10

You feel calm descend as you try to embrace your notable nature, for good and ill alike, and try not to concern yourself with every odd look. [+Phlegm]

You're just passing a great cuboid topiary when you nearly bump into the ginger-haired maidservant Audrey, walking from the far side of the bush. As you make your greetings, she tucks a lock of hair back into her snood and looks you up and down.

"Dinnae tell me it's you!" she fairly squeals, eyes widening with merriment.

"Oh, it's me, the most perplexed Fool in Brenton." You put your hands on your hips. "I feel I'm being gawked at from all sides; now from you, too! Has Brute smeared something unholy on my backside again?"

She peers behind you to observe your rump rather shamelessly, just to be sure, before withdrawing a scroll from the pouch at her waist. "No chuckles at my reading now, I do right well for a scrubber of stones, thankee," she warns you. "This is by a gel who's some kind o' Princess, at least in her own mind? Just listen."

Oh, I'm listening, you think, not at all sure where this is going.

Onward