I am currently rereading, "Land of Fire" to get my headset in the right place to start writing the sequel next week.
I've got to the entrance of the irrepressible Brodie, and have been enjoying it so much I thought you might like to have a read of it too.
Enjoy!
Perry hung up his fifth cheesecloth shirt in a row, and above
this line of dripping hippydom an apparition leapt into view from around the
side of the house. It had wild, fine, orange hair that blew out like a halo
about its head, a blunt, jolly face, forearms like orange-furred treetrunks, a
broad, naked, furry chest, and it wore a kilt and nothing else.
The apparition’s
name was Brodie Mac Brodie, and the last time Perry had seen him was at a
medieval event in Sydney, where he had been the best fighter on the day, as he
usually was, which had included thrashing Perry’s arse from one end of the Eric
to the other. Brodie and Perry went way back, back to their early teen years at
least, and they had always been friends.
“M’Lord Peregrine!”
Brodie roared, and swept a flashy bow that left his hair even more excited than
before.
Not big on fast
reactions, Perry was still standing behind his shirts, peg in hand and mouth
agape. A larger-than-life Australian Highlander in your backyard didn’t happen
every day, not even to Perry. He scrambled for his wits and ducked under the
washing to come give Brodie a hug.
“Bloody hell!” Perry
groaned as he was hugged back (groaned because all the air was being crushed
out of his chest). “What are you doing in Perth, you mad bugger?”
“I’ve come to stay
with you of course,” Brodie answered, looking not at all offended at being
called a mad bugger, probably because he was one. “Well, that and I wangled a
short short-term contract over here. Going to have my arse in the river of gold
for three months! Two weeks on the rig, one week off, which I want to spend
every minute of with you!”
Perry can be
forgiven for looking dismayed for just a second before he managed to get that
welcoming smile back on his face: Brodie Mac Brodie, whose real name was lost
to the mists of childhood, and perhaps these days only seen on those oil rig
contracts and the like, was as bad as Perry’s parents for living what was to
most people only a hobby. He was Mad Medievalist incarnate, an odd thing to
find in an Electrician, but there you have it.
“What’s the local
group like?” he asked, and Perry needed no further explanation to know that he
was asking about the local members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, or
SCA, which back in Sydney filled Brodie’s life as well as providing him with a
family.
“I don’t actually
know,” Perry had to admit. “I came over here to be normal for a while.”
“What’s normal, my
friend?” Brodie asked, and gave some mysterious, probably bare, area under his
kilt a good scratch.
“Not kilts as
streetwear, that’s for sure,” Perry rejoindered, “and not spending all your
social life poncing around in tights.”
“Neither you nor I
wear tights, unless you’ve changed your persona,” Brodie answered happily, “and
kilts are fashionable. Come help me get my gear off your front lawn. The taxi
guy wanted to leave in a hurry.”
“Saw your weapons or
something, did he?”
“My helm, actually,”
Brodie said, and grinned a lunatic grin. “I’ve got a new one.”
The new helm proved
to be polished steel with a particularly scary stylized face on it, although,
as Perry pointed out, it wasn’t as scary as Brodie’s own mug when he got going.
They lumped all of
Brodie’s gear into the house; his small case of clothing, his large bag full of
rattan weapons, his huge trunk full of armour, and the heavy, scary helm. All
of it went into Perry’s spare room, which was also his junk room.
Brodie professed
himself happy with the old mattress on the floor amongst the piles of Perry’s
old computer components and his multitude of stacked books, and dropped his
gear randomly in any available space.
“Now,” he told
Perry, “we get pissed together!”
