Willam Smith looked at the stranger in the polished copper mirror, dressed in fine boots and homespun clothes under a worn gambeson and armor that was anything but shining. He lifted one arm the stranger followed in lock step, metal plates rubbing and clinking together with the simple movements. A slow spin in place and a rolling of the shoulders produced a sound like a coin purse being aggressively shaken and Tumble couldn’t help but chuckled at himself. All dressed up like a maid at her first barn dance and twice as nervous.

A shield sat in the corner of his small room, stoically guarding the corner with zealous fervor, his sister’s painting scrawled across the front. He still wasn’t sure where she got the paints, and he wasn’t going to ask either. The white wings and knight’s golden helmet were straight from one of their childhood fairy tales, the kind of knight who slew monsters, who saved princesses and nobles, whos armor gleamed like noonday sun. Again, Tumble stared at the stranger in the mirror and the too-big armor it wore.
He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and recalls what his father told him when he first helped his son into the thick cloth and metal plates. When Willam had expressed concern over the size of the armor, worried it would be too big for him. But his father had seen the true issue, the anxiety over being a squire, of the responsibility of being the first Smith to leave the farm in several generations, of being the first son to leave Murten in an age.
Roain Smith’s response was the same to all worries, spoken and unsaid

“You’ll grow into it.”