Merida was volunteerin’ for the community play.
She’d not had any intent to do so before-- the likes of theatre often too boring and soft for Merida, who already had to memorize enough hymns, chants, songs, vows, and stories on behalf of the Order (women, see, were the “keepers of the Order’s long and storied past.”) She had so much Latin and Gaelic crammed in her brain she hardly needed anythin’ by a playwright nut-job. Not to mention, Merida didn’t sing.
(Merida did sing. She sang to herself in the shower, she hummed, and strummed a guitar her father had gotten for her after her own ceremony at 14. Her voice crackled like lit firewood, smoky and strong. She liked singing. But she’d tear yer eyes out if ye so much as suggested she did.)
But she’d met a boy at the bonfire with a bucket of sparklers and big, loud, ambitious plans. And she thought, to hell with it! Why not join Team Banger?
So she strolled into the theatre, havin’ just signed up at the community’s front desk to get on the crew. The stage rattled with workers, as students and adults alike hammered at planks of wood. There were gatherins’ of actors out in the audience; she wasn’t here for them.
“Oi! Banger! There ye are!” Merida crowed when she spotted that scrawny mite with the dark hair. She skipped on over to him and swiftly walloped him in the arm with her fist. A friendly gesture, course.
“Surprise! I signed up for tech crew! Dinnit think I’d let ye blow up Swynlake’s community center without me, didje?”