It doesn't matter tonight, just like the fact she hadn't truly been an apparition or a scholar or anything else the people of Anterwold had thought of her, so long ago. Now, as then, it's easier just to nod along, to allow these boys to think what they would of her and of Neil, and then to step into those bits of it that suited them best.

There's more idle conversation as they wait, introductions--"Mark," says Rosie's new companion with a flash of a grin, while the fair-haired boy offers his own name to Neil more quietly and with a bit of a blush--before the bartender sets their drinks down. "Is this your first time here?" Mark asks, sliding Rosie's drink over to her before picking up his own. "I don't think I've seen you."

"Why, were you looking?" Rosie says it without thinking; a daring, playful retort that she tries not to be surprised by after the fact. Mark just laughs a bit, his smile curving against the mouth of his beer bottle before he takes a drink.

"I wasn't," he says. "Maybe I should've been."