While reading about Mercian fortifications this afternoon, the thunderstorm cleared, and a rainbow emerged out of the lowering clouds, a lovely full arc of color. If spring brings rain, and rain will bring me rainbows, then I am happy.

The most spectacular rainbow I ever saw was east of the University of York one Sunday afternoon as several of us (including mirrorshard and darkling_dreams) sat gaming in Alcuin. A complete arc of rich color, it ran through the entire spectrum twice in the main bow, and then had another ghostly rainbow within it, perhaps a third of the way lower to the ground than it.

And speaking of gaming, I've been thinking about it in the past few days. I mushed for years, LARPed for a while, and played tabletop a few times. My last tabletop group (schizmatic, larkvi, acrabtree, YCS, and M.) is back in Canada now. For years, online roleplaying was a way of keeping in touch with friends, as well as the fun of RPing itself. I spent ten years among text-lands and pose-evoked dragons.

And dragons are why I've been thinking about roleplaying lately, because dragons were the common interest of the group - the Gather - I joined on Saturday. They weren't my dragons, and it wasn't my gather, but it was an event which echoed others I'd been a part of over the years.

Today, my maps of fantasy lands are on the shelves, and the maps spread all around me show me where Mercia and Frisia and all those other early medieval placenames whose locations I never quite knew are. And there are rainbows.