Trinket Trading

I sometimes joke that I’ve spent half my life playing make-believe, only it’s not really a joke. Some of my earliest memories are of forcing my parents to act out The Hobbit with me; some of my most recent memories are of storming an imaginary castle with sets of dice and intricately painted miniatures. This enthusiasm for stories seeps into my real life. It’s in how I dress, and how I see the world (what side quests will I complete today?), and most of the friends I make have a similar enthusiasm for collaborative storytelling. 

When one set of friends, from a fairly longstanding Dungeons and Dragons campaign, decided we should all go to the Rennaisance Faire dressed as our characters, I was overjoyed and started collecting items to complete my outfit immediately. My character, Nestien, is a scholarly Eladrin alchemist, so what really completed her ensemble was the accessories. I already owned plenty, and most of them were gifts. Glass vials from another player that I filled with cinnamon sticks and tea leaves, crystal necklaces crafted by friends, a spritz of glittery perfume I was gifted by a real-life alchemist, a bottle filled with spices one of my naturalist friends said were good for enhancing focus. It formed an interesting, unintentional parallel: a large part of my costume came from people who cared about me; in-game, the tunic Nestien wears was a gift from another party member (the same who gifted me the vials). 

Now, it is not a requirement to dress up for the Ren Faire, but it will enhance the experience. Half our group was unable to get costumes together that fit their characters (plate mail is hard to come by, I’ll give them that) so they went as pirates instead, and spent the day quite successfully gathering folks to join their crew. The rest of us, who did dress as our characters, had similar fun, in perhaps smaller quantity simply because we are less outgoing people. We took pictures, talked in accents, found things that would be of interest to each others’ characters. But the pirate half’s crew, boisterous as they were, did not have the winning interaction for the day.

That goes to the little girl dressed as a fairy who walked up to me and asked if I was trinket trading. 

Trinket trading? This was the first I’d heard of it. If I knew before I came, I’d have brought allllll the trinkets, but since I didn’t, I had only what was on my person. That included the aforementioned assorted bottles and vials, and a small selection of glass gemstones, leftover rewards from when I attended a convention as a quest-giving NPC (Non-Player Character) the month before.

“I have these gems, if you like!” I offered, smiling. 

I expected they’d be sub-par, it’s certainly not what I would have brought had I known about trinket trading in advance. But she accepted them with a radiant smile (no thanks, but she is a fairy and we all know those rules) and handed me a length of twine threaded with wooden beads before prancing off. It was clearly handmade, with lots of care, and I fastened it to my belt. I spent the rest of the day fiddling with the beads, like a Renaissance-era fidget toy. 

Another accessory, made and gifted with care, from one young storyteller to a slightly older one.