BLUE FISH MINGLE

[save_the_souls]

Who: Blue Fish Crew and Visitors!
Broadcast: IF YOU WANT?
Action: SS BLUE FISH
When: After the Shuffle but before Calibrations Plot!

[Well guys it's a new month and there's been some new additions to the crew! So let's check in to see what's going on with the Blue Fish!]

[In other words: GET IN HERE ITS A MINGLE.]

Comments

[dancingmd]

Smallfolk? Who are they?

[summerschild]

... The common folk. People who aren't nobility.

[He suddenly looks a bit embarrassed at making that distinction, and possibly offending somebody.]

[dancingmd]

[Oh well... yes, she was definitely expecting "smallfolk" to be elves or fairies or something.]

I see.

[She considers this for a moment. Commoners have magic but nobility don't? That seems strange to her, compared to what she's heard of other magic realms, so perhaps Westeros is more like her Earth, in that the "magic" was more herbal lore and the like.]

That is very different! But I'm always here to help, or answer any questions you have.

[summerschild]

I'm afraid I have quite a lot of them.

[It's true, sometimes all he does is ask questions. But it's very difficult to understand things here, not when he has so little a frame of reference for them back home.]

But thank you, Doctor Crusher.

[dancingmd]

Oh, that's quite alright. Asking questions is how you learn things, after all!

[summerschild]

That's what my maester used to say when someone complained that I asked too many.

[dancingmd]

Your maester sounds like a very wise person then. Were they your teacher?

[summerschild]

A maester does a lot of things, like teaching and advising, but he can also be a doctor, or a scholar. Maester Luwin called them "Knights of the Mind".

[dancingmd]

Ahh, a real Renaissance Man then.

[Beverly. Come on.]

Right. Sorry, that's a term in my world for people who are knowledgeable in all sorts of skills and subjects.

[summerschild]

Oh. I supposed maesters are a bit like... [He tries out the word.] ... Renaissance Men, then.

[Thinking about it puts a bit of a hole in his chest.]

Maester Luwin used to say that I would be good at it, but I always wanted to be a knight instead. A real knight, not a knight of the mind.

[dancingmd]

[Oh. In her world, his dreams wouldn't be derailed by his physical condition, but in a medieval world of knights and magic... She's not so sure.]

Tell me more about Knights. We don't have them where I come from, you see.

[summerschild]

They fight in battle, and follow a code of nobility. They protect their king or queen.

[dancingmd]

So you want to protect people, and your home. That sounds like a noble goal to me.

[summerschild]

I want to help my brothers. They're both away fighting. And I want to save my sisters, and bring them back home.

[Though that would require having a home, but Beverly will get that story another time. So far, only Ino knows.]

[dancingmd]

[Oh. A war, then, of some sort, it sounds like.]

I'm sorry, that your family cannot be together. You must miss them terribly.

[As much as she misses Wesley, at least it's not like this, not because of a war.]

[summerschild]

I do. It's been a very long time since we were together.

[Two years, by now. He was seven when he last saw his father and his sisters. They would nearly by women grown now.]

[dancingmd]

[She reaches across the table and lightly touches his arm, for just a moment, not entirely sure how he feels about such physical reassurances.]

I hope you find one another again.