Attention-Deficit Roleplaying

"No. Not her."
As Johnny English was speaking to the guard, Bough noticed something very important and rushed over to tell Johnny. "Sir!"
"Not now, Bough I'm busy setting this imbecile's mind at ease."
"No, Sir, it's about the-"
"It can wait a few more minutes, Bough! If I don't get the facts straight, a royal rumor is likely to start spreading."
Clearly frustrated, Bough insisted "If you don't listen to me, Pascal is going to get away and we'll have a Royal Frenchman on the throne!" With that, Bough quickly turned Johnny around to see Pascal's car headed off down the road.
"Let's go." Johnny finally relented

When they caught up with Pascal, they found him at a Scottish renaissance festival, prancing through the streets with a midget at his side, singing and telling everyone he met, "We can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind. Because your friends don't dance and if they won't dance, well they're no friends of mine!"
 
Musicians were playing nearby: a bagpipe-plus-guitars-and-singing band called The Rogues, which had been performing at the Maryland Renaissance Festival in 2005 when Copperfox had come there with his then-new wife Janalee.
 
Taliesin the legendary celtic bard had somehow time-warped into the present day Scottish renaissance festival. He sat down beside his old friend Sadko of Novgorod as they listened to the Rogues' music. "It's good to see you again, my old friend."
 
"The same to you, moi droog. I'm glad you came by just now, because I was thinking about something which would interest a Celtic bard like you. I believe I have hit upon the chief difference between Celtic songs and Russian songs. Both types are the product of peoples who have known plenty of trouble and grief. But we Russians, in our sad songs, pour out everything without restraint -- mourning, sobbing, cursing, lamenting. Whereas Celtic people, when singing about equally sad subjects, make their songs-- how to say it? Compared to our songs, yours are UNDERSTATED. Not less powerful, not less moving to the hearer; but the SINGER usually seems less carried away by the emotion."
 
"That sounds like a difference between the ways our cultures typically think!" Said Taliesin, who was clearly fascinated. "I know a priest who seems to like throwing excessive emotion into his sermons, you know, with shouting, crying and sobbing and jumping around the sanctuary. Some times I think he's crazy, but he acts like there's something wrong with the congregation because we're not shouting or sobbing loudly as he is. But the simple fact is, I tend to feel more emotion and more spiritual edification when I am silently meditating in calmness, or listening to a preacher who is more calm. So, the ways people best tend to think and register emotions, probably has a lot to do with your observations. Now before we continue, and before I begin to enquire of your wisdom on other matters, may I buy you food or drink?"
 
"Why, thank you. I like that beans-and-rice mixture. We don't grow rice in Russia; I first became acquainted with it when I sailed away to Asia."
 
"Consider it done. I'll be right back." Taliesin stood up and walked over to the nearby food stand. He soon came back with a Reuben sandwich in one hand for himself, and Sadko's rice and beans in the other hand, which he promptly gave to Sadko, and sat down in his seat again.
 
"Of course." Taliesin chuckled and chose a seat more conveniently placed. "Well Sadko my friend, I must tell you of my plight. Back home in the sixth century AD, I'm currently in the process of trying to write an accurate narrative of the reign of King Arthur and the adventures of his allies, as you are already aware, but that doesn't mean I have any less responsibilities outside the realm of literature, poetry and song. Only to complicate matters further, I now have the convenient distraction of a Viking lass from the northland who is vying for my affections. I like her and no mistaking it, in fact I've begun to have feelings for her that I haven't felt in many years, not since my first love. But this is the conundrum I am struggling to understand: Some people speak of love as if a man has a woman made by God specifically suited to him, yet others speak of it as if no one is made for one person in particular, yet they become eternally linked through marriage. What do you think is the truth of it? Is it one or the other, a combination of them, or perhaps the answer is not either of the aforementioned views?"
 
Sir Tom the Dragon Knight said:
"Of course." Taliesin chuckled and chose a seat more conveniently placed. "Well Sadko my friend, I must tell you of my plight. Back home in the sixth century AD, I'm currently in the process of trying to write an accurate narrative of the reign of King Arthur and the adventures of his allies, as you are already aware, but that doesn't mean I have any less responsibilities outside the realm of literature, poetry and song. Only to complicate matters further, I now have the convenient distraction of a Viking lass from the northland who is vying for my affections. I like her and no mistaking it, in fact I've begun to have feelings for her that I haven't felt in many years, not since my first love. But this is the conundrum I am struggling to understand: Some people speak of love as if a man has a woman made by God specifically suited to him, yet others speak of it as if no one is made for one person in particular, yet they become eternally linked through marriage. What do you think is the truth of it? Is it one or the other, a combination of them, or perhaps the answer is not either of the aforementioned views?"
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Sadko fingered his beard and replied, "A combination. As you know, I have been married more than once, due to bereavement. My second wife was not stealing me from the first, nor was my third wife stealing me from the second; and _each_ woman was God's will for me at the time.

"Imagine a sort of hierarchy. For any given man, let us say that there are one thousand women in the world, any one of whom would be a _suitable_ bride for him; and if the man marries a particular one of them, God certainly _doesn't_ want him wondering if he 'could have done better.' Yet out of those thousand, perhaps twenty are much _more_ suitable for him. To ask just _how_ closely God chooses to control the process of who meets whom is to address the whole subject of predestination, and--"

Just then, Sadko was interrupted by a sexy woman of age no more than twenty-five years, who was dressed in a furry barbarian-wench outfit. Spewing curses, she screamed at the old Russian: "You _________ pig! You're saying that everything is arranged for men, that only men get a ________choice, and women can only passively wait and hope they get selected!"
 
"Wait just a minute, before you blow a fuse!" Taliesin stood up to defend his friend. "He was merely speaking from a male perspective, because, incase you haven't noticed, he and I are both men, and that doesn't mean the same principal doesn't work the other way around, too."
The barbarian wench prepared to blast an obscenity at Taliesin, but then stopped and realized something: Taliesin was a hot 20-something year old. A celtic bard no less! Barbarian Wench's composure changed from indignance to flirtatious, and said, "Oh, great bard of the Gaels... Your words of wisdom are like poetry in my ears. Please, sing to me love songs of the Celtic and Norse gods of old!"
"Sorry, lass," replied Taliesin, "but there's only one God I sing about, and His story of sacrifice at Calvary is the greatest love story ever told."
Barbarian Wench was clearly turned off, as was evidenced by her eye-rolling and subsequent walking away and muttering, "Stupid Christian copycats... Don't they know that Christians aren't allowed to be bards?"
Taliesin let out a sigh, sat down, and resumed his conversation with Sadko. "Thank you so much for your answer to my question. Based on my knowledge of your history, I knew you'd have a good one."
 
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"I wasn't allowed to finish. I was going to add that, in overseeing our lives, God surely does not only think about one man's benefit--" Sadko glanced after the barbarian girl; "--or one woman's benefit. Returning to the idea of twenty women all being well-suited to a particular man, it could happen that five of the twenty women have some special mission or calling in their lives, which is _more_ important in God's sight than whether they ever get married. Then there could be some reason why another ten of the women are even _more_ perfectly suited for some _other_ men than they are for the man we started with. Of the remaining four, perhaps three die before they ever get to meet the man in question; so God leads the twentieth woman to meet the man, though she is not actually _better_ than the other nineteen."
 
"Well, let me explain my story. When I was a lad, I picked a bright star out of the sky and called it my own. Years later I fell in love with a girl who told me (with no prior knowledge of the story I first told you) that she 'keeps seeing this star,' and that she is convinced that it is MY star. After further inquiry I found out that it was the very same star I had picked out as a boy, and she told me the story of the first night she had seen it many years before, and how she seemed to have a supernatural knowledge when she saw it that it was the star of her 'future knight'. This was the first girl I ever loved, having met her when I was 17. She has long since abandoned me, even after I tried keeping in touch with her again recently, she refuses to talk to me. Though it wasn't the only odd little sign to come up, I'm still most baffled by the fact that she knew about the star. Even more recently than she completely ceased communication with me, I've met another lass, the Viking girl I mentioned, who seems to show genuine interest in me, and I think I may be falling for her. Yet still I sometimes miss my first love, and I am afraid of making a wrong choice one way or the other. My good sense tells me to forget about the first girl, but my questions still remain." Taliesin sighed, noting to himself what a mess he sounded like.
 
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Sadko patted the shoulder of this man who (thanks to time-warp) was at once younger AND older than he.

"What you describe fits together, I think, with what I said about multiple possibilities. It seems that God gave the first maiden a _chance_ to find true love with you; His bringing the star to her mind was prompting her. But He would not _force_ her to love you; that would be a contradiction in terms. Instead, He has evidently brought forth _another_ of the candidates. If the first maiden had pledged her troth to you, no doubt God would have blessed this, and it would have had every chance of turning out well. But like David replacing Saul as King of Israel, a new potential bride has arisen with whom things could _also_ turn out well."
 
Taliesin gave a relieved and thankful smile to his wise friend. "Thank you. That really helps to make sense of the seeming madness of the human storybook. Speaking of storybooks, it has come to my attention that the people of this current future we are visiting in seem to have very conflicted and inaccurate versions of the life stories of the kings in whose courts I have served. Do you think there is much hope of altering this timeline enough that they'll have access to the true history, or is that out of my hands?"
 
"Well, we have to try. If the world has enough time left, our imparting understanding even to a FEW souls might start a landslide of enlightenment, a wildfire of learning."
 
"Hmmmm... if there are people at this festival NOT so obnoxious as that barbarian-garbed woman, maybe some of them would be willing to visit your century and help get word of mouth going?"
 
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