Hearth and Home 1106 - There's Something in the Water

Friday
The Lions mainly arrived together after a leisurely walk from the circle. We got in a bit before Jutah - the advantage of not having a steady job, I guess - and so I went to find some crash space and dump my stuff. I found that Kianan had given Jutah and I a private room of our own, which was pretty sweet of him.

When we arrived the rest of the Lions all huddled together round a table. I found myself excluded from the group so I wandered off to find someone else to talk to. There were various interesting things around the room - etches of the McAylwyns and rules for various bar games and stuff like that, and I ended up talking to Callum McAylwyn, who was the foreman who'd organised the pub building. I started fishing for business, since it's always nice to work somewhere different.

This ended up with Megiddo, Callum, Cosaint and myself discussing dovetail joints and whether they could really be as annoying and footery as I said they were. Cosaint, with his irritatingly good memory, started reciting dangerous periods of my life with dovetail joints as the main antagonist. I was quite glad when the conversation turned to something else.

I spent a pleasant evening wandering around talking to people randomly, it was pretty relaxing. I found out about the different clan cultures between Caledonia and Avalon. Because I'm the eldest woman of the blood Sena R'Ios, some Bears started treating me like I was the head of a clan. Which is technically accurate, but doesn't really mean the same as it does in Caledonia. Lannister MacAylwyn explained that in Caledonia you don't count as a clan unless you own land, which made classifying the Sena R'Ios a little more complicated.

There were sign up sheets for various competitions. Jutah mentioned that he was thinking of signing up for the entertainer's competition with some offensive poetry he'd thought up, so I signed him up. He decided to go for it.

Jutah asked me about the archery competition. I wasn't convinced - I'm still not very good - but he bet me a copper that I'd beat him so I kinda had to enter. I had to explain this Teutonian custom to the other Lions, who mainly thought it seemed a good idea if a bit strange. Cara was the only other person who'd signed up for it so it could be an all-Lion tourney, though apparently one of the Bears clans has a lot of archers so we presumed they'd just forgotten to sign up.

Kianan announced various other plans for the weekend, including a competition to steal a "tail" from everyone. The Lions immediately decided to assist Ivory to win this (I'm not sure if Ivory got a choice in this) and so we stole each others' tails to give to her before attempting the slightly harder task of stealing them from people who weren't on our side.

Other competitions included Pin The Tail On The Laird, a treasure hunt, and singles and doubles fighting tourneys - the first being based solely on hand-to-hand ability, the latter on any relevant abilities you could call to mind. Adara was irked that the ritual circle was so far away, as she had a cunning plan to use her skill to win the doubles tourney.

Jutah kept saying something to me in the Rus language, which he wouldn't translate but assured me it was a compliment. Since the only Rus I've ever picked up is how to say "I'd like to go home, please" (Ya hochoo idyot ver domya, spaseba, for the record), I had no idea what he'd said. Which was frustrating, but it sounded impressive anyway.

Saturday
The archery tournament was set for the inhuman hour of eleven in the morning, but with the sun shining through our window we managed to get up in time. Just in time to find out that the clan people had mentioned earlier, the Bruids, had indeed decided to enter but weren't out of bed yet. Which was entirely understandable, and it seemed reasonable to wait.

We met Mandrake Darkendale and Callum again up at the area where there was a practice archery range set up, alongside quits, horseshoe throwing, a target range and haggis hurling. We played around for a while, then Callum challenged us to play for money - the wager was a copper, and if you beat Callum then you got a little carved leather token. Technically you could swap them for prizes, but they were nice enough that we didn't really want to. We had a game each. Mandrake won the horseshoe throwing easily and I managed a win on the "throwing balls at targets" game, but Jutah got unlucky on the quoit throwing and Callum just scraped a win.

Kianan came up to tell us that the fighting tournaments were just about to start so we went down to the arena area, Jutah to enter the singles and me to watch from the side since I'm not that heavily armed or armoured. I might have entered if I'd heard in advance how it was being done - as we were using the flats of the blade it wasn't fight until you fall over, but rather fight to five strikes and you didn't have to stop after each hit. In some ways I think that works better and we were interested to see how it went. Jutah and I settled down on the grass to watch, and I ended up falling asleep.

When I woke up, King Rhino was standing over me. Which was odd, and slightly worrying in case there's something wrong with Avalon. He was acting strangely too, wouldn't say much, just wanted to talk to Adara. Then he suddenly stopped being Rhino at all, but Jutah. It felt very much like I was still dreaming, and would probably have been less embarrassing if that had been the case.

Queen Blodwyn came over to explain that this had been happening to a few people - they'd fallen asleep and then woke up hallucinating, and that it was possibly linked to some dreams I'd been having as everyone it affected had had odd dreams over the last two days. The night before I'd dreamt that Erienne, Caoimhe and I had robbed the bank, but the night before that I'd had a depressing dream about being a bard sitting in hearth and home writing event reports for centuries as all my mates got old and died, which Blodwyn reckoned was more likely to be relevent.

I found Kianan and warned him that if I got possessed again, Tope would be very annoyed, though I didn't mention that it was probably me she'd be annoyed with. Luckily, no further weirdness happened to any of the loads of people who the hallucinations happened to.

That minor excitement over, we hadn't missed the start of the tournament. It was pretty well organised, with everyone fighting two bouts in each round. The Lions did pretty well - Jutah won one and lost one, but Luxor and Jerusalem won both of theirs, and Meggido got through by being the highest scoring runner up. Jerusalem made it to the finals but was eventually beaten just in time to team up with Luxor for the doubles.

They decided that given that very few Bears use any weapon but swords and knives, the Kerrimanian tabards would be a bit unsporting, and still did well without them until Jerusalem had to drop out from exhaustion. Jutah and I were surprised to see how few people were using spells or healing powers in the fights. It would be interesting to see such a tournament in the Lions to see how it would be different.

After that the archery tournament actually took place. The first half was a contest of speed, the next half was a contest of range, and if different people won each they'd work out a tie break. I knew I'd be dreadful at the speed shooting - mine is not a bow designed for speed - and I got the worst score, but Jutah won comfortably. I was annoyed at myself at the distance shoot - I comfortably made the first distance, but the second, which even most of the Bruids had difficulty with, I missed the target because I overcompensated for the first arrow being slightly off to the right. I was very irked.

The tie break was shot at the very edge of the range Jutah's bow could do, which was a shame as it gave the other guy, one of the Bruids, a clear advantage. Since he was a great shot anyway, it would have been nicer for both if it was a more even contest. Either way, the Bruid guy won and Jutah owes me a copper for losing the bet.

The rain came on just after the tournament - good timing, really, but it dampened enthusiasm for the wide games. Still, enough people were up for it that three teams were mustered, with the Lions putting together one, the Bruids being in another, and the McFooks in a third, There were of course other Bears in the teams too, but I'm not great at recognising clans and the Bruids and the McFooks were the only ones I saw that I was sure of.

Jutah and I went off to dump my bow in my room, and when we got back there were a good deal fewer people in the pub. Adara explained that a couple of pirates had come in, offered to lead people to find buried treasure, then done some weird magical effect to make them vanish, then announced that they didn't know where our friends had gone and had no way of bringing them back anyway.

Adara and I did the needful, though as she didn't have any blunt weapons Bethanie then did the healing which had suddenly become necessary to ensure that we had both prisoners for longer than ten minutes. The captain claimed that the other guy, the unconscious one, had a scroll hidden in his crotch, so Ivory and Adara cut his clothes off to check. Unsurprisingly, his enthusiasm for hiding things safely hadn't overcome his fear of papercuts, and Adara assures us that he had nothing of interest in his crotch. They kept the pirates prisoner until the treasure seekers came back, and Jutah and I went looking for the wide game teams to let them know.

There wasn't much anyone could do, but we thought we should let people know and we got a lovely wander in the woods out of it anyway. The Lions team had made a great litte fort out of a hut and some benches they found, the entrances being guarded by a shieldwall on one side and a nettle patch on the other, and when we found the Bruids' camp then Gonrell Bruid offered us fruit. We took the scenic route back to the pub and it was a very peaceful and genuinely nice walk. Which is rare in Erdreja.

The treasure seekers returned, having found treasure, so we let the pirates go to find their ship and, in one case, replacement trousers. Then not a lot happened until the ceileigh.

Many people got changed for the ceileigh, particularly the girls, but a lot of guys smartened up as well. Cosaint had a new black and yellow swirl jacket, which looked pretty dramatic, and Aldous borrowed my CK sash so he was still wearing unit colours while Elrood had had a whole black and red velvet dress uniform made. Adara had a flowing red velvet dress that was very elegant, Ivory's was a stylish dark blue, and Elenor McAylwyn had been suggested (possibly at knife point) that she'd look good in a dress too. Which she did.

Void Lance had of course spent so long travelling and having to adapt to local customs that none of them were phased by donning the kilt for the evening - Lochlan would have been proud. Dalziel did too, though I'm not entierly sure why he went for the McAylwyn tartan instead of the Douglas.

Myself, I'd decided after much deliberation that I might as well make an effort and so I had a reasonably practical white dress that I'd spent ages trying to keep clean and still somehow had a mud splash on the sleeve by the time I got downstairs. I got quite a lot of comments and was reasonably embarrassed by most of them, though Lex's "Bloody hell Robin, you are a girl after all" was not the most flattering. He was on form with his diplomatic comments that evening, leading to him being threatened if he hit on or hit at the Blodwyn. He also thumped Tirel, I'm not sure why.

The dancing was fun, though I was glad the Douglas brothers had given us lessons in advance. I had a swirly skirt competition with Lio'Ara and was surprised to see that my skirt went horizontal when I spun - I was glad I had an underskirt on too. Luxor was impressed at the skirt when we danced the Gay Gordans though, so I guess it must have looked impressive. I didn't get a chance to dance with half the people I wanted to, partly because Jutah was such a good dancer and partly because I was wearing a stupid corset which meant I got out of breath far more easily. Dresses really are impractical.

The ceileigh finished and Coasint kicked off the entertainer's competition with a rendition of "I Hate You" which the Bears truly took into their hearts - I thought the singing would never stop, and it restarted every time anyone there was a lull in the conversation. Cosaint looked impressed, and mildly scared.

There were a good many entrants in the competition - Jutah had forgotten he'd agreed to it, but still put on a pretty good performance - and there were lots of songs I didn't know which is always nice. Cosaint premiered an elegy he'd written for Lochlan which was possibly more in Lochlan's style than in Cosaint's but that worked, and it was nice to see how many Bears remembered Lochlan as fondly as the Lions do.

The Orkneyjar Marine Corps did a very bouncy song about David McSnaga's death and subsequent raising, with audience participation in the form of a conga. Adara was very pleased to be able to jump in front of the conga and claim it as her unliving horde, and Luxor shambled with great enthusiasm. Lex challenged David McSnaga to a drinking competition at the Games, which seems a little unfair on the etherial guy. Byzantium performed a tale about a cockrel and a fox which he did with great style and drama, and Luxor persuaded me to sing the Widow's Moor with him. Not really to enter seriously, but just to get a go of singing.

Overall the song went down well, apart from the naked bloke. Mat McFinn decided to streak towards the end, which is a form of audience participation I wasn't expecting. It's possibly a good thing I wasn't wearing my usual outfit as my automatic response in being charged at by someone is to get ready to attack, but as was pointed out he didn't have any form of weapon either so it wouldn't have been fair - though in his defense, it was a little chilly. Would have been more so if Lament had reacted faster - he almost got hit with a Freeze spell.

Other than the naked bloke it was quite a romantic evening as many, many couples got together - as well as Jutah and I, Nazareth and Dalziel paired off, as did Adara and Megiddo and Jerusalem and Elenor, and Lex pulled too. We theorised that there was something in the water, but Ivory checked and it was just the usual - fish, ancestors and slimy green stuff.

Sunday
On Sunday I was one of the later Lions to wake up, and came down to the pub to find most of the faction talking nonsense. We'd been joined by a guy called Brennan, who's life so far had been summed up rather succinctly by Lio'Ara as "Bimble, bimble, bimble, sploosh, yay!".

As far as I can tell, he fell in the sea and now hangs out with a sea ancestor called Manan. Or Mananan. Or Mananananan, it got longer every time people said it. Still, there was a cheerful song that people used to invoke his name. We decided that evil does in fact have a purpose in Erdreja - we talk some amount of nonsense when there's nothing attacking us. Worse than usual.

Mananan turned up with the team who'd won the wide game, who'd gone with him to find magic conch. It was a pretty nice magic conch, and unlike the Lions' one you could blow it like a horn, too. He wasn't a desperately powerful ancestor - he had to ask me to cast a Shatter spell as it was beyond his power - but he was reasonably nice and he did have a cheery theme song.

They announced the winners of all the various competitions - the Lions had done pretty well, with Ivory winning the tails competition by a clear mile (56, the next nearest entry was 17); Cara winning pin the tail on the Laird; Byzantium won the entertainer's competition and Nazareth won the story writing. And so we headed back to Lantia having achieved the impossible: a relaxing social weekend.

 

All Works are © Original Author

(OC Author - Marianne Wells)