Camilla smiled into the fire.

[b]"Consider how you sound to me," [/b]she jibbed playfully.

[b]"For the Emperor, Forward March, We must hunt for pheasants!"[/b] she made her voice comically rough, drawing out the syllables and flattening the vowels to make the words almost unrecognizable. In Tilea, Imperials were mocked for their gutural accents. They routinely made up the comedy element of plays with a caricatured brutishness and fanatical devotion to even the silliest duties. Since she had come to Ostland she had found the sterotypes to be wrong of course, although Imperials in general did seem a grim foreboding lot. For a few moments she allowed her eyes to wander the room and she considered the lands they had traveled together since fleeing. Perhaps these were good lands for grim foreboding people.

[b]"I don't have a home in Tilea,[/b]" she responded, a little more somberly. A shower of sparks flew up as one of the pieces of timber gave way with a little pop.

[b]"I was... how you say... without mother... orphan, I was an orphan,"[/b] she explained.

[b]"When I was a little girl I lived on the street, but in Tilea there are Putadorea... houses that will take in orphans, pretty ones anyway. They trained us, taught us to dance and duel to read and write, be witty." [/b] Her accent drew out the word witty to sound like Whee tee. It had been a happy time, as far as such things went, there had been enough food, and the tutors beat the children less than the street kids had. There had been other things of course, but she tried not to think on it too deeply.

[b]"When I was old enough, I was sent to court as a companion, this was in Remus, while I was there a merchant from the Empire saw me, he thought I would make a good companion for his own wife who was old,"[/b] she continued. Companion to a wife or aged relation was the usual pleasantry that was used.

[b]"Otto, saw me at a ball and convinced the merchant to part with my... services, the rest you know, more or less anyway."[/b] She pulled her knees up to her chest as she talked, making her self smaller instinctively.