[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/XHZxXVB.png[/img]
[sub][@Ambra][/sub][/center]

While other students may have had the chance to have gotten acquainted with each other on the way there, Andrion had arrived at the monastery long before the others had. There were formalities to be performed, after all. Names to pay his respects to, as a child of the Church. He had spent the last month sequestered within the Irinduil Monastery, tempered by his austere surroundings and the natural beauty of the mountain it was built upon. Perhaps the priests and nuns thought him more pliable in isolation, figured that some time away from the Lower City would be enough to work the guttertrash out of him.

Turning a blind eye to the fact that he had lived in a Church-affiliated orphanage. Ignorant to the fact that he found the pleasures of the flesh to be the same sort of pleasure one could derive through appreciation of untamed majesty and the satisfaction of simple chores. Humans were of flesh and blood. All that they did, so long as it was rooted in their body, was natural, was good.

Still, when the month had passed and others of the Officers Academy began trickling in, Andrion had to confess: he wasn't so impressed. The girls, especially the ones that were set to be house leaders, were almost remarkably unremarkable, with proportions that were almost mannish! How could they, with ample opportunity for exercise and the diet that only wealth could provide them, end up with such disappointing figures? Why, the Francette girl had hips that were undoubtedly narrower than her shoulders! And the men too looked more like children than, well, men. Even the grimmest, most serious looking of them seemed to have forgotten to get a haircut for the last three years and now, every one of them seemed to sport the sort of vagabond-spikes one would expect out of a highwayman. Or a prostitute.

Maybe foppishness and androgyny was the natural state of even the finest military talents amongst the nobility though. Or maybe they figured that following in the footsteps of the archbishop and the professors would gain them some sort of advantage. Andrion wouldn't pretend he understood it.

Oh, but he did understand expressions and whispers, the sniggering slyness of a blue-blooded waif.

[b]"What's this, House Leader?"[/b] Andrion's voice, unlike Sherry's, echoed against the walls of the garden. [b]"The tour's hardly started, and you're already gushing over our venerable Archbishop's fine looks?"[/b]