Deirdre pays very close attention to each time a new staff member is hired to the Black Eagles house. There was a time, long ago, when she was the only professor employed. Their numbers now are many but she still gets excited whenever someone else joins the ranks.
Even more so when she learns the name of the newest teaching assistant.
She tries not to get her hopes up terribly but Oifey has just arrived in Fódlan so perhaps...
"Excuse me? Professor Shannan?" She peeks her head through the new teacher's door and stops still in her tracks when she sees him. "Shannan? Little Shannan is that you? Please tell me it is really you!"
Shannan has set himself to the task of organising his new domicile—his office, his living space, his what-have-you—with as much vigour as he's ever mustered for interior decorating. In other words, not much. He's never had an eye for aesthetics in any real sense; long used to the sort of kitsch minimalism common to a border town, all rustic hard edges and cobbled furnishing from whatever had been built up by forebears and the sparse things that could actually be bought, Shannan would admit at least that he'd found the tarnished luxuries of a half-restored Isaach... less than tasteful. So, now armed with his scarce luggage and a comfortably small room, he's resorted primarily to shuffling things in whichever directions strike him as vaguely practical, or not total eyesores, and calling it a day. The only real methodology involved has been his insistence on wholly unpacking. Right now he levies all the beauty of some awful little knick-knack in his hands, weighing the quandary of its rightful position on his shelf; it's an ugly thing, a malformed possibly-porcelain attempt at what he thinks is probably a goat—mismatched horns and twisted figure, one leg short and all—that he'd spotted in the wreckage of Miletos and had been so charmed by that he'd unloaded a good fingertip of coin for it. He wants it on display. He'd brought it along out of all the sentiments of desiring an ornament that was unaccountably grotesque and, therefore, a perfect reminder of the times attached to it. A voice at the door piques his attention, but not enough that he turns immediately from the shelf. A faint sense of familiarity—withering, like nostalgia—he chalks up to the sleeplessness of his travel here, still being shaken. "One minute," he says distractedly, eyes narrowed; does he think the forefront of the shelf is the best place, or maybe at the very top, like an overseer... he clicks his tongue, making an about-face not to give any good greeting, but mostly just to grab a chair to hoist himself up with; it's a tall shelf.
He catches the silhouette out the corner of his eye, anyway—a sharp crack resounds upwards from the floor, and there in unfortunate pieces his favoured goat-creature lies, fragile and cheap as anything with a semblance of soul is. Shannan barely notices it, stiffened in place. Everyone knows of ghosts—the benevolent kind spectating atop the spiralling peak of Tower Bragi, the vengeful dead clustered in the catacombs with all the bones of the Loptyr. He'd not particularly expected to ever see one in waking; if ever it'd happen, he might have seen the shadow of his father, or some other lingering regret, some other torch to carry, and he'd have seen it younger than he is now, a war past him with the many, many prior.
He'd never expected to see her. Shannan's mouth feels as ash and lead, a smoky aftertaste. "Lady—" It catches in his throat, a harsh croak, wobbling on a short note. "... Lady Deirdre...?"
