Maria von Zehntner sat quietly at her desk as sunlight filtered through the tall windows of the classroom.
Like her twin sister Theresa, and most of her cousins, Maria attended one of Innsbruck's oldest Catholic academies.
The school prided itself on discipline, history, and proximity to legacy. At the front of the room, the teacher continued her lecture, chalk tapping softly against the board as dates and names accumulated with mechanical precision.
Theresa, seated beside Maria, stifled a yawn. It wasn't history that bored her., it was the repetition.
They had grown up surrounded by it; history spoken not as abstraction, but as memory.
Stories told at dinner tables, during long car rides, and beside hearth fires in winter. Stories their grandfather had never volunteered, but never refused when asked.
No recitation from a textbook could compete with that.
