A Katarina Vacation Arc
Very disappointingly, there didn't seem to be any festivals scheduled nearby any time soon. A summer trip to visit your cousins should have ended with at least a festival event, but nope, nothing. The closest there would be was a harvest festival, but that wouldn't be until, well, harvest, and by then Katarina would be long gone. Ugh, was this DLC written by a foreigner? Why would they not add a festival event for the final confession? Sure, it wouldn't have any fireworks, since Maria was the only one who made fireworks and she and Sophia charged a lot of money for it, but still!
Katarina did attend tea parties and lunch parties and parties and once even a ball– sponsored by the local knight covenants to celebrate various knights being promoted– and her cousins had introduced her to their friends. It turned out that Olga wasn't completely friendless, but they were such mild, nice girls that Katarina got the feeling Olga thought they only hung out with her out of pity. Olga, the dense tsundere character type is getting unfashionable, you know? Seriously, what kind of person can't tell they're liked by the people who insist on always hanging out with them? Get some self-awareness cousin, you might actually be able to open up a romantic route and be happy!
Honestly, Marie and Matthew had it hard, having a sister who was just so dense about such completely obvious matters.
Katarina figured the big event would be the farewell party that had been scheduled two days before Matthew was to leave with them. a lot of knights were invited, including Matthew's fellow squires. Not surprisingly, Matthew was a very popular girl with many friends. Though it seemed she was also popular because she specialized in an uncommon fighting style, and a lot of the local knights had wanted to see what it was like to fight someone who used shields for both defense and offense.
In the days leading up to it, Katarina had stepped back from her ice-cream research– mostly because Aunt Leona, Aunt Sheryl, Aunt Henriette, Aunt Eileen, Aunt Viola and most of the kitchen staff had gotten in on it, meaning she wasn't the only one trying to mix new flavors– so she'd dragged her cousins along to do an 'end of vacation cousin fun montage'!
"So, we just sit here and wait for fish?" Olga said dubiously, standing at the bank of the stream and holding with pole with the string on it Katarina had handed her.
"There's a faster way too," Katarina said.
"What's the faster way?"
"We go into the water and get them by hand!" Katarina said, sitting down on a rock and taking off her boots and socks. Watson smoothly turned around to avert his gaze at his cousin's womanly ankle. He'd seen his other cousins' ankles before, but it was back when they'd been much, much younger, and more innocent.
"Lewd!" Marie gasped in scandalized glee, but sat down and stared taking off her white boots as well as Katarina started tying up her skirts.
Katarina splashed into the stream some distance from Olga– it would be rude to ruin her fishing spot after all– and began trying to catch things with her bare hands, soon followed by a laughing Marie.
They soon had a bucket filled with small fish and crayfish, which Olga refused to believe was edible no matter how much Katarina asserted it was.
Olga stuck with eating her two foot-long fish that had been stupid enough to swallow the hook at the end of her pole's string. Katarina had congratulated her on her beginner's luck.
"This seems a waste of a good watermelon," Adella said dubiously as Katarina blindfolded Watson and handed him a wooden practice sword. "Can't we just cut it properly with a knife?"
"Where's the fun in that?" Katarina said.
"Eating it?" Adella said.
"But then we can't break it open with a practice sword!"
"Exactly. We eat it instead."
"But that's so boring!"
"Catching Brightbugs?" Olga said. "What are we, children?" Still, she looked intently at the dark and gloom of the garden for the closest little speck of moving light.
"I caught another one!" Iosefka declared, holding up the glass jar with a single shimmering speck of light, the opening covered by her hand.
"I caught two!" Adella said.
"So pretty…"Katarina said, just staring at the Brightbugs in her jar as they spun and danced. Watson, holding the currently-covered lantern, shook her out of her stupor.
"Ah! Sir Glowrock! I finally found you again!" Matthew cried, holding up a prism stone that glowed with purple light. "I thought I'd lost you forever! Everyone, I found Sir Glowrock!"
"Now he and Lady Radiance can finally get married!" Marie said.
"Argh!" Olga cried. "Flame butterfly, flame butterfly! Someone get a bucket of water before it sets the garden on fire!"
"Catch it, I need it for my experiments!" Aunt Leona cried as Aunt Henriette got up from where she and the other adults had been sitting with a bottle of wine to take in the night breeze, manifesting water with her magic.
"Mother, stop bringing these things into the house, they're a fire hazard!" Olga cried.
Finally the day of the farewell party came, and Katarina got into a party dress for the last time. Tomorrow would come the last of the packing and getting the little saplings of fruit trees she'd been given ready for transport before she and mother finally left to go back home.
"Don't worry," Katarina said. "I'm sure your friends will come visit you. Or you can go and visit them. Or Aunt Leona might even be able to make some kind of magic tool that will let you talk to them from all the way over at our house."
Matthew smiled. "That's true. Mother is certainly motivated enough." Matthew had done a Maria and was wearing a fancy formal-type leather armor in shades of purple, with a small purple buckler hanging from her side instead of a sword. It must be some sort of knight thing.
"And hey, we can spend the time looking for girls that Olga can be friends with so she's not so lonely," Katarina suggested.
"I'm… not sure she'll like that," Matthew said, chuckling. "She might see it as pity."
"Nah, it's just us arranging a playdate," Katarina said. "She'll have to make friends on her own."
"That's not easy for Olga to do," Matthew said.
"That was before I made ice-cream," Katarina said.
Matthew considered. "Good point."
Finally, the farewell party began!
There was food (which Katarina didn't have to leave anymore, since Matthew was the guest of honor so she was the one who had to go around and mingle), there was dancing (it turned out Marie was a really great dancer), there were requests to briefly to duel Katarina the next day because a lot of the knights who'd been invited as guests had heard of her from Matthew, Sir Galad and Lord Stone (which she had to refuse since she planned to sleep in the next day, and then there was packing) and there was ice-cream. Lots of ice-cream. They had to put troughs under the buffet tables to catch the water from all the melting ice keeping the ice-cream cold. It was basically an ice-cream party. For once, Katarina wasn't the only one eating.
Ah, now this was a party!
She'd have to hold one like this when she got back home. Let's see if people neglected the buffet then!
