the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[neverbeatme]

"I guess we'll see. And I'll take this as a cue to start organizing the fighting knights into an army."

[deepest_magic]

"And I suppose we can see if any of the winged horses want to be ridden into battle when we have more than usual reason to imagine one might happen."

[neverbeatme]

"That would be helpful. Especially if we can get the dwarves to produce decent armour for them... I'll look into it."

[deepest_magic]

"You look really nice in your armor," blushes Isabella.

[neverbeatme]

"Thank you," says James. "It's nice armour. I'm very fond of it. Is there something you want to talk about, here?"

[deepest_magic]

"Um."

[neverbeatme]

"'No' is an acceptable answer, I'm not trying to put you on the spot or anything."

[deepest_magic]

"Is 'yes but not talking about it works for me too if talking about it would be weird' usable?"

[neverbeatme]

"Yes. Would talking about it be weird? I don't think talking about it would necessarily be weird."

[deepest_magic]

"Well, I wouldn't know, you see."

[neverbeatme]

"Wouldn't you?"

[deepest_magic]

"If it would be weird? No, I don't know."

[neverbeatme]

"Well, based on current estimates of projected weirdness levels, what are we going to do?"

[deepest_magic]

Isabella laughs.

"I think me and my notebook are going to go somewhere and I will get back to you?"

[neverbeatme]

"Sure, sounds good."

[deepest_magic]

Isabella sneaks one more peek at James-in-armor and then scurries away.

[neverbeatme]

James decides that while she has the armour on, she might as well go try out learning from the sword in it. So she'll be doing that.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella comes and finds her again about an hour and a half later.

[neverbeatme]

"Hi!" she says, pausing in her imaginary combat.

[deepest_magic]

"Hi. How's it going?"

[neverbeatme]

"Good! I am liking this armour."

[deepest_magic]

"Does it help all by itself?" wonders Isabella.

[neverbeatme]

"Not exactly. But it - gets out of my way. It doesn't get tangled up, it doesn't jam, it doesn't poke, it's lighter than it has any right to be."

[deepest_magic]

"Cool. Um, I did my thinking."

[neverbeatme]

She sheathes her sword. "And?"