Previously published in the Murmurs, Aquaterra's monthly newsletter. Used with permission.
Lo, for the past two seasons a legend has grown in the Shire of Aquaterra. It concerns a wondrous confection called Magic Aquaterra Archers' Cookies (MAAC). And magic they are!
It began in the summer of AS XXIX when a young lady named Danu O'Cahiricveen began baking what was then known as "Coins of the Realm" (chocolate chip cookies). She thought that this would be a good way to meet new folk and make friends. So bake she did. These morsels made their way to Guards War III where she traversed Merchants' Row distributing them to folk along her way. The cookies were met with delight.
And it came to pass that some of the cookies found their way to the archery range. There the archers fell to devouring them until the cookies were no more. Behold a strange thing happened. Archery scores began to climb! One good gentle, fearing he could not shoot because of a cookie in his mouth, went to the line even as he swallowed it. He shot well and scored high, all the while attributing his success to the bits of cookie still in his mouth. And so it has been at Aquaterra and Blatha An Oir events ever since.
The magic is not limited to the archery range, it seems. Some folk claim them to have properties of an aphrodisiac. Some come in search of the cookie jar to obtain some of the contents for later in the evening after the bardic fires have died (wink, wink).
This season the cookies have been tested in another arena: heavy combat. At Lord Defenders Tourney in Blatha An Oir, a fighter ate some of the cookies before his bout. He won the Shield of the Barony. Coincidence or magic? You be the judge.
The key ingredients seems to be almonds that were gifted to Danu by a family friend named, oddly enough, Grunge Sr. This gentle, an almond-grower, and Danu maintain a friendly, if sometimes libelous and inflammatory, communication. He implied that he had spit into previous batches of almonds. When the archers learned of this, a great hue and cry was heard. Not for the chirurgeons' curative measures and leeches, but for more cookies. It was reasoned that the spittle was the source, the catalyst for the magic that raised scores, won championships, fostered romance, and even once cured a leper. Ah, but that is another tale.
