#talbury

She shows Ms. Braque, who's hot—"Please, call me Lon.  When your parents will name you London there's not much you can do with that," she says, with a wry twist of her lips—all the sights.  Merchants' Row, and the tents where the classes happen, and the campsite where she and the girls hang out when they're not kicking ass.

"What's this?" Lon says with interest, gesturing to the blue and green fan taking up half the table.

"Oh, that's Kiriko's peacock feather fan."  Charlie picks it up and collapses it carefully.  "It belonged to her grandmother.  She says it's her good luck charm.  Pretty far out of period, but so much style.  Can you blame her?  She doesn't carry it to fight, of course, just to parties and things.  And she always forgets to put it away."

She sets the fan down and checks her watch.  "Hey, speaking of fighting, if we head to the hay wagon stop now we can catch a ride to a great place to watch the field battle.  It's something to see."

"Of course," Lon says smoothly, adjusting her purse.  "Lead the way."

The wagon ride's bouncy, but Lon doesn't seem to mind if Charlie leans into her a little as they navigate the curves.  When they get to the overlook, Charlie grins, but she can’t help sighing.

"Fuck yeah, we’re just in time.  It's about to start.  And if you look over there you can see my girls.  Viola Brigade.  That's Kiriko in the turquoise lamellar."

"Interesting," Lon says, leaning forward and watching as the charge quickly degenerates into many individual clumps of fighting.  "And how do you decide who wins?"

"Well, on an individual level, there's the marshals.  They're kinda like umpires.  For the whole thing ... it's complicated.  Here, the rules are in the site book.  They can make you a copy at troll.  Uh, check-in."  Charlie sighs.  "I wish I was down there getting my smash on.  Oh well.  There's always next year."

Lon’s lips tighten, as if Charlie’d brought up something better not mentioned in polite company.  "Yes, indeed.  Well, better luck next year."  She stares out toward the horizon.

Hesitantly, Charlie puts a hand on her arm.  "Are you okay?  I can take you to get some first aid, if you need it?"

Lon shakes her head, and the pleasantly curious look is back on her face, like a mask.  "Just thinking about my deadline.  Can't forget that."

"Okay.  Well, uh ... if you've seen enough here, I could maybe take you around to the lake, show you the swimming hole?  The classic swimming hole's clothing optional."  She looks at the reporter hopefully.  "It's the best way to cool off, and you get a lot of local color."

The reporter smiles briefly.  "I really should be going, I'm afraid.  But thank you for telling me about it.  Can you tell me the fastest way to get back to the parking area?"

"Sure.  The, uh, swimming hole's kinda on the way," Charlie says coaxingly.  

Lon laughs a little.  "All right.  A brief stop."

The reporter stares briefly at the flowing water and the play of the sunlight, and the shouting and laughing people cooling off.  Charlie's not sure what she's seeing, but it's probably not the mostly naked people.

After a few minutes, she turns to Charlie, and holds out her hand.  "Thanks for your help, Ms. Bradbury.  If it's any consolation, if the circumstances were different and I had more time, I'd be happy to go swimming with you.  Enjoy the rest of your war."

"Uh, sure.  Good luck with your article."  Charlie watches her go, and then shrugs to herself.  Nobody has a 100% conversion rate.

A few minutes later, though, she has to stop herself from running, no, walking after her.  "Wait, I didn't tell her my last name.  So how—"

She's back in camp and telling Marisa about it a couple hours later when Kiriko comes out of her tent, frowning.

"Hey, have you guys seen my fan?  I can't find it."

"Yeah, it's right—shit.  It was right here on the table."

"Yes.  I have the fan.  It will be on its way to you as soon as I confirm receipt of your final payment."  Bela drives down the interstate.  Her buyer doesn't need to know that she examined it thoroughly, and that it didn't do a bloody thing for her and probably won't do a bloody thing for his medical problem, either.  He paid her to acquire and deliver it, and she has.  She'd hoped, though, that something with its reputation, and with the peacock's mythic links to Lilith, would be of use to her.  But once again, it's nothing but a dry well.

"Very good.  I'll see you in three days, then.  I'll call to confirm.  Goodbye."

The event where Charlie is camping is loosely based on the Pennsic War.  I researched some things and took artistic license with others.  The clothing optional status of the classic swimming hole (shown in an unoccupied state there) is/was a real thing.

Bela is canonically a year older than Charlie.  There are a million different ways they might have hypothetically crossed paths.

Since you don’t just instantly become a major player in a LARP, I like to headcanon that Charlie had some experience with re-enactor style combat that wasn’t Moondor.  Hence this.

"SCA Gal - Daydream" by Carsten Tolkmit from Kiel, Germany. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons (hair color modified).

Ren Faire photo by Jon Sullivan. 

Girl by the water photo by Paolo Neo.  (Hair modified.)

"CastleFeverPeriodCamp" by Jonathunder - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

“Pennsic Field Battle 2006″ by Room237 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

Peacock fan and photo photo from the McClung Museum.