"I'd like to lay eyes on Roger and Lucia." Roger was talking when she got him out of the dragon, and there was a Pelican right there*, but she didn't see him again after that, and Lucia was up at the front and Sergia lost track of her when she went up the tree.

*In Sergia's experience, this is enough to consider a problem basically solved until further notice.

"Let's go find -" 

"Nicole, Sergia! I won't be here long, I have -" 

"- to take Fearchar and go track down a dragon, yes, do you have snacks?"

(Oh good, someone is going to track it down so it doesn't pop back up and surprise them a month from now. Possibly that means they're not done fighting today?)

Blink blink. "I wasn't thinking of taking Fearchar, I was actually going to ask - but of course you can't - yes, I've got whatever you need."

From one of his pony's saddlebags Raoulin produces a chunky double chocolate cookie and hands it to Nicole. 

Who immediately gives it to Sergia. "If you don't like cookies, say so, and Raoulin has other things. He's got magic. I don't have cookie summoning magic, because life is very unfair." 

Oh no, is Nicole having to skip chasing the dragon to look after Sergia, that's embarr--oooh food! The sight of a physical cookie is enough to get Sergia's brain aware that it does want food right now actually. "That's really cool, thank you. Do you have water? Mine's, uh, still in the car." She's going to need to start tying her water to her belt or something. Nomf cookie yes good.

Raoulin produces a waterskin - an actual waterskin, not a plastic bottle hiding inside a leather covering - and hands it to Sergia. "You didn't think we had waterbearers for practice battles and not for real ones? There'll be a cart coming round once they hear it's safe. For now borrow this."

While Sergia has her mouth full of cookie and thus presumably can't object, Raoulin also puts an apple and a banana and an entire pickle in her hands. 

Yes, she approves, Sergia should be allowed to go looking for Lucia and Roger once she's consumed all of those things. 

Nicole makes sad, forgotten, betrayed eyes at Raoulin as if nobody has ever given her food once in her entire life - okay yes good she's being handed beef jerky and a clementine. 

Magic food is so cool and water is the tastiest substance ever. Sergia feels so much more herself now. "Thank you Sir Raoulin! So, is the plan for you to find the dragon so we know where it went and then leave it alone, or is there going to be more fighting soon, or are the diplomats going to try again first?"

"Oh tracking down that thing is going to take days, maybe weeks, unless somehow we get Odierne bringing it back to us on a leash. They fly fast. No, you're all going to go rifle through its hoard like a Goodwill fire sale while I'm off hunting, and there will probably be more fighting at a future date."

"Makes sense. What's going to prevent people on the ground from seeing it? I guess if it stays high up people will think it's a plane."

"Oh he's not heading for the city, he'll be going straight to the nearest crossroads and trying to lose us in the feyrealms. He fought us on Atlantian soil and lost, he'll be keen to take us on better terrain. Besides, if some rural farmer tries to tell the news he saw a dragon, they'll laugh him out of the room."

"Makes sense." She doesn't really understand how fey realms work but she can learn more about that later; right now she should stop bothering Sir Raoulin with questions and let him get on with it. "Good luck with finding him quickly."

Nope, Sergia is doing exactly the right thing by bothering him with questions, he's so proud to finally see Nicole adopting someone and he's delighted to help in any way he can.

Before he leaves he produces a large canvas bag and tosses it down. It crunches softly when it falls. "Hand these out for me and report back what people say? Arnkatla's testing a new recipe and I don't have the heart to tell her I don't like gingerbread."

Before either Nicole or Sergia can respond, he's turned invisible and he's off. It'll be faster to find Fearchar again if he's not being stopped for chitchat by everyone who wants to catch up. 

"Do you want company, or do you want to go look for Roger and Lucia on your own? We might get a bit swarmed if we've got a bag of cookies to hand out." 

"I don't mind getting swarmed." Roger and Lucia are the two she feels most responsible for checking on, but they're far from the only people she'd be reassured to see alive. Time to go distribute cookies!

Okay, in hindsight, Nicole was projecting; she was willing to go hand out gingerbread if Sergia needed her to provide moral support, but... she does not want to get swarmed.

She's just tired. She just risked her life quite a few times in rapid succession, she has very mixed feelings about the prince using that flight artefact at all (let alone flying off after a dragon), they didn't even kill the damn thing, and she is pretty sure she's broken a nail - which shouldn't matter even slightly, and sounds like a frankly comedic complaint in the face of dragonfire, but she doesn't get to break nails, she's supposed to be untouchable. This is why one of her favourite things to do after a battle is find a nice spot to sit in absolute silence and look at an interesting beetle or perhaps smell a leaf. 

At no point will it ever be appropriate for a duchess to flop face-down on the floor and simply refuse to move until someone gives her ice cream and plays her an entire episode of The Last Airbender, so she is instead going to very gracefully go and distribute gingerbread. And offer to help the healers, and also attend whatever tactical check-in will doubtless be called by the commanders, and generally be an inspiration to everyone. 

(And she has work tomorrow, doesn't she? Yeah, she has work tomorrow.)

...right now Nicole likes their current location, in the shadow under a tree. Outside the comforting tree-shadow there is lots of noise and emotion and utter chaos.

"If you're sure you don't mind," she says, hesitating, because she really does not want to fail in her responsibility to look after Sergia and make sure she's doing okay and that she drinks more water, "I might let you do that, and I'll take a moment to sit down. I did - quite a lot of dodging around."

(It is excruciatingly painful to admit this weakness right now but if Sergia spends too much time with her then she's eventually going to realise Nicole isn't made of ice. May as well get it over with.)

"Yeah, of course. I'm fine now that I've had a drink and a snack. I'll see you in a bit." 

Everyone deserves to get to sit down for a bit after battles, especially people who were running in and out of melee rather than standing behind cover for most of it. Sergia has retained for queens, and she knows the reason they can look perfect for twelve hours on a ninety-degree campground is because they've got someone holding a parasol over them and passing them water and a nice secluded camp to retreat to. If Sir Nicole is willing to admit to being human in front of her, that's a privilege and Sergia will appreciate it by getting out of the way. She heads off with the bag of cookies in one hand and the pickle in the other, munching the latter like a corn dog because nobody expects her to look fabulous.

If she stares at a leaf and meditates hard enough then maybe her anxiety will go away and she will simply cease to care what anyone thinks about her. This leaf is a good leaf. This leaf has zero expectations of any sort of carefully orchestrated performance from her. 

There's chaos to the post-battle scene, but it's organised chaos. Healers are triaging patients, and quite a lot of their patients are happy to help them triage by only going to the healers after their friends bully them into it. Less-injured people are comparing who has the coolest-looking bruise.

There's something to be said for fighting play battles at medieval reenactment events, as a way of getting people in positive habits. Comparing who has the coolest-looking bruise keeps anyone from thinking that the appropriate thing to do now is to freak out about the terrifying amount of danger and pain and fire that just happened.

Without the distraction of the dragon, the fires are being dealt with fairly rapidly and efficiently by people with appropriate powers. Getting a car this far into the woods wouldn't be possible, but they were prepared to deal with a firebreathing monster and they have handcarts full of water jugs for the use of people with magic water powers. 

The waterbearer carts are starting to arrive now, and people are handing out bottles and pickles and even some popsicles from a cooler. Sergia munching a pickle like a corn dog has a protective effect against the numerous people who would otherwise hand the newbie a water bottle and sternly insist that she drink it.

She does get waves and nods from people she barely recognises as she passes by. "Great job with the veil!" one person says, and fistbumps her before running off. Another person gives her a wave and a, "Nice first battle! Good work out there!" 

Between a couple gear carts and some awkwardly-placed bushes, there's just about enough empty space where nobody's walking that Lucia can swing a sword around.

If Sergia looks for her, she'll see Lucia's shield before she sees Lucia. She has her helmet off, but the rest of her armour still on. The contrast to Nicole couldn't be sharper; Lucia's red in the face, her hair looks like a crime scene, and there are visible dents in her armour. 

"So it's this motion?" Lucia asks Migliorotto, angling her shield upwards as if to deflect dragonfire over her head.

"Steeper angle - the person behind you is usually going to be taller than you, remember. And you control that with your elbow."

"Here?" Lucia returns to her normal fighting stance and then switches to a defensive posture with shield raised, this time kicking the shield corner out with her elbow properly. 

"You're still crouching. Good habit for physical attacks to duck behind your shield rather than lifting the shield, but your job here is to not let the spearman get scorched."

Lucia repeats the motion again. It does feel easier to control the exact angle of her shield when she remembers to use her elbow and not just muscle her fist up. She needs things to be easier right now, because she's exhausted, but her knight literally has silver hair so there's no way she's going to sit down before he does. 

Roger is losing an argument with the healers. He contends that beer contains electrolytes and is therefore an excellent recovery drink. Unfortunately, despite (in his opinion) their lack of any good counterarguments, they have a trump card (his knight said no). Roger is contemplating running away to join the circus. 

Who does Sergia want to look for first?