounded by roughly fourteen-hundred other students who had come here for the same reason she had. She'd have roommates. She didn't know how many, didn't know who, didn't know anything about them yet.

She felt herself smiling widely.

I live here now, she thought.

She was probably going to be too excited to sleep.

She was still thinking about her roommates and classmates when someone called out to her.

"Hey first-year! Over here!"

A woman was waving at her from further along the path. She pointed Elayna toward a wide stone walkway where five lines of students already stood chatting and socialising, the path leading into an imposingly large pentagonal building with towers rising from each of its five corners.

She began walking over.

Between her and the other students stood a man waving her in. Wearing a white and navy uniform rather than her own white and black uniform, and on his chest a detailed blue dragon with seven stars above it. The seventh year. The final year, Elayna thought. He wasn't alone — on either side of him stood two women, one a Wood-Elf by the look of her, and the other was possibly a Wolf-kin, Elayna wasn't entirely certain. All three of them each held a small black crystal.

She walked up to the man. Before she could ask what she was supposed to do, he introduced himself with a slight bow.

"Hello there, and welcome to Awenholt's Magic Academy! The name's Mikell. I trust you've had a safe journey through the city?"

"H-hello, yes, thank you," she managed, and forgot to introduce herself. "What does that black crystal do?"

Mikell smiled and held it up. "This determines your class for the rest of your time here. If you'd place your hand on it for just a moment—"

Her hand was on it before he'd finished the sentence.

The crystal glowed faintly at first, then the glow deepened, white smoke appeared inside it, swirling and shifting before slowly turning blue. She watched it happen with her hand still pressed against the surface and felt faint warmth where the crystal touched her skin. The smoke inside stilled. Mikell then took it away from her hand and pointed it toward her collar. She heard a soft whoosh — and the smoke poured out of the crystal and gathered into the gemstone brooch holding together her capelet, the colourless stone blooming into a clear azure color.

She stared at the crystal, then down at the brooch.

She opened her mouth, a "woah" forming somewhere between her lungs and her lips, when a palm appeared in her vision facing her chest, already gathering mana.

"We're not quite done yet," Mikell said, with a slight smile.

Flecks and strands of blue light wove and danced between his fingers, settling into a shape on his palm before shattering like broken glass, the fragments bursting into mist and quickly vanishing entirely.

She looked down.

On the left side of her chest where nothing had been a moment ago, a simple blue dragon burned itself into the fabric, with one star above it.

Azure... Elayna thought, the dragon class...

"There, all done," Mikell said, with a satisfied nod. "You're now part of Class Azure, year one. A-1 for short. Your class is waiting for you in the second line from the left."

He leaned slightly to one side and gestured past his shoulder.

She leaned with him and stole a glance.

These were going to be her people for the next seven years. She could feel the excitement and the anxiety arriving in equal measure, filling up her chest simultaneously. Somewhere in those lines was maybe the party she was going to form, the people she was going to fight beside, the party and companions she'd argue with and drag through impossible situations and who would drag her through them in return and—

"Ahem."

Mikell leaned down and looked at her with a kind smile and teasing but slightly impatient eyes.

"There are still quite a few people waiting," he said. "It would be rather rude of me, as their senior, to let Claire and Gretlynn do all the work while I stand here chatting." He straightened himself. "Sooo... unless you have a quick, general question you'd like for me to answer...?"

Heat rushed up her face. "Right! I-I'm sorry!"

She turned into a short dash, running past Mikell and slowing down as she grew closer to the line of students already waiting.