Finger guards are for whiny children who will never learn to really - oh right the priests here don't have healing.

Joy has a whole box of finger guards and arm guards! She finds some that she thinks will fit Iomedae.

"This straps to your arm, like this," she says, and gestures to her own left arm. Her own arm guard is a gorgeous red-stained leather bracer with a depiction of various phases of the moon in white along its length. The one she offers Iomedae is a plain black plastic with some nylon-web straps. "So the string won't hit you." 

"The finger guard protects these fingers so you don't get nerve damage." She shows Iomedae the much smaller fingerguard which slides onto the first three fingers of her right hand. 

Iomedae doesn't know what nerve damage is but it is obvious why, if you can't have a priest channel at the end of the day to help the skin regrow when you've fired several hundred arrows and your whole hand is bloody, you'd want these objects. She will put them on. 

"Here! This is a loaner bow. It's about eighteen pounds of draw weight. I'll go get you arrows."

Joy finds Rembrandt and confirms that she can give Iomedae arrows, which prompts him to open the range. He waves over a voice herald, who faces the rest of the event and bellows in a voice like a trumpet: "OYEZ, OYEZ, GOOD GENTLES! THE ARCHERY RANGE IS OPENING NOW!"

Rembrandt steps up to a position at the end of the line where he can supervise everyone, and Joy trots back to Iomedae holding six black plastic arrows with neon yellow and pink fletching.

"Alright, Iomedae, I'll give you one arrow at a time for now if you're ready?" Joy asks, because she's still a little nervous about the non-English-speaker who objected to the rule about not shooting people. 

Iomedae is examining her bow. It looks very odd and bends oddly, which makes sense because Americans are good at producing things. She probably can't assess whether it's a good bow without actually firing it. 

"One arrow at a time," she agrees. "Ready."

With a little bit of trepidation, Joy hands Iomedae one arrow and gestures at the range. "Pick whatever target you like," she says. "The sheep and the big star are both good for beginners." 

It's a new bow; her aim isn't going to be very good on the first shot even if it's a good bow, which she's really feeling rather unsure of. It definitely doesn't seem like you could kill a real sheep with it.

Drawing the bow makes it apparent it is a child's bow, the kind you'd start a five year old on. She tries not to feel insulted. When she has demonstrated that she is competent on the baby targets they will perhaps allow her to shoot at the more distant targets and then maybe she can tell them that she can use a man's weapon. 

She nocks the arrow and draws the bow and fires it, mostly all in one motion. The shot is wide of the sheep's eye where she was aiming. (She shoots like someone trained to fire a longbow, using her whole back; it's not good form for modern target shooting but it's very recognizable.)

"Good job, sweetie!"

"It's okay if you want to take a second to aim before you fire!" Joy says encouragingly while handing her the second arrow. She is quite focused on passing her Marshal In Training requirements and not noticing anything about Iomedae's form; she was mostly watching to make sure that her feet were either side of the required line and she did not point the arrow in any banned directions. 

With the toy bow and stationary targets, sure, but it's a bad habit. "That a rule, ma'am?"

"...no, not a rule so long as you're not being careless. I will make it a rule if I think you are not in control enough to be safe." 

"Not a rule, you will tell me if a rule," she says, so she can be corrected if she misunderstood. Rules are a serious matter.

She nocks the next arrow and draws and fires again. The second shot's better than the first but still not good; she is unselfconscious about this. Even her father, who is a good archer, needs a few shots on a new bow to learn its inclinations. 

It probably doesn't help Iomedae that the cheap plastic newbie-loaner arrows tend to warp and wriggle as they fly! 

Joy hands her a third arrow. 

Rembrandt, who is standing at the end of the line without many archers to watch yet, has a slightly quizzical frown on his face. He crosses his arms. 

It would be very frustrating if she cannot prove herself competent to use a men's weapon because the women's arrows literally do not fly straight but Iomedae'll have to fire a few more arrows before she concludes it's not just a skill issue.  

The third shot's only a little off the sheep's eye. It'd probably kill the sheep if it was a real sheep, but her brother would make fun of her for her poor hand. And for hunting sheep in the first place. 

Hitting the target would prompt Joy to hand over the other three arrows under normal circumstances, but Iomedae firing without really looking first has Joy convinced that that was beginner's luck, and she's still concerned about what Iomedae said earlier. She will hand over one more arrow with a cheery grin and a, "Nice shot!" 

Center of the star, then? ...off-center. She is not going to complain about the arrows, that'd be poor sportsmanship, but she is starting to suspect the arrows. What if she fires approximately the exact same shot again?

Joy hands over the fifth arrow so that Iomedae can attempt that. The arrows might wriggle enough to put her shot off-centre, but if she shoots with good form she'll still hit somewhere near the middle of the target. 

There's a few other archers stepping up to the line, but they're all taking much more time about their shots than Iomedae. Some are clearly warming up and stretching lazily between each shot. 

Warming up is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but once you're warmed up you want to practice the way you'll fight, which in Menador is 'shoot at a charging beast until it's close'. Good archers can draw a real men's bow to the arrow's full length and fire in as long as it takes to say 'dragon!'

 She shoots the fifth arrow with the same motion and hits a hand's breadth off her fourth.

"Last arrow!" Joy warns as she hands the sixth one to Iomedae. "Deep breath, make sure it counts!" She's still suspicious that Iomedae's lack of English proficiency is responsible for her thinking that she needs to fire off the arrows as soon as she's handed them. 

Oh. A tiny taste with a child's bow of being a real person again and then - she should have clarified whether she could get more arrows somehow. She should have argued more about the baby targets and the baby bow -

- no. They are being generous. The proper comparison here is what she thought she was doing all day, which was serving at the armor table, and she should be grateful that someone took the time to purchase a bow for babies and some plastic arrows so that people who cannot afford a real bow or real arrows can still know the joy of doing real things, and she should not be desperately conniving to get more when people are already generous. They told her what they want from her; they want her to have a nice time. Let them have their act of charity and generosity, don't demand more from it. 

"Thank you!" she says to Joy, and takes the last arrow, and aims for one of the distant targets since they did say any target was allowed. She still doesn't hold for more than a fraction of a second at draw; she does angle the bow upwards, this target being distant enough it matters.

The wind catches the arrow a little more on the longer flight, and the arrow's flex takes it a little more off-target, but Iomedae still manages to put the arrow cleanly through the ear of the painted foam gargoyle some forty yards away - just about the maximum range that the low-draw-weight bow would be able to send an arrow at all. It's hardly a killing shot, but it's impressive to hit it at all. 

Joy cranes her neck to peer down the range, uncertain where the arrow went. Maybe Iomedae saw it? Probably off into the long grass? "Okay, that's your six! Now we wait until everyone else is done before you can retrieve the arrows."

They will be waiting a while, because while everyone else is also limiting themselves to six or eight arrows, everyone else is taking much longer about shooting them. 

(Rembrandt wants to talk to Iomedae. He just can't, because his job right now is to watch the entire line.)

Iomedae saw the shot, and it hit, but it's fair for Joy not to be very impressed by nocking a target on the ear at forty paces. "He says light," she says cheerfully, of the quality of the hit on the gargoyle, and then she'll patiently wait for everyone else.

Once Joy manages to spot the bright pink fletching hanging out of the gargoyle's ear, she lets out a very delayed snort of laughter at that line. "So he does." 

Eventually Rembrandt calls loudly, "Last arrow!" and then, after a few more archers loose, "Bows down! Hold! Retrieve arrows!" 

Joy will walk with Iomedae to collect the arrows from the sheep, and show her how to retrieve them properly. "You hold it near the arrowhead, like this. If you hold it out near the fletching, you might snap it." She puts her boot against the sheep to yank out the arrow and hands it back to Iomedae. "See if you can find all six. Yours have the pink and green feathers." She points carefully to the two relevant colours as she says 'pink' and 'green'. 

Then she'll run off to consult with Rembrandt, who is supposed to be supervising her and who she wants to ask about the protocol for newbies who don't seem to want to aim at all before they send lethal objects flying through the air. 

Iomedae can absolutely find all six of her pink and green plastic arrows, saving the one that hit the gargoyle for last. The plastic arrows are actually more durable than she expected; you break a lot of arrows at the range. Where Iomedae grew up there was a travelling man with a bit of magic who fixed them.

The plastic arrows are used because they're cheap, but it also helps that they're a little sturdier than the wooden ones. 

When Iomedae returns to the line, Joy is standing in Rembrandt's place, having been instructed that she should take a turn at making all the calls while he supervises. Rembrandt is digging around in an entire box stuffed with quivers, each containing twelve to twenty arrows - hundreds of arrows total. He approaches Iomedae with six in hand, smooth grey ash shafts with crow-feather fletching. 

"You've shot before." It isn't a question.