Tonight was a special evening spent with my closest friends, and in a happy coincidence, Raul will be meeting the missing members of our St. Louis gang in just a couple hours in Florence, Italy. It’s just a shame that we couldn’t all be in Italy for this reunion.

After enjoying a truly beautiful and mild May and first week of June, typical St. Louis summer weather is back with a vengeance. It was in the 90s till late in the evening with high humidity. Nevertheless, we convened at Forest Park, the expansive and verdant gem of St. Louis and rented paddle boats as if we were young couples on first dates. It’s a good thing Betsy wasn’t on a date though, or one may have raised one’s eyebrows at the coquettish manner in which she “tried” to cover herself as she paddled in a dress. A grand time was had by all even though we were sticky with sweat by the end of our lake tour.

After boating, we returned to the Boat House for dinner where we were able to review our impressions of the season finale of our beloved Game of Thrones, which we had all watched in time for our meet-up. The King is tired.

Sung looked a little tired too, as he took the liberty of unbuttoning his shirt at dinner to take better advantage of the air conditioning.

Soon Sung was back to himself, and he dutifully returned to his task of picking out our own sigils. Trent’s is a river, after the River Trent as I understand it, and Kari’s is a moose because that’s all there is in Canada. (Confirm or deny, Kari?) We imagined theirs together with the moose peacefully lapping up water from the river. I told Sung Raul’s name is from a word for Wolf, but Sung said Raul’s sigil is a beaver. Betsy kindly thought it was because of his industriousness, but Sung explained that it’s due to a physical resemblance. I must disagree; Raul doesn’t even have the teeth for a beaver, the most obvious characteristic! Sung deemed me a phoenix because he rises from the ashes of a fire like my red hair. Betsy is a horse with a flowing mane, and Sung is a sloth who never comes down from his tree. All in all, we make a formidable group.

As for the events on the European continent, I will let Raul pick up the story.