[ church grim, huh... romani knows a thing or two about those, he thinks. in all the stories of the church grims, even in the lore of the scandanavian kyrkogrims, it was the singular act of sacrifice that created them and made them so. it's often thought that because of this, their loyalty transcended life and death. which was the nicest way of putting the fact that dogs were sacrificed quite often under the assumption that dogs have the kind of purity of love to transcend the inherent selfishness of their death.

oh, romani realises. the church grim will definitely be waiting for her back home. it's the sort of selfless, deathless, hopeless wait that likely won't come as a comfort. the little girl offers that shaky smile of hers again, and romani plucks up his courage to grin. ]

There's almost always an element of fate involved. There's a Chinese phrase for this - yuánfèn, something meant to be. Being protected and being protected by someone is a privilege and an honour both, right? [ romani laughs a little. ] Ah, but if you're a mage, you might end up protecting me. I don't have any magecraft capabilities or anything like that. I'm just a doctor. You can call me Doctor Roman - everyone does, or did.

[ here, though, romani has to consider this. what can he share? ... what's worth sharing? ] It was a... well, I can't say it was a regular school. But it was a cut-throat place where everyone was trying their best to survive on a day to day basis, so I guess in a way it was sort of regular? Isn't that how all students feel?