<div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/v7L6hqd.png)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Seretti<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Manshealed Park, cottage corner, then First Floor Main Room Comfy Couch<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Crorn, Sara, Akonoh<br/><hr/><br/>Seretti's carefully-minded eye on the situation between Dorn, Arty, and Reign -- the latter at her typical prima-donna snootiest, especially with that drop she got -- suggested that the three of them had this all well in hand.  For the revelry part of things, anyway.  She mentally filed away a note to talk to Crorn about Dorn's performance in the raid; that conversation would have to would happen later, though, when people had had a chance to bleed off the stress and relief that came from a hard-earned victory.  Maybe again even later, after she had had a long, thorough examination of the performance logs, if their next event went out like this again.  Part of being a good raid assistant was being able to look at a mess of a spreadsheet and piece together facts and trends -- something she had long practice at, from the endless series of numbers crunched together in a typical patients' file in Real Life -- and Seretti was pretty damn good at isolating trends.<br/><br/>The scene on her other side, though, was -way- more entertaining.  There were looks of confusion, and then there were looks of confusion, and poor Akonoh looked like she was in -way- over her head.  On the one hand, it would be really funny to just watch her get more and more alarmed; on the other hand, it really wasn't especially fair to just drop the girl in the deep end, and Akonoh had all the hallmarks of someone who was a newbie not only to the game and to raiding, but to the adult side of things in general.  The more Seretti studied Akonoh, the more she decided the other woman just needed a little bit of... guidelines.  Someone to ease her in again.<br/><br/>Time to step in.<br/><br/>With a breezy ease, Seretti was next to the little group of three near the altar-shrine.  With one hand, she gently nudged the proffered cup to the side; the other, she touched Akonoh lightly on the shoulder.<strong>"Sara just wants everybody to be engaged,"</strong>she said, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly.  Fiddling with something from her pack.<strong>"Don't worry about it.  Come on, let me get you up to speed..."<br/></strong><br/>Gently, she took Akonoh by the arm and directed her back to the first floor's main room, nodding a sincere apology to Sara and Crorn for interrupting overtly.  Once they were a safe conversational distance away, Seretti sat Akonoh down on the couch -- a dark, near-black bear leather, with satin throw pillows -- and took the other woman's hands in hers.<strong>"This is probably your first time seriously raiding with a group,"</strong>Seretti said gently,<strong>"so I know how exciting it can be to get to go new places, do new things, and all of that good stuff. I was just like you when I first started.  And you're right: we did win, in the end, and that's worth celebrating.  But there's something special about raiding: it's a team effort, you know?  We all have to focus and do our part.  It's like -- have you ever been to a big family dinner, where everybody is supposed to be bringing a different part of the meal, and then when everyone's there, someone says, 'Oops!  I forgot to bring dessert.  Even if people told me every day this week I just forgot to get any.'  I don't know how that kind of scenario would play out in your family, but in mine, we'd march that person right out the door, and down to the store, and they would have to get us a couple of pies."</strong><br/><br/>She patted Akonoh's hand.<strong>"Today, in this metaphor, you're the person who forgot to get the pies,"</strong>Seretti said, pointedly.<strong>"You weren't paying attention a lot of today's raid, you know?  And that means the rest of us have to work harder to get the job done.  We don't mind helping you, but if you mess up like you did today?  If you can't carry your weight, you have to be willing to make it up to us.  I'm not going to ask you to drink anything out of a chalice, but if you do want to make it up to us, I do know a something a little less... intense?"</strong><br/><br/>Seretti let the thought linger in the air.<strong>"If you still want to run with B2H, of course,"</strong>she added, casually, fingers trailing up from Akonoh's hand to her shoulder.<strong>"What do you say?"</strong>