"That's a pretty good start." Lucia nods slowly. "Yeah, she's exactly the person I go to for advice on adapting technique for me being smaller and... shaped differently to the average Atlantian fighter." 

She might phrase that differently if Roger and Cináed weren't there, but in front of the male fighters she's in the habit of carefully not calling attention to gender, pretending that there's some basically uninteresting and unimportant reason why she's smaller and has to do more strength training and has to shape her armour differently and sometimes has to deal with people being prejudiced and struggles to find herself in the songs they sing about Arthuriana. No pattern to draw attention to connecting those things, nothing to see there, move along. It's not a topic she wants to constantly be drawn into, and she doesn't want her gender to be important to how they see her, and it seems like it makes them more comfortable sometimes. 

(She might be nonbinary, too, but she's tucking that thought away in the back of her mind to be examined however many years down the line when she's done figuring out everything else.)

"I know she's turned people down before, but I don't think she dislikes the idea of having associates, just - wants to make sure they have the right reasons." 

Lucia's still worried that this counts as a bad reason. If she's ever a knight, she'll definitely take the time to help out the junior female fighters with adapting things, but she'd never want to feel that someone was coming to her for advice because of her gender. But she ought to let Sergia talk before jumping to any conclusions about that, and besides she doesn't know Sir Nicole well enough to really know whether she'd object, and really Lucia is reading way too much into the phrase 'people a foot taller than me' which might have not been about gender at all. 

Cináed figured out Lucia's hangups around gender months ago, and is quietly being sensitive about the subject. He leans back and steeples his fingers in type of his face. "Let's back up a second. Before you even think about whether you want to ask Sir Nicole. Are you interested in being a squire? It's a big thing..." Cináed counts the months since he met Sergia on his fingers. "The standard advice is don't even think about this question in your first year, I know you were in Aethelmearc for your whole life before you came to Atlantia though." 

"I've wanted to be a knight since I was about five, yeah, not that I understood anything about what it meant back then. I've wanted to be a squire since . . . more recently than that, but still a long time? I like the idea of having someone teaching me in particular, someone who knows my strengths and weaknesses and cares enough to hold me accountable for improving. Both in prowess and in--all the other things that you can't learn just by fighting ten thousand pickups. Being able to fight well is so so important but it's not the only thing that matters, if it was the only thing that mattered then I'd have as much fun learning karate or something. It's about honor and chivalry and being part of the tradition. And I know that different people have different ideas of what kind of relationship a knight and their squire should have, and if Sir Nicole's idea of it doesn't line up with mine then I won't do it even if she's interested. But--there are a lot of great knights in Atlantia, I don't have to have lived here a year to notice that. But the goal isn't to join the coolest household I can join, it's to become the best knight I can be. And I think learning from Sir Nicole is the way to do that."

Lucia looks around at Roger and Cináed, who both make small gestures of deferral, and sighs. Cináed is probably the best-equipped to handle this tactfully, but he's halfway asleep so it falls to her. She's never tried to give someone The Talk before...

"None of us would dissuade you from wanting to be a knight - I mean, we all want that too. And those are the right things to say, I mean, about caring about honour and chivalry and tradition. Though if you don't want to join a household and have it be a whole thing then you should probably ask someone who isn't old blood Rosemary-"

Roger interrupts to ask, "She's House Rosemary? Since when?"

Cináed sighs. "Since forever, she just doesn't go around in a household tabard 24/7. Her fighting style is literally carbon-copied from Count Raoulin's." 

Roger makes an expansive shrugging gesture and goes back to nursing a drink. 

"The point is," Lucia says, choosing her next words very carefully, "Once you've uh - visibly got a red belt, things change. People will think they can hit you harder, you'll get a lot of worse bruises on the battlefield, people are watching you and you'll be conscious of it whenever you want to, um, turn down a pickup or say you're too tired to help with dishes after dinner-"

There's things Lucia can't say, now, things that aren't her place to say or reveal but she's really trying to give a sense of how seriously she thinks the topic should be taken. "My knight says being a knight isn't something you just are at an event, it's something you have to be all the time, you're supposed to be chivalrous every moment of every day. So you have to be really really sure if you're publicly putting your feet on that path."

"That was not meant as a knock on households, households are great, I don't know a ton of Rosemary people but I bet they're lovely. As for the other thing--I think I'll be okay? If what you're trying to say is that I don't meet the standard expected of squires then okay, I'll just have to work harder until I do, but the expectation doesn't bother me. However good I am, that's how good I am and I should get better. And, well, I can't say I'm looking forward to my first authentic Atlantian concussion," she says with a smile in her voice, "but if I don't like it I'll just have to dodge better." 

"I wasn't saying that! You're really good! You have some awesome reads, honestly, I feel like I can't leave anything open against you because you'll always spot it - I'm just saying, uh, your whole life might change more than you expect. And you should definitely be ready for that and make sure you're not, um, halfway thinking about pursuing this but halfway still tempted to go become a karate champion or something. It's.... a lot harder to change your mind afterwards-" Lucia strains and reaches for a reason she can reveal as to why it's hard to go back- "because people might, uh, gossip a lot if you hand a belt back?"

She already knows it's not going to dissuade Sergia but she feels like she has to say at least some of the pieces of the script that was said to her. 

"I can tell that you're taking this really seriously and that you want me to make good decisions and I appreciate that. But I'm not going to stop wanting this. It's--not my whole life, I have classes and career plans and stuff, but it's a lens I see the whole world through. It's the culture I grew up in. And I can tell that--people who have gone farther down that path than me--take it extremely seriously, and I can tell they're right to, and I expect that when I understand more I'll be the same way." And that's as much as she's going to say right now. She might have said too much already.

Lucia finds that she is too strongly in agreement to be able to say anything negative. "I feel that - about the lens. It's the way I approach my whole life, and it's a way that I aspire to and I couldn't ever stop wanting it if I tried. And I look up so much to everyone who's - chased that dream further than I have, into the places I want to go. And trying to be like them makes me better at everything else, like I would've failed high school math if I wasn't trying to be diligent and faithful and like - pursue excellence in all things and all those words I learned at SCA campfires." 

She realises she's excited to have another comrade who she can talk to about these things, even though she's been trying so hard to be the stern older fighter like the old squires that tried to convince her that squiredom was all about polishing armour and fetching heavy objects and having shoes thrown at them (she knew that was fake, she's never seen anyone throw a shoe at a squire except when the squire thought it was hilarious) and made her stand her ground about it. She's not very good at giving The Talk. "Um, that doesn't mean I necessarily always love everyone though. I've got a squire-cousin I can't stand. Have you met all the people Sir Nicole camps with?" 

"Only the ones who come to events around here, and I should meet the rest! I like most people, especially most SCAdians, once I get to know them, but it's good to get to know them before we're all living in tents right next to each other."

"And I really hear you about the SCA being an inspiration for academics. I could go off on a whole tangent about how thinking about history made me realize I want to go to law school eventually." Hopefully her own lack of math talent won't sink her GPA too much.

"Right, SCAdians are just my favourite people, I don't know what it is about medieval reenactment that is a magnet for people who are so lovely."

Yep, Lucia is bad at this. She wants to say something useful about the dynamics and the added pressure of being part of one of the old households with a million ancient traditions, but she can't figure out a way to say it that doesn't sound like she's complaining about her people. Which she wouldn't ever do. Also, doesn't law school keep people busy - is that going to be compatible with all the secret responsibilities? - but no, that is something Nicole and Sergia can figure out between themselves. 

Cináed is willing to come to Lucia's rescue. "OK, you should probably make a list of things to ask her if you ask her and put that on it - like, whether you're supposed to be super involved with her household."

Cináed muses about the various reasons he's not got a red belt. "There's a bunch of standard warnings - like, don't squire for anyone who seems like they're just collecting squires so they can take credit for them."

"Don't squire for anyone who you wouldn't let crash on your couch, mundanely," Roger adds.

Cináed nods, and adds, "I've heard people say don't squire for someone at the same primary practice as you," though with a wiggly hand gesture that says he isn't sure what he thinks about that advice. 

Roger is willing to be a little less polite. "I don't know, I kind of think that's bullshit."

"What's the worry there, just that you'll see too much of them and not learn as much from other people? I feel like that's the kind of problem where if you both notice it happening you can just agree to stop doing that."

"That, yeah, that you might only pay attention to them and start ignoring everyone else's advice. But also that other people might hesitate to push you too hard or call you out if you're misbehaving if your knight is always right there and they assume that's his - uh, her job. Like - people might not want to beef with you if they think that means beefing with a duchess."

"Ah, yeah, that's a risk. I'd rather--well, ideally I'd rather people not have beef with me, but if they do I'd rather they say it than sit there stewing. And that's a hard thing to get common knowledge about, even assuming Sir Nicole is on the same page about not protecting me too much."

"Yeah, my knight tells everyone to take it up with him if they have a problem with me, and he's plenty comfortable making it clear to me if I fucked up." 

Roger grins. "Yeah, if anything we're all protecting Lucia from Miglio. We're all, hey Lucia psssst you're missing your lanyard, so she can fix it before His Grace starts making her run laps of the field about it." 

Cináed adds, "Or making her bring her pell to war, that's insane-" 

"I told you, he has no opinions about that!" Lucia objects, somewhat defensively. "I do that for me!" 

She turns back to Sergia, changing the subject. "With Sir Nicole... I don't know, I certainly would just tell you if I had beef with you but I think if I had beef with her I would possibly just hide myself under the nearest tarp and wait to die?" She's trying to be humorous but she is genuinely a little intimidated.

A lot of the old fighters are intimidating, but they're scary in ways Lucia knows how to deal with; they're seven feet tall and good with a sword and irritable. She doesn't mind bruises, works her ass off, is meticulous about using everyone's correct titles, and knows they'll forgive her for irritating them when she's next to them in a shield wall. Sir Nicole doesn't even like people using her correct title - she insists on sir even though she's a duchess, which tripped Lucia up the first ten times (until she understood how badly Nicole probably wants to be a duchess by right of arms rather than a duchess by courtesy, and then she remembered). She's intimidating in this cold, perfectly polished and put-together way that makes Lucia feel like she's a clunky mess by comparison. A lot of the Roses are, but Nicole manages to look like she doesn't have a hair out of place even when she's just taken her helmet off, and Lucia is sort of convinced that's only possible with witchcraft. 

"You? No way. If you really believed you were in the right about something and she was in the wrong, you'd say it."

"Okay, yes, I would. I would say it. And then before she could respond I would swirl the tarp around me like a cloak, fall on the ground wrapped in it, and be all, you can't see me! You can't see me! I disappeared! With magic!" 

Sergia cracks up and is laughing too hard to speak for several seconds.

Roger shakes his head. "I think Sir Nicole just hates the cut of my jib, or the way I breathe or something," he complains glumly.

Cináed frowns. "No, she's just - like that. A bit aloof maybe. I think she has to be, with her mundane job. She's not actually mean."

"She's not mean to you," Roger protests. "She once told me I was throwing my wrap wrong and I told her I was throwing it the way Reynhard showed me and then instead of explaining it she just hit me in the inside of my elbow where I've not got any armour fifteen times and the bruise lasted a month-"

"Sounds like you were throwing your wrap wrong," Cináed observes dryly. "And she figured out how to make you listen."

Sergia gets her shit together and sits back up. It sounds like Roger was throwing his wrap wrong but better for Cináed to say that than her. "I continue to not be scared off by any of this." She's not, actually, completely unafraid, but it's not of any of the stuff they're talking about.