blades before babes

In the wake of Dark, Magnus takes a day or two to dig camp out from the snow drifts with Alex, then presents himself, finally, for lessons with Hanguang-jun.

They've been talking about it for a while, him and Hanguang-jun and Galahad — since Magnus first got weird about Galahad becoming Hanguang-jun's student. By now, he pretty much knows he's not going to stop feeling weird about stepping into a lesson with the two of them — even one totally unrelated to sword stuff — so he might as well rip off that proverbial bandaid.

He's a largely punctual guy, a trait recently intensified by Sunny's interest in making plans to hang out in one week and Magnus's role in keeping her calendar, but there is still a lot of snow to fight through to get to the Mansion's doors. He's a little breathless when he sweeps into the agreed-upon room, raking melting snow out of his hair with his fingers.

"What's up, my favorite comedians?"

It's winter now, deep enough into the season that drifts of snow cover the grounds, marred only by the desire paths formed by the regular routes residents tend to take as they go about their days: between the Mansion's many doors and the greenhouses, the training ground, the stable, Magnus and Alex's camp (which is cozier than ever), the not-so-secret training clearing deep in the forest, his family's house, the regular archery range and the forest archery range, the pier, the beach... okay, there are actually a ton of desire paths cobwebbing around the grounds.

There is a large swath of unadulterated snow along the gentle hill to the left of the Mansion's main entrance, and it's here that Magnus is setting up shop. First he drags out a folding table. Then he goes to the kitchen for, like, so many carrots and powdered Kool-aid singles and Crystal Light packs and maple syrup and condensed milk and hot chocolate sachets and bags of tea. Then he goes to the arts and crafts room in the basement for popsicle sticks, buttons, and a box of dress-up clothes. Finally, he drags over his outdoor fireplace from camp, lights it, and sets his grill grates over it. Upon this he places a huge pot of water and a smaller pot of the maple syrup; the final pot (which has a bag of popcorn kernels, a bottle of oil, a salt shaker, and a bag of sugar tucked underneath the lid) he sets to the side.

Then, confident he'll soon have people stopping by to see what's up, he starts rolling snowballs.

Magnus knows his mom is coming, he just doesn't know when. So while he's always been a tidy guy, he ratchets up several levels as summer fades into autumn. (After all, the last vistor's day was in the fall!)

Camp is always spotless, or at least as spotless as an outdoor living situation can be. He organizes and reorganizes his cooler, and starts putting the stuff that doesn't need to be weather-protected onto the shelves he and Laertes have been building. There's a proper sort of lean-to shanty half-built on the far side of the clearing — the opposite side from Magnus and Alex's bed-and-belongings set-up. Mostly it's going to be space to store Alex's artwork and outfits — plus Magnus's few belongings — but there's a planned dedicated space on one side for Drosera to sleep now that she's gotten way too big for her dog beds and bird perches. With Alex and Galahad's help, he figures out how to build a big swing that hangs from the branch he'd climbed when Shen Yuan painted him; it doubles as extra seating. The trampoline is pristine; the makeshift shelter he built before Alex arrived looks more like a permanent outdoor camp than a cobbled-together array of tarps and canvases. It's perfect for the changing of the season and the cooling weather, though he does make a mental note to ask Dad(s) if he and Alex can come crash if there's another blizzard like there was at the end of Dark last year. (They'd survived, obviously, and mostly been cozy after the snow covered camp, but it was... a lot.)

It's a lovely autumn morning when Natalie does come. Magnus has, for once, not picked Sunny up for adventures bright and early — their plans are for after lunch — but he still wakes up at the buttcrack of dawn every day now out of habit, so he takes advantage of the time to do his and Alex's laundry back at the mansion. He's freshly arrived back at the camp, kneeling on his favorite patch of moss, folding one of Alex's fluffy skirts when—

"Hey, pumpkin."

Boxer shorts and t-shirts go flying. "Mom," Magnus cries, dashing headlong into a hug. He doesn't feel like pulling his strength, so he sweeps her up instead, spinning her around, laughing and laughing and laughing.

They take an hour or so to catch up. Magnus tells her all about his life —

"Pumpkin, I'm so sorry I left you alone to deal with all of that."

"It's not your fault, mom. I did my best. I didn't go to Randolph, I—" and he's crushed against her side again as she pulls him into a hug.

— and death —

Natalie's lips thin when he mentions Randolph's quest for the sword, and her face blanches when he tells her about Surt. There's a stormy look behind her eyes as he talks about the all-faith chapel, but the look softens when he tells her about Annabeth. Throughout, her hand is warm on his, her grip steady, unchanging.

—and afterlife. He makes a big show of ignoring her when she tries to apologize for not telling him about his heritage, and instead tells her about his valkyrie and his hallmates and his Alex. She tells him she's proud of him for stopping Loki and postponing Ragnarok, and when he tells her that Alex is sometimes his girlfriend and sometimes his boyfriend, she gives him a resounding kiss to his forehead. And she looks misty enough when he mentions meeting Frey that he doesn't complain for even one second about how useless Frey can be, just says that he managed to visit here once during the summer.

"And where's 'here,' pumpkin?" Natalie asks, glancing around. "It doesn't look like Valhalla..."

"It's not, it's some... pocket world," Magnus tells her. "Not one of the Nine. It's mostly totally separate."

"Mostly?"

"Sometimes stuff leaks through. Hanguang-jun's brother gets his letters. Frey heard a few of my prayers."

"A few of your—!" and she crushes him to her side again. "You? Praying?"

Magnus laughs, ducking his head. "I know. I know. I was surprised too. It's, um." He pauses, then admits, "Mostly snarky."

Natalie laughs, misty-eyed. "That's my boy," she says, fondly.

"There's, um, some people you should probably — I mean, would you like to meet some of the people here? The important ones? To me?" When Alex came, she wanted to wander and get to know the place on her own terms, because she's Alex; that's her way. But Magnus isn't letting his mother out of his sight until she gets yanked away by the powers that be. "They're, like. Sort of like my adoptive family at this point."

"Okay, kiddo," and when Natalie gets to her feet, she's as limber as he remembers, easily rising. She's so, so beautiful with her blonde pixie cut and sharp green eyes and the wicked smile — with its fledgling smile lines — etched into her mouth. She still looks the same as he remembers — forty-two, athletic, always ready to laugh — which he guesses does make sense.

He loves her so much. He rises, too, and as he's rising tells her, "I love you so much. I missed you so m—" and again, the rest of the word gets muffled in a hug.

(It feels, Magnus thinks, like there's a spell over her visit. Like if he asks her where she went when she died, he'll break it. (There isn't a spell. He still — he'll let her tell him, if she wants to, and he won't pry. He's just happy to have her.))

Eventually, she asks, "So who exactly are all these people?"

Magnus purses his lips. "Hanguang-jun is probably the easiest to find. He and Galahad will be done with training and he'll be doing his, like, sky patrol right about now. Alex is at the kiln, so we can make our way there. And then... well, you can come with me to lunch and meet Sagramore and Sunny and Laertes." He takes his mom by the hand and leads her from the trees, explaining who these people are to him as they walk.

( Hanguang-jun )
( Alex )
( Sagramore )
( Sunny )
( Laertes )+++
Lunch is a rambunctious affair, and Magnus's heart is so, so full throughout it. He wishes Alex was feeling up to joining them — especially since Sunny is still jealously subdued, and he really thinks they could do with talking to each other — but his mom gets along well with everyone, and he's teased within an inch of his life. He helps do the dishes after, trying to coax Sunny into a smile and letting Mom have a parent-parent conference in lowered voices with Dadgramore behind them, and then asks if Sunny still wants to keep their afternoon plans, since his mom would definitely be joining them.

She doesn't, and so his next order of business is leaving a note for Alex at camp about the whole affair, and then he and his mom are packing up for a night under the stars. "We could find our own camp spot," he tells her, "but also my Evil Twin gave Galahad Frey-dad's boat, so we could also do that. Oh, you have to meet Galahad, he's my best friend, he can sketch us! And take our picture! And if we run into Claudius or Uncle D or Shen Yuan or, like, I guess my sword teacher, I'll introduce you, too. And—"

"Honey," Natalie says, pulling Magnus into a firm hug. "Slow down. We have a full day ahead of us. We have time for everything."

Magnus takes a deep breath and doesn't argue that one day isn't long enough. He wants so much more time, but... he's also so thrilled to have any time at all. "Okay," he says, and gives his mom one more squeeze. "Okay. One thing at a time. Wanna hike?"

"Yeah, pumpkin," says Natalie. "I really do."



Single-tag reactions from other residents encountering them on their post-lunch walk are welcome - and ones from the characters Magnus specifically mentioned at the end are especially encouraged!

Magnus, who now definitely knows that many mansion residents keep specific daily schedules (thanks Galahad!), can reliably find Hanguang-jun whenever he needs him. (Unless it's the part of the schedule when Hanguang-jun is alone with Wei Wuxian, in which case Magnus can find him but, for the sake of his own mental peace, elects to never ever do that unless it's a genuine emergency.) He can also reliably find Galahad, Sunny, at least one of their shared fathers, Tress, and sometimes Claudius, except Claudius's unpredictability is genuinely unpredictable, as opposed to, say, Tally's unpredictability, which is predictably unpredictable.

Lancelot is definitely a regular schedule kind of guy, but outside of their training sessions, Magnus has no idea what it is. Magnus asks Galahad since Galahad is his go-to calendar and schedules guy; Galahad's brow wrinkles infinitesimally in the way that, on someone else, would be an incredulous, laughing 'what are you up to?' and his lips quirk when Magnus clarifies that he has really reasonable regular normal reasons for wanting to know. (Then Galahad tells him Susan's schedule, which is helpful, because Magnus is generally interested in avoiding her.)

All of this to say that Magnus doesn't actually manage to track Lancelot down and give him a heads up on the same morning he non-randomly encounters Hanguang-jun after dropping Sunny back with their dads, and impulsively asks "So, wanna do parent-teacher conference day? Me and Lancelot train after lunch in that clearing way out past Dads' house."

Whatever. He'd cleared that it was okay with Lancelot at, like, some point, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

So in the end, Lancelot gets about thirty seconds' warning that Hanguang-jun will be joining, between when Magnus rocks up, practice sword in one hand, shield in the other, and Jack flying around behind him, calling, "How's it going, Swordmaster Dickface^*? We've got company today," and when Hanguang-jun alights from Bichen.


*He's still workshopping appropriate nicknames

"Okay, just another minute," Magnus says.

It's a hot day out, so holding Galahad's hand is a sweaty affair... and Magnus's current use of his alf seidr isn't making matters any more comfortable. The grass is tickling at Magnus's back -- his shirt has ridden up while he lies, spread-eagle, in the middle of the lawn. Galahad is always so smart about his clothes, Magnus bets he's not getting the grass itches at all.

But he can put all that aside. Grass tickles are good tickles, and the heat of the sun is -- to Magnus -- always more refreshing than it is annoying. There's a trickle of sweat at the side of his neck, but even though it's hot out it's not really a temperature extreme, so as usual he feels regular about it.

All his attention is on the plants around them. Feverfew and milkweed, black-eyed susan and queen anne's lace, aster and boneset and flowering spurge and yarrow and tickseed and teasel and wild thyme and forget-me-nots and poppies and and and -- well. He's not sure what else is in the mix. He's been trying to get better at plant identification with Claudius's guidance, but the package he found earlier that morning only said FIELD SEEDS. He's doing his best! Right now, his 'best' is less focused on identification and more focused on growing them to flower, high enough that some of them are providing shade to both him and Galahad, in a very neat outline of the grass they've politely crushed between the two of them.

Eventually, he's done all he can without overtaxing the plants. "There," he tells Galahad. "Summer snow angels, check."

It's been a big few days in general, and this day, specifically, has also been pretty big, and so Magnus does the number two thing that reliably lets him reach a place where he feels more grounded: he goes to Hanguang-jun's parlor at a time when Hanguang-jun is also there playing music. (Number one, of course, is burying his face against Alex's belly and groaning. Number three, embarrassingly, is still finding a summery spot outside and praying to his dad.)

This time, he has a stack of comic books to go through -- he wants to start making tailored recommendation lists, for Tally and Lancelot (who he's made general recommendations to), but also for Galahad and Sagramore and Sunny and Hanguang-jun and Gideon and Shen Yuan and Gu Xiang and Tress and Nina. So he lays on the ground for a while, paging through issues while Hanguang-jun quietly picks out a tune on his qin and Danding nibbles his hair.

But after about half an hour, he's still got excitement and overstimulation brimming through his veins, so he sets Sensational She-Hulk #39 to one side (it's definitely going on Lancelot's list, probably also Tally's, possibly also Gideon's), twists his head, and waits for a lull in the music. When it comes, he says, "Hanguang-jun? I have... stuff. Not crisisy stuff. Mostly good stuff, and also... some questionsy stuff."

Ever since Magnus learned that Hanguang-jun keeps a regular schedule, he's been doing his best to memorize it. Without asking Galahad to tell it to him, because that just seems like it's cheating.

It helps that Magnus already knows about Galahad's training time, which he does sometimes now crash... just to watch, not to participate; it's an inoculation against the jealousy that still clings at the edges of his vision whenever he watches them interact. But now he knows the times Hanguang-jun flies around to survey the grounds, and the times that he's in his room doing stuff Magnus doesn't need to know about, and the times he's in the kitchens cooking, and --

Well. Anyway. It's helpful, because now that the secret garden he and Claudius are growing for Hanguang-jun is getting big, he can, like, try to cover it so Hanguang-jun can't see it from the air.

It's also helpful on a day like today, when he's been worrying over his conversation with Luo Binghe and (admittedly) getting a little worked up over the thought of what needs to happen to bring Aornis down. He's sitting on a log just outside of tree cover, watching the skies for Hanguang-jun and Bichen, ruminating. When they fly into his field of vision, he leaps up, waving Hanguang-jun down.

The first day of summer dawns bright and warm, a steady breeze stirring through the trees. The day itself is a flurry of activity: Magnus and Tress meet up in the kitchen early in the morning to start throwing together refreshments for Galahad's party. They make three kinds of cookies, and also a tray of flat brownies — Magnus has it in his head that half of the cookies and all of the brownies should be turned into ice cream sandwiches and, accordingly, tracks down Susan (who seems to know everything about this place) to get her to produce a deep freezer for Legoland. (She has that look on her face like he smells bad the whole time, but when he mentions it's for the bachelorette, at least she seems slightly less cold and standoffish.)

While the baked goods cool, Magnus ransacks the pantry for chips and candy and stuff for sandwiches. He lets Tress handle ice cream selection; when they find boxes of Bagel Bites in the freezer, he cheers. Legoland definitely has a microwave; they plugged the freezer into the same outlet. (Is a bachelorette the same thing as a slumber party? Maybe!)

It's early evening by the time everything is done and set up, even with Alex and Tress's help. He decides that the substantial food and record player should both be reserved for Legoland, partly because it does have electricity. They lug a big old table up to the top of the tower for the taste tests, and then an easel with giant post-it notes for the 'naming Mansion constellations' portion of the evening, and then a bunch of the smaller easels, sketchpads, and a selection of different art supplies (markers, crayons, watercolors, pencils, acrylic paints) he and Sunny have been tracking down and hoarding, for the bestiality portion of the evening.

After sending Tress and Alex off so they can get ready, he sets up for the taste tests: bowls full of different candies (white rabbit, hopjes, strawberry-flavored fizzing warheads, Reeses's cluster bites, Haribo gummy goldbears, hundred grand bars, red vines, salmiak licorice, candied verdant vines (Tress made them), and nerd ropes), bowls full of chips (Takis in the flavors angry burger, blue heat, and dragon sweet chili; Lays in the flavors Wasabi Octopus, All Dressed, Cappuccino, White Rabbit Rich Toffee (to compare with the actual white rabbit candy), and Pimento Cheese), and several cloth bags covering different red-flavored sodas, with wine tasting note cards so people can try to guess which is Code Red, which is Big Red, which is Cheerwine, and (in a fond nod to Alex), which is Tizer. He completes the array with a stack of paper for general ranking notes for the candy and chips. (There are also a couple child-sized easels and ranking sheets, for Mothwing and Sunny, but Magnus did also bring regular water for her and Sunny, a fish supplied by Drosera for Mothwing, and some carrots and apple slices for Sunny. There is also an easel and notepad for Shen Yuan, even though he's just a ghost and probably can't manipulate it, but he knocked once for yes when Magnus asked his growing body if he was going to make it.)

Finally, after convincing Drosera that she should absolutely wear a cute little bolo tie and party hat for this, he darts into the mansion for a quick shower, a change into one of the outfits Galahad picked for him when they tried on clothes, and to collect the groom himself. He presents Galahad with a white sash embroidered in gold; it reads GROOM TO BE. There's also a little tiara that he found in their bedroom. He assumes it's a cheap gimmicky one, but it's actually filigree red and white gold with real sapphires, diamonds, and pearls — he just picked it because it's delicate and will blend in with Galahad's hair in a way that will let the sapphires really pop.


Stages of the night will be posted in parent comments; everyone is welcome to thread with whoever in response to those! Awkward social interactions between people who aren't necessarily friendly are encouraged.

Magnus's day is already pretty thrown off, between surprise Hanguang-jun morning hangs (definitely positive) and coming clean to Alex about training with Lancelot (mostly positive), which led directly to Alex coming along to afternoon training (weird, but ultimately extremely good), so that he can... vet Lancelot??? Have a fun little spar with Magnus???? Tease them both mercilessly??? Anyway, it's fun! It feels kind of like the best part of old times, except Magnus is actually kind of good now that he's had formal training, and even though he knows Alex, like, super well, Alex is always a wildcard with fighting, and it's nice to have things shaken up in training now that Magnus is also getting used to how Lancelot fights.

All this to say that he somehow hasn't seen Galahad yet, even though usually by now he's spent several hours with Galahad. So after dinner, he heads back up to the Mansion with the dual purposes of finding (1) Galahad and (2) art supplies for his next time-sensitive project.

cw: nondescript references to Shen Yuan's death

It's different now.

Magnus isn't ignorant of the facts. He knows his own M.O. when the stuff hits the fan: run, focusing just on the next step he needs to take at every turn to keep from tripping and falling flat on his face, with a great and amorphous fear of what the future might hold looming above it all. When he was homeless, he focused on what he needed to do for his next meal, for his next park bench, to dodge the next cop who would like nothing better than to be a dick to a homeless kid with a record. He wanted to survive, but what life would look like in five, ten, fifteen years... that was never something he had the time or wherewithal to consider. His first three years in Valhalla were just battle after battle, quest after quest, an exercise in learning to trust other people again, in learning to let himself rely on them. In learning to actually live for the moment, instead of being laser-focused on each small next step forward. In not just running away to save his own skin, but to also know when to knuckle down and stand his ground and fight.

He hadn't had the time to process his mom's death until he got to Valhalla and had to process his own at the same time, and even then, the processing was curtailed by the fact that he was thrust immediately into escalating and desperate attempts to prevent Ragnarok. And even after they managed to circumvent it for at least a good few decades, there were still daily Battle Practice, and strange little smaller quests, and managing the Chase Space. Life in Valhalla -- at least for an einherji who also ran a shelter for homeless youth -- wasn't exactly slow.

That's one thing Magnus has had to adapt to, here: the slowness and openness of time. He can spend a week just teaching himself how to fix up busted old bikes. He can use his powers, not just for survival, but to grow vegetables and fruits and bodies. He's really, really enjoying learning to grow things even without alf seidr -- to just let them do their thing naturally while he tends to them the way that regular gardeners do. But with all that unstructured time, there's so much space for processing. He knows he's had grumpier spells here than he would back in Valhalla, that he's been more emotionally volatile and clingy than has typically been usual for him, or at least not since - well. Not since middle school at least. He's not ignorant of that. It's weird. It's nothing like the panic attacks that would intersperse his asthma as a kid, but it's still like something burbling up and breaking through: an off-gassing of feelings he thought he knew what to deal with.

In a way -- just like after he, himself, almost died, in those weeks when he was in the greenhouse every day just growing, growing, growing -- it's been a relief lately to have so many next steps to focus on. It's allowed him to tighten up, to keep focused and busy. There's Uncle D's garden, there's Hanguang-jun's garden, there's his own secret training with Lancelot, there's babysitting. And then, of course, there's Shen Yuan's mushroom-fruit-herb-thing body, where he spends every moment of free time, meditating and trying to share the 'summer qi' Shen Yuan had talked about as being particularly good for the bodies. He's also, honestly, been leaning a lot on Alex, spending significantly more time with him every day than they really have since he recovered from that falling sword, feeling a little guilty that he's eating into the time that Alex (and Magnus, too) likes to have to bop around and do his own thing, even though he knows Alex is more than willing to be there for him, with him. And, like, he knows that if Alex never showed up here, he could handle all of this, but...

It's one of the things that are different here, actually. Magnus doesn't have to handle it all on his own. Back in Valhalla, he had friends, and he had people he decided were family, like Hearth and Blitz and Sam. Here, too, he has friends, and people he's decided are family, like Galahad and Hanguang-jun and... well. It's a long list. He's known for years that his strength is his community, and that the best thing he can do for the world is make friends and enable those friends to shine in what they do best. The best way to save the world is as a team, working in concert.

But back in Valhalla, everyone had the same frame of reference, even if they had different attitudes and experiences and beliefs. It was normal to die and to have the trajectory of your life arcing toward the knowledge of your final death. The point was to get to a place of accepting it without letting it -- or the passage of time -- overwhelm you enough that you faded into Ginnungagap. The gods were a necessary and predictable annoyance, like Battle Practice and making sure the Chase Space didn't run out of toilet paper. Magnus knew where he stood in that world. He knew what was expected of him, and he didn't particularly care if he met or exceeded or even fell short of those expectations, as long as Ragnarok was kept at bay and he was true to himself and his people.

He still hasn't figured out where, exactly, he fits into this world. It's not a bad thing — it might even be a good one — but it is different. And not just because there's actual adults here who don't all suck, and who genuinely seem interested in making sure Magnus doesn't have everything on his plate for the first time since his mom died. There are also so many different perspectives and frames of reference and attitudes, enough that it's not really clear to Magnus what people are bent toward here. If there is a shared goal, or if everyone here is also just taking each next small step. There's no Ragnarok here to prevent, no definitive conclusion to work toward or to try and move away from, no concrete clear enemy to fight. It's destabilizing for a guy used to worrying about the future, even if most of his attention is focused on carefully making sure that the ground is solid for each next step forward but not being able to attend to whether it's taking you closer to or further from your final destination. Something is happening, but why? How do they stop it? How does Magnus hype up his community so they can save the day? What is there even to do to save the day? He can help bring Shen Yuan back, but what if more people get attacked? Magnus really, really doesn't want to be right about being the only person who can survive that kind of thing.

Also, it's too small to effectively just run from the danger and keep running. Not that he wants to. He likes the community he has here, likes that — even though sometimes he forgets — there are people here he trusts completely. But sitting with it,with the uncertainty and danger, is hard. And the more people challenge his assumptions — about what he's responsible for, about how the world works, about when he should set down his own load and trust himself to rely on others — the harder it is to know which next step to take.

It was like that when he first got here, too, when he kept trying to pray to Frey. He can't remember when he stopped doing that. Since Easter, maybe? And even before that he was praying less and less, and turning to the people here more and more. Things here are different. He's known that for months as he's tried to search for meaning, some endpoint, in the wake of deliberately giving up on Valhalla, but he's really feeling it lately. Running, one step at a time, might not work anymore.

He doesn't know the right play, though. And so he leans on Alex. He grits his teeth and grimly trains, harder than he ever has before, with Lancelot. He ripens Shen Yuan's body, sometimes with Luo Binghe there (usually in silence), sometimes alone. He works in the greenhouses with Claudius and the garden with Uncle D. He hangs out with Sunny. He watches Galahad and Hanguang-jun train as he takes Drosera out to try and teach her how to hunt. It's still the cool part of spring, but the best part is teaching Dro to fish — he can stick his feet in the frigid water and calm down enough to catch his breath, and laugh at the way she splashes in the shallows of the lake. He tries to picture what the future might look like.

It's different here. So many people are mortal; so few people look at him as a final bulwark against the crumbling of the world. The strength of Alex's sensitive clay-working fingers is the same; so is the sparkling, teasing light in her eyes as she ribs Magnus into getting out of his own head. The belief he has in the strength of his community hasn't changed — his greatest talent is, he thinks, still being a good friend to his friends.

"So maybe that's the next step," he tells Drosera as she stumbles out of the lake, beak dripping, a squirming fish caught tight in one talon. "Maybe I work on being a better friend."

baby kill!!! she tells him, proudly, utterly unconcerned with his inner turmoil as she bites the head off of the fish.

Magnus takes a deep breath and lets it go slowly. The amorphous fear that swirls around him and inside him loosens for just a moment, and he stands in place, watching Drosera eat the fish, watching Galahad and Hanguang-jun train up the hill, watching Laertes and Sagramore make their way into the woods and Mothwing come out of the foliage on the other side of the lake and Susan bustle past with her bow and quiver and the flash of color in Grantaire's window that means he's setting up his easel. It's a chilly morning, but the sunlight is getting warmer and warmer. He can feel it on his hair, trimmed again by Alex just that morning.

He wraps his hand around Jack and Hanguang-jun's jade token alike, closes his eyes, and breathes.