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Our medieval re-enactment society is not actually for re-enactment.
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"That is the first time in my entire life that anyone has ever called me, a high school dropout who works in a bar, a good example. Can you write that down so I can frame it?"

Aaliyah's modern tent is easier to take down than Roger's period canvas tent, so Sergia will probably finish before Roger does. Once that happens he will enlist her help in folding up the giant sheets of heavy canvas, which is definitely a two-person job, but easy enough if each person takes a corner. 

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"I'll get one of the scribes to make you a little certificate." She helps fold up the heaviest and most obstinate bedsheet and heave it back into its box.

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"I will treasure it forever!"

Fold fold. 

"So have you gotten your magic rock yet?" 

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"No, just the veil, unless you're speaking metaphorically." 

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"Oh, no, someone must have forgotten to give you the magic rock - it's very important! Here, for now - have one of mine!"

Roger pulls a plain white pebble from his pocket and holds it out to Sergia in an outstretched palm. 

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Very serious business, magic rocks. Very serious indeed. 

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Did he find a rock this morning just to be silly, that's delightful. "Ooh, thank you! What does it do?"

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"First you got to lick it to activate it."

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This results in a peal of giggles. "If it's one of yours, then surely you've already licked it, and it's a universal law that anything you've licked is yours forever, so clearly I have to go get a new one."

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"No, no, it's a spare one I have! I've never licked this one!" 

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"....but if you want to get a new one you'll just have to magically prepare it first. Better wash it in boiling water so it's safe to lick, and then you have to do a ritual where you put the rock on your head and do a special dance at midnight." 

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"Oh, well in that case." She exaggeratedly licks the rock. It doesn't taste like anything.

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"Once you've licked it, to get it to be yours, then you gotta sing it a song. That's the other part of activating it. You should hold it very gently when you sing to it." 

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"Oh, I have to sing to it? That's serious business. I should pick something I know really well. Scaaaaarlet, fight for the banners of scarlet, fight 'til the fields they run scarlet . . ."

Roger is going to need to interrupt her if he doesn't want to hear eight choruses and seven verses of Æthelmartian patriotism.

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"Careful! It's an Atlantian rock!! It is deeply offended by this Aethelmartian song! You'll confuse it!" 

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Sergia gets through another two lines before being overtaken by giggles and losing the beat. Once she gets back to breathing properly she switches to Atlantian Steel. (She loves both kingdoms and expects she always will.)

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Roger enthusiastically joins in with singing Atlantian Steel to the rock. He is a solid tenor - nothing exceptionally rich or bright, but confident and expressive and generally on key. He is very fierce about no blackguard's flag shall darken Atlantia's sky!

"So the next step in the magic rock activation is you have to go show it to five people and get them each to bless it."

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"Gotta give everyone a turn to mess with the newbie, huh? I'm not sure how many people are still on site. We'll see how many I run into getting all this stuff to the cars."

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"Damnit, you catch on way too fast. You knew before we started singing, didn't you."

The campsite is pretty much packed up at this point. Roger heaves a box into the air with an exaggerated groan at its weight. 

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"Yeah. But, you know, excuse to sing! Want a hand with that?"

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"I'm good with this one but I won't complain if you want to grab another one!"

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Heave ho.


In short order everything is into the appropriate cars and the site is clear, leaving Sergia plenty of time to get to the restaurant where House Rosemary is having pre-battle dinner.

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The group from Camp Rosemary has assembled at a local fusion place that seems to be doing a mixture of Southern barbecue and Korean barbecue. It's not Nicole's favourite, but her cousins seem to think it's a mixture of two of the best things to ever exist and she's happy to go along with it. 

Adele and Jean are here for dinner, though they're too retired to join a dragon hunt. Even at a random restaurant that isn't set up to accommodate them sitting at the head of the table, it's clear from the way people move around them that they are the fountain from which Rosemary flows.

Nicole remembers how intimidated she was by Jean when Jean was her own grandknight. When she was a squire she'd known that she would happily follow Raoulin into hell, and she'd also known that Raoulin would happily follow Jean into hell, and so even when she'd barely known the man she had felt a shy sense of deference towards him. She can't imagine how Sergia must feel about him, and his consort Adele - plenty of people never meet their great-grandknights, and Jean has a quiet self-assuredness that visibly warps the social fabric around him.

There are twenty people at dinner because Rosemary is a huge household. 

Adele's former apprentice, Layla, sits with Adele's current protege Ludmila and Layla's own apprentice Valandi. Jean's former squires, Raoulin and Colyne (both knighted long ago), are engaged in a fierce debate about sports on the other end of the table. Colyne's wife Muriel listens very politely and occasionally interjects. Ludmila's husband Kiallakr is chatting happily with Raoulin's current man-at-arms Fearchar and Colyne's two current squires, Oste and Johannes. Colyne's former squire Sir Lluwelin is explaining melee tactics to Violet (Johannes' partner), next to Arnkatla (Raoulin's wife), who is excitedly telling Flavia (Lluwelin's man-at-arms) about Viking shipbuilding. 

Nicole will be very sympathetic if Sergia can't keep track of the entire family tree straight away.

When Sergia arrives Nicole is standing and explaining the SCA to the waiter, who was very excited to see so many people wearing "funny clothes". About one-third of the household is still in garb. 

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Sergia knows several of these people by face and is able to infer a couple more given the context and who's sitting next to whom, but, what's the Bilbo Baggins quote, she doesn't know half of them half as well as she should like. She's 99% immune to peer fear, but her knight's knight's knight is intimidating enough as a concept and a person that she's nervous anyway. Fortunately there are So Many people at this dinner, so she can get used to being near Jean and Adele and get a sense of how they interact with people from several seats away.

Awwww, yay, there is Explaining To A Surprised Person going on! Explaining to surprised people is a joyous and important duty, and very occasionally you get a newbie out of it. Sergia grins at Sir Nicole and the waiter with an unobtrusive little wave, then heads towards a seat near where it looks like Sir Nicole is planning to sit down and within earshot of the shipbuilding conversation. She'd like to get to know Raoulin and Arnkatla a bit better, Flavia she's already hung out with a fair amount, and also she wants to hear about shipbuilding.

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Arnkatla is a viciously sharp older woman who radiates a certain joie de vivre whenever she is correcting someone's Latin grammar or fixing someone's hair judgementally, but she has more than enough protective warmth to make up for an occasional lack of tolerance for fools. She is in the middle of telling Flavia, "Well, using a rudder instead of a steering oar wasn't possible until changes to ship shapes that made the sternposts straight, which if I remember correctly was sometime in the eleven-hundreds- oh, Sergia! It's good to see you!" 

Flavia had her back to Sergia, but at this she turns around and gets a bright smile on her face. "Sergia! You're here! It's so good you made it!"

Flavia was briefed earlier and told to be normal, but she is ridiculously excited to have a .... squire-first-cousin? squire-cousin-once-removed? same-generation-relation-of-some-kind? She will figure this out later when she is not learning about shipbuilding. 

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