Report on my First Bard Camp (G)

[Raxtull]

Using the new GU forum to shamelessly repost my old stories that previously were posted on the Firiona Vie and W T F Comics forums (I rarely actually finish a story I start, so I have to keep posting the same old ones). Some of you may have seen them before, but they're over a year old, so it's a nice refresher. :)

As always before, but adding here since it's a new forum with an assuredly different readership, I welcome comments. If you don't want to leave one in the thread, feel free to pm me.

[Raxtull]

I was so excited to be going to my first bard camp. I’ve always loved singing since I was little and hoped I could one day become famous. My Mom and Dad would always smile and laugh every time I sang. Seems that now, everyone in Kelethin knows my voice, even the great Sylia Windlehands has praised me, saying my voice was “enough to take the scales off an Iksar.” While I don’t really know what that means, she was smiling when she said it so I’m sure it was a compliment.

Anyway, back to the camp. This was a camp for all first timers, so Sarialiyn Tranquilsong was there to teach us personally. We went out into the Faydark to find a nice place away from town to hold our classes. A lot of times, the fairies came up to listen to us as we practiced our songs. Oddly enough, they always seemed to go away once it was my turn to sing. I guess they were busy and realized they had somewhere to be at the time, which would explain why they flew away so fast. Who really knows with fairies? The wolves, however, would join in with my singing. They’re nice.

I do have to be a bit worried about Ms. Sarialiyn though. It seemed when it was my turn, she’d place these odd white thingies in her ears and put a pair of ear muffs on. I guess maybe she has some kind of infection. I asked my parents if they knew of any medicine to help her, but they just laughed and assured me she would be fine.

There was this one boy at the camp, I don’t remember his name, but he was very rude. First of all, he was talking in some strange dialect. It sounded weird, like it was missing pretty much all vowels. I couldn’t really make out what he said, and he kept getting angry at me for it. One thing I did kinda catch on to was he called me an ‘arrpeer.’ I asked him what that meant and he told me it meant I was a roll player. I told him he was silly, that we don’t start learning how to play instruments until our fifth trip to bard camp, it says so in the curriculum. He seemed to get very mad at me for some reason and ran off in a huff calling me a n-zero-zero-b. Must be something else from his strange dialect.

The only thing I didn’t like about bard camp was the fact I had to learn how to use a sword. I really don’t like the things, but I guess if I am to travel, I have to learn how to defend myself. Hopefully I can join a troupe or a caravan and never have to touch one of the things ever again. I’ll let people who like using those things use them, while I sing them on. I don’t know, it’s just icky, the whole blood thing and insides and stuff. I’d rather not have to deal with it at all that if I can help it.

Sadly, bard camp eventually came to an end. But at least Ms. Sarialiyn pulled me aside personally saying that my voice will be a great inspiration to get some people ready for battle. She also let me know that there will be some songs I will learn that my voice is just perfect for. I greatly appreciated it, though I can’t for the life of me figure out why she was laughing so hard while she was saying it. I guess I really do bring joy into some people’s lives.