Folks, it’s that time of the month again: the Drollerie Press Blog Tour! This time around our topic is summer, and I’m hosting Cindy Lynn Speer, the author of The Chocolatier’s Wife and other works. Y’all say hi! Cindy has the following to say about her post:
I am working on a new book, so Minerva Corvae, one of my main characters, wants to take over today’s blog post.
She’s a summer girl. And now I shall tell you why…and try to explain why I’m now a summer girl, too.
Enjoy!
Minerva tilted her head to the sun. Summer was her favorite time of the year…it wasn’t always so, it used to be that fall, then winter, were her favorites, the chance to stay inside and be warm and snuggly and read, but now, when the weather was warm enough to go outside and stay outside, she had only one thought on her mind: that it was time to play with swords.
Right now she was standing in a doublet made of three layers of fairly thick fabric, a white, long sleeved shirt, knee high boots and two skirts. The wind was sieving itself through the front of her fencing mask, cooling her face a tiny bit, her sword and dagger were comfortable in her hands. She didn’t really notice that it was warm anymore…her hands did not feel hot in her gloves, she didn’t feel the sweat soaking into the sheep-skin lined leather gorget around her neck. She was just waiting for someone to call the lay on so she could walk over to the man dressed in green and red motley and see if she was right about his weakness in his sword arm. She thought that he was leaving it behind, a bit, not committing himself fully to his thrust, and she was curious to see if she’d judged this correctly.
She could fence fine, inside. She was used to the slickness of tile floors, and to be honest, temperature control was nice, as was the lack of glare. But fencing outside was where it was at. If it was balmy or overcast, it was heaven. If it was raining just a little, then the rain drops would work their way through the fencing mask to her skin, a welcome, cooling kiss. As soon as the weather warmed, she was looking for events, planning where to go, excited to be outside, excited to feel her fencing getting just a tiny bit better each time, preparing for the big medieval encampment at the end of summer, where scores of fencers from all over the world would face each other across the battle field…
The lay on was called, and she paced forward. A fencer from the other team joined the man in the motley, so she hung back until she had a friend with her. The four fencers met, and she managed to angle a shot in over his arm while she parried the other fencer’s blade with her dagger, and the shot went over the arm and became a thrust to the belly. Theory proved right. Just shows that the guy who thinks he’s teaching me to fence knows what he’s talking about…yet again.
She “died” a couple moments later…a hit to the mask…and she went back to the resurrection point, tapped her sword on the tree there, and grabbed some water before heading back. As she was drinking, she watched the other fencers, feeling contentment and peace. “Fencing is the best thing in the world,” she said to one of her friends, thrusting the gallon jugs of water in his hands as he came off the field, and she went back to pretending to kill people.
