summerdude | I Embrace My Inner Tarzan [open post]

Qi Yan has been limiting her time outside as the weather grows colder, beholden to her duties to Nangong Jingnu and her promises to Mothwing. But as she steps out for a little fresh air, bundled in a warm, fur-trimmed coat she found in her room,¹ she sees a fire burning in the woods.

It is not all that surprising, upon investigation, to find Magnus. She first encountered him in the woods, not far from here, and he seems comfortable in nature. The area around his tree is warmer than the surroundings , and Qi Yan expects it's not wholly from the fire. She's happy to see him; she has been thinking hard about various matters since the day of the curse.

Magnus does not like being addressed as young master, so she simply calls up to the tree above, "Magnus."

¹It's likely not cold enough for most people to be heavily bundled, but Qi Yan is sensitive.

Magnus swallows his bite of apple and peers down through the increasingly-barren branches. "Oh hey, Qi Yan!" he says, enthusiastically. "How's it hanging?"

Qi Yan does not understand the question. "I promised we'd speak later. The compulsion to speak my thoughts was a curse, it seems."

Magnus considers this for a second, and then leaps down, landing firmly, yet easily, about a yard away from Qi Yan. "But you're feeling better now?" he asks, concerned.

"I am." Each conversation Qi Yan had under the curse was different, and she has relived them all, thinking carefully of what was revealed and what it means. Several people learned disparate pieces about her background, her relationship with Nangong Jingnu, and her transgressions against the Nangong family. Lan Wangji and Gu Xiang both even learned she was a woman. Yet nothing has changed; no calamity has befallen her.

She has longed, all these years, to throw off the trappings of the Wei empire and live again as herself. But she has waited so long to do so that she can no longer remember how. Her first language is rusty. Her archery skills have deteriorated. She has no family to teach her what a prince of the Chengli tribe is meant to know. And here, she doesn't even have Nangong Jingnu's company to comfort her. She is lonely, and she is lost.

Magnus reminds her of the kind of friends she had when she was young—spirited, generous and brave. She likes him very much, and she does not want to be Qi Yan of the Jin province to him, if she is allowed another option. "There were things I didn't want to be forced to say to you under a curse, but I would like to say them now. May I?"

"Good," Magnus says. He glances around -- he doesn't have much by way of furniture, out here, but there's a cozy enough root he likes to sit on. He sits down next to it on the ground, cross-legged, and then makes eye contact with Qi Yan and pats it. "And of course you can. Wanna sit? It's more comfortable than it looks."

Nangong Jingnu would lose her mind if she saw Qi Yan sitting on the cold ground in late autumn. Rather than making Qi Yan sad, this thought infuses her with fondness as she takes Magnus up on his offer. Of course, since it's near him, it is warm. "Do you remember that I said I was accustomed to a very high level of etiquette? The Wei kingdom is very strict, even outside the court. Etiquette and propriety are essential. But it wasn't how I was raised. I learned all of that later, so I could live in the Wei kingdom safely. That's why, as I said, I like how direct you are." She gives him a little smile. "And I'd like to reciprocate your forthrightness. The first day, you asked how I felt about my wife, and I found it difficult to answer. She is the most precious person in the world to me. She divorced me because she found out some secrets that she could not forgive. When I first came here, I kept those secrets out of habit, but several were spilled during the tenure of the curse. And since they are no longer so secret, I'm curious to know what you might think of them."

Magnus sits up a little straighter. Noting the way Qi Yan is dressed, he calls summer with more deliberation, making sure the air around Qi Yan is nice and warm. "I'm listening," he says, seriously.

"I wasn't born Qi Yan; my name was Qiyan Agula, a prince of the grass plains. And..." She has said this to several people, both back home and here. She doesn't mind people knowing it, at least not so far from the Wei kingdom, but it was such a dangerous secret there that she hesitated even to think it too loudly. It doesn't feel like an important fact about her, but it is important to her relationship with Nangong Jingnu. Qi Yan does not care if she is seen as a woman or a man, but she loves Nangong Jingnu in the way a woman loves another.

"I am a woman. A woman who is both like a woman and also like a man. It's different from your friend, who you said is sometimes one thing and sometimes another, and it's different from the other situation you mentioned, where someone is one way in mind and another in body. Because my body is also not one thing—I altered it with poison long ago. It's too much to untangle, so it's easier to be a man; it doesn't bother me at all, except that I hate fearing discovery." Hearing herself say it, Qi Yan realizes she might have implied that this is the secret Nangong Jingnu could not countenance. It isn't fair to Jingnu, so she hastens to add: "My wife knew this and accepted it, but it became more widely known just before I came here. That is one reason we could not stay legally married."

Edited 2023-11-25 22:03 (UTC)

Magnus regards Qi Yan for a long moment. He realizes that he hasn't really been thinking of Qi Yan as having a gender at all, in the time they've known each other; mentally, he categorizes Qi Yan as it's complicated with a splash of her. "Gay marriage isn't allowed in your world, huh," he says, thoughtfully. He wants to know more about poison as a gender affirming intervention -- it's so unlike anything he's heard of -- but he's also pretty sure that's not his business. Still trying to sort through Qi Yan's story, he offers, "I know some people back home who are kind of... in the middle, instead of one or the other."

"Do you mean marriage between two women? No, it's not legal. Not for anyone, but especially not for Nangong Jingnu, because she is the Emperor and needs to bear an heir. As for the rest..." Qi Yan is certain that a man is something different from what she is. Men have a certain way of being in the world, a way of acting as though everything should belong to them. Many things are denied women, and they must find more creative ways of obtaining what they want. That is what Qi Yan has done. But she is also sure that she is something different from Nangong Jingnu. "It's a long story. I will have to prevail upon your patience to tell it."

"I've got all the time in the world," Magnus says, gesturing around them at the peaceful woods and the sun slanting through the branches. "I'd love to hear your story."

"When I was born, my parents needed a son, politically. The elders of the tribe would not accept my mother as Khatun unless she bore a prince. So my father resolved to say I was a prince no matter what my gender. His intention was to have a true son with my mother as soon as possible, and then, with her position secure, I could live as a woman. The elders might be irritated by the deception, but by that time my mother would be established as Khatun and they would have to accept it. My mother was very anxious for this to happen—she took it hard when their second child was also female. She badly wanted a son, so I could claim my identity as a girl. But it didn't matter much to me." It is always difficult to think of her childhood, the happy memories suffused with painful yearning and regret. There was no reason to believe things would not continue always as they were, with Qiyan Agula raising her perfect horse, learning to fight, and finding gifts in the woods to delight her sister.

"In the Chengli tribe, being a man or a woman made little difference. Either way, I would have been able to ride my horse and hunt with my sworn brother, and the Chengli also would have accepted a female Khagan. Men ruled by tradition, but the strength of women was respected, and my father intended to champion me as his heir. But my family was murdered before my parents' third child could be born, so no one ever knew I was a female prince—not even my own sister. After that..." How much of this to tell? Qi Yan does not want to discuss the masked princess. "I did live openly as a woman for some years, while recovering from illness and studying. Again, it made little difference to me. But when I went to the southern Wei kingdom, it was necessary to disguise myself as a man, because the Wei kingdom is different from where I grew up. Women's options are very limited there. I took poison to restrict some of my feminine aspects, so I wouldn't be discovered and killed." She pauses to put her thoughts together. There are more details about the trouble her gender has caused her, but they're not relevant to what she's trying to explain to Magnus. "I am not a man. Among my own people, I might have liked to live as a woman. I sometimes wonder what it might have been like—what kind of woman I would have been. But I could not have lived as a woman of the Wei kingdom. In that land, I much prefer to be a gentleman of the court."

Magnus listens attentively, trying to slot Qi Yan's experience in with his understanding of gender. So like a butch lesbian? he wonders. He feels a little out of his depth, actually, and wishes Alex were here for this conversation instead. Knowing more about gender than most of the residents here is a really low bar, and he's by no means an expert -- after all, he's been trapped in one gender his entire life, and it fits him fine enough. Heck, he didn't even realize he was into dudes until Alex kissed him while male^*! So it's not like he's any wiser when it comes to sexuality, either.

"So it's more of a -- safety and convenience thing?" he asks, to clarify. "Rather than an inner need?"

*To be fair, he also didn't really think about being into girls. Until Alex kissed him while female.

Qi Yan has never much thought about it. It is difficult to explain what is not clear even to her. "I don't know. There has always been an external need, so I can't say how it would be if I had the choice. I have no desire, now, to start dressing as a woman and answer to feminine titles." She gives Magnus a little smile. "I don't expect you to diagnose me, like a physician." She just wondered what it would be like to take advantage of her apparent safety here, and say things she has not been able to say. Her gender became common knowledge in the Wei kingdom just before she left it, so it feels as though the secret has already been half-exposed. Otherwise she might have kept it a little longer, truth spell or no.

"Gender isn't a diagnosis," Magnus says, immediately and firmly. Of this he is certain. He's learned about how it's been used as one in the past, and come down on the side of 'strongly opposed.' But he abandons his attempt to try to categorize Qi Yan anyway, instead taking everything she (they? he?) says at face value.

He still does have one question, though. "You have no desire to answer to feminine titles," he says. "Does that include pronouns?" He's mostly avoided thinking of Qi Yan in terms of pronouns since they met, and he wants to make sure he's doing it right. "Would you prefer masculine ones, or neutral ones?"

"I don't think I understand. It may be a language difference."¹ This place does translate between different tongues. Magnus is not speaking Mandarin, and parts of speech differ drastically between languages, so "pronouns" may have an entirely different use to him. Qi Yan knew this, but it didn't occur to her that her gender might be indicated by the language others use, in ways she cannot perceive. "I would prefer if most people assume I am a man, and treat me as such. Whatever language indicates that is what you should use. Will you explain it to me?"

¹Modern Mandarin differentiates between "he" and "she" in spelling but not pronunciation. Before the 20th century, it did not differentiate. Qi Yan's first language is not specified in canon, but as far as I can tell none of the languages in the families it might belong to use gendered pronouns.

"So there's masculine pronouns, like he/him/his," Magnus says. "Those are the ones I've always used. There's feminine ones, like she/her/hers. Alex has both sets. And then the neutral ones... it varies. Some people have they/them/theirs. Some people have other stuff that isn't in any of those categories, based on what feels the most correct. I don't know as much about that, but we had a kid at the Chase Space the month before I came here who had xe/xem/xyr."

Qi Yan shakes her head, mystified. The translation is nonsensical, but the idea of different pronouns for different genders is simple to grasp. "It doesn't make any difference to me. But what I've told you is private, so you may use the masculine ones with others." It varies, which words in her own language feel like her, and which do not. She is Bayin's sworn brother, and a prince to her people. The word princess would sound inaccurate. Xiao-Die calls her gege, but she wouldn't mind jiejie, if it was ever safe to acknowledge their relationship. She would not like to be called a woman within the Wei court, especially as it would make her title Empress, which makes her skin crawl just to think of. But if Nangong Jingnu were to call her wife... The flame that lights in her heart, she must immediately extinguish before the heat reaches her face.

With all that in mind, it is impossible to choose how she might feel about gendered words that mean nothing to her culturally. "Lan Wangji knows." And Qi Yan mentioned her gender to Gu Xiang, but she doesn't know if Gu Xiang understood what she meant. "If you're speaking with him, you could indicate that I am a woman." Lan Wangji knows that she is a certain type of woman. He won't misunderstand.

"Okay," Magnus says, frowning with concentration. "Let me get this straight: Out loud, masculine terms, unless I'm only around Hanguang-jun or you, in which case feminine ones are okay but not necessarily strongly preferred. And in my head, when I'm thinking about you... it can be anything?"

"Exactly." She smiles at him, appreciative of how hard he's working to understand. It's this earnest nature that makes her like and trust him.

Magnus nods, smiling back. "I still have questions," he admits. "But I think maybe our worlds have different words to talk about this kind of stuff, and my questions are definitely more based in what's familiar to me." Plus he's still trying to be better about respecting people's boundaries, and doesn't want to risk coming too close to any of Qi Yan's, especially after what is obviously a major revelation. So he'll just say -- "Thank you for trusting me with this, Qi Yan."

Qi Yan might not have answers for his questions, even if he asked them. She has not met anyone like her, and she does not expect there to be a category to describe it. "Thank you for being trustworthy," she says with a respectful nod.

Magnus flushes. "Sure, no problem," he says, a little awkwardly.

"And you?" She gives him a little smile. "Yet a man?"

"My whole life," Magnus says, with a crooked smile.

"And how are your lessons? Have you learned anything new?"

"I'm trying," Magnus says, now smiling. "Let's see. A few people are teaching me how to cook. Nina is teaching me how to flirt, but I'm terrible at it. Claudius is teaching me some more diplomacy. I've been doing a lot of reading on a ton of different subjects, too; I think I'm finally starting to understand triangles."

"Teaching you to flirt? Who are you practicing on?"

"Oh, it's all conceptual, since Alex isn't here."

"Oh, of course." Qi Yan could probably use those lessons too. For so long she's been unable to openly express her feelings for Nangong Jingnu—she's not sure how she would begin, if she could. She feels a stab of kinship with Magnus, separated from the one he loves, even though Qi Yan's situation is different. Nangong Jingnu would not like to see her. Thinking it reminds her of how determined she is to return to Nangong Jingnu and force her to settle their affairs. She must stay well until then.

"I should go inside soon—the cold is not good for my health. I would hate to disobey the orders of my physician. She is a cat."

Without any real thought or intent, Magnus summons some heat and pushes it Qi Yan's way. "Mothwing is the best," he agrees.

"She is both knowledgeable and compassionate. A valuable combination."

"Yeah," Magnus says. "It's cool other people here can talk to her, too. Back home I'm the only one who can talk to animals."

"Can you?" Qi Yan glances at him in surprise. "Have you met Fenyes?"

"Feynes?" There's another named animal on the premises?

"Sagramore's horse." Qi Yan's affinity with horses isn't as dangerous of a secret as what she's just told Magnus, and in her childhood she was famous for it. So she doesn't hesitate to say, "I have the ability to communicate with horses. It is a gift I was born with."

Magnus' ability is likely different from hers, since so much of his life is unrecognizable to her. But she cannot shake her own associations with animal communication. To the Chengli, it would show that Magnus has a pure and loving heart. That is easy to believe.

"Oh, awesome," Magnus enthuses. "Even before I could talk to animals I could -- well, I couldn't talk to horses, but I could kind of understand them. They're sacred to my dad, you see."

This touches Qi Yan deeply. She has never met anyone else with this ability, and it is very close to her heart. This seems a confirmation that she was right to trust Magnus; some knot inside her eases. "The Chengli people consider it a divine gift to listen to the hearts of horses. We have boundless respect for them. Your talent would be valued highly there."

Magnus blushes, a little. "So maybe one day we can both go have a conversation with Sagramore's horse," he says.

It's an odd feeling: Qi Yan cannot recall the last time she looked forward to a social engagement. "Yes. You'll like Fenyes, she is kind-hearted."

"Awesome," says Magnus. He's smiling -- a soft, happy smile. "Well, Qi Yan, I don't want to keep you out here if you're feeling the cold too badly, but I can also warm it up out here if you want to hang out longer."

"I should go." The temperature is fine near Magnus, but finding the words for everything Qi Yan told him has been exhausting. She wants to go inside and write another long letter to Nangong Jingnu full of things she would never say to Nangong Jingnu.

She stands. It feels improper not to bow to him again in parting, but she can tell that formal courtesies are not a part of Magnus' culture, and she has been trying not to follow the structures of the Wei kingdom as meticulously as before. So she simply says, "I look forward to meeting again."

"You too, Qi Yan," Magnus says. He leaps to his feet -- he's also been picking up cues from the other residents -- and bobs into one of his now-trademark half-bow, half-curtsies.

Lan Wangji had, prior to the truth spell, been -- in his way -- doing what he could to disassemble the barrier of silence that existed between himself and the other residents of this mansion. It does not come easily to him, and it never has, but he had made a choice, and he had been trying.

Recently, that has slipped back out of his grasp. He keeps to Wei Ying and his quarters and seeks out no one. There is nothing, however, no shame or dissatisfaction or distraction, that could keep him from his duty. He rises at mao hour, he meditates, and he makes his rounds, no matter how many times he makes the same circuit of the grounds, no matter how little changes each time. This morning, though, something has changed in the woods. There is a fire. It comes in no form Lan Wangji has ever seen before, but it is unmistakable, and seemingly contained. He stops to examine it.

It is useful to be perceptive. Something tugs at his awareness, a familiar warm aura, and Lan Wangji looks up until he sees an even more familiar face, light-haired and disheveled and beloved to him. "Magnus," he says, startled enough to let some surprise and concern color his voice.

Edited 2023-11-25 20:12 (UTC)

"Hanguang-jun," Magnus says, an instinctual smile blooming across his face. He tucks his book into the crook of a nearby branch, settling the apple on top of it, and -- absolutely to show off a little -- hooks his legs around his seat and allows himself to fall backward, so that he's hanging upside down by his knees. His hair, which is loose and no doubt bestrewn with twigs, hangs below his head; his t-shirt settle somewhere around his armpits. If he hadn't tucked his necklace underneath the neckline of his shirt, no doubt it would have smacked him in the face. "Hi!"

Neatly torn between pride, amusement, and continued concern, Lan Wangji opts to simply take the path that requires the fewest number of words. He backs up a pace or two, enough to get a small running start that is, in turn, enough for him to jump neatly, pivot with the sole of one boot off the trunk of the tree, and then land with equal tidiness next to Magnus on his chosen branch, nearly floating into a seated position that does not jostle the tree at all when he lands. Tree-climbing is Wei Ying's domain; he enjoys goading Lan Wangji into doing it, then scolding him for approaching the activity with too little gracelessness and enthusiasm, for not getting his hands dirty enough. Lan Wangji knows no other way to approach it.

Magnus hauls himself back up with an easy surge of strength, and then scoots closer to Lan Wangji, leaning against him. "Thanks again for the other day," he says, as the heavy weight of Lan Wangji's pendant settles against his sternum again.

The only answer that springs to mind is there is very little I would not do for you, so Lan Wangji says nothing, and tucks a firm arm around Magnus' shoulders. He is silent, sitting in the pleasant warmth that Magnus seems to emanate, and then he reaches to pluck a stray twig from Magnus' hair, a frown creasing his brow.

Magnus laughs. "Whoops," he says, looking at the twig in Lan Wangji's hands. "I keep thinking I should bring a brush out here, but every time I'm in the house I forget."

Lan Wangji's frown stays in place for a beat or two longer, and then he removes his arm from Magnus' shoulders. He unfastens his qiankun pouch from his waist and reaches inside, with a brief and brisk rummage until he finds the object he is looking for: an ivory comb.

He turns a little, as much as he can while sitting on a tree branch, and begins at the ends of Magnus' hair where he can reach it, teasing out twigs and tangles with gentle efficiency.

"Oh," Magnus says, closing his eyes and relaxing. "That feels nice."

For a time, Lan Wangji remains silent, working his way methodically up the length of Magnus' hair. His own hair is considerably longer, and so is Wei Ying's; he has more than enough practice at completing this task with as little painful tugging or snarling as possible. It is meditative, in a way, and at length, he says, "Hair must be combed daily."

"It's been awhile since it's gotten this long," Magnus says. "Back home, Alex would wrangle it into submission anytime it got messy. I guess I'm a little out of practice." Plus, he hasn't really been seeing that many people lately, so there hasn't been much point.

Lan Wangji pauses at a particularly stubborn knot, using the teeth of the comb to coax it apart as gently as he can until he can pass the comb easily through Magnus' hair again. "Where I am from, we do not cut our hair." This is part of his explanation for why daily combing is necessary. It is also necessary for health reasons, of course.

"That's cool," Magnus says. The comb feels so good. Hanguang-jun is so gentle and nice. "Why not?"

"Hair is a gift from one's parents," Lan Wangji says evenly. "Cutting it is disrespectful to that gift." Already, Magnus' hair is beginning to look much neater and more comfortable, which is immensely satisfying.

"Mom always kept her hair super short," Magnus remembers. "But she liked mine longer. I don't know if it's because it was closer to my - to Frey's hair, then, or because... There was this Midgardian musician named Kurt Cobain before my time that she used to really like, and she got a kick out of how much I apparently looked like him. So I mostly kept it long, until we had a quest and Blitz had to cut it so he could use it as thread for a crafting. Alex got really into being my personal hairdresser after that, and I mostly let him."

It's a comfort to listen to Magnus, and Lan Wangji continues to comb out his hair, closer now to the crown of his head, as he speaks. There is a smear of sap stuck nearly to where the hair parts, and that takes the longest time of all to work out, because Lan Wangji is utterly determined to stay gentle, not to hurt him. "Alex," he repeats, thoughtful. He can identify a significant name, especially when it is uttered twice in one conversation. "You told me that Alex's parents were unkind to him."

Magnus freezes. "Yeah," he says, slowly. "Very. I shouldn't have said that, though, even if I was upset at the time. The Loki stuff is common knowledge, but the other stuff... Alex is a really private person." Tone apologetic, he adds, "If he ever shows up here I won't ask you to pretend like I didn't say anything, but I probably shouldn't say anything else about her life before she was homeless."

"Mn." With some triumph, Lan Wangji flicks the half-hardened sap away, watching it soar into the air and then drop to the forest floor. He switches the hand holding the comb so that he may run his fingers through that portion of Magnus' hair, confirming that it is no longer sticky, then switches back to resume his work. "I would not ask you to."

"I know you wouldn't," Magnus says, appreciatively. "Suffice to say, then, that Alex's mom is Loki, but she doesn't like to be defined by that particular relationship."

"I read of Loki," Lan Wangji says with another small and fleeting frown. He committed to memory every detail that he could of the gods who seem to define Magnus' world. "I understand." Finished at last, he runs the comb through each section of Magnus' hair one final time, top to bottom. Once he is satisfied that there are no knots remaining, he returns the comb to his qiankun pouch and secures it afresh to his waist.

"Yeah," Magnus nods. "Bad news bears." When it become clear that Lan Wangji is done with his hair, he twists back and leans against him again. "I'm trying to think of the best way to tell Alex that I love her, next time I see her."

It is clear that Magnus is unlikely to fall, and equally clear that he would not sustain significant damage if he did. Lan Wangji fits his arm back around his shoulders anyway.

Magnus is young, but Lan Wangji was younger still when he fell in love. He never fell out of that love. As such, he considers this, and takes it seriously. "Can you not say it plainly?"

"Yeah, but," Magnus says. "Like, I think she probably knows. I'm not a cagey guy. But I want it to be special, especially since I've been gone so long."

"I am more qualified to teach you painting and handstands," Lan Wangji admits, just the tiniest bit dry about it. "I have loved one person all my life and did not speak of it until recently." This is not quite accurate. He confessed once, at length, and it was forgotten entirely, Wei Ying's mind breaking under the qi backlash along with his body and spirit. That Lan Wangji is the only one who remembers makes it easy to feel as though it never truly happened.

"But you did speak of it," Magnus says. "If you don't want to get into it, though, that's fine." He considers something, though, and doesn't drop the topic: "I also don't want to scare him off by being like, Alex, you're the love of my life, PS I've decided to try and quit fighting, I hope that doesn't make things weird, because I really mean it."

Lan Wangji is quiet for a time, gazing out at the trees around them, their bursts of autumnal colors. Magnus is very warm against his side. He thinks of Wei Ying, whose wants are often in conflict with his needs. "If Alex loves you, he will know that you require peace, and he will want it for you as much as you want it for yourself."

"Yeah," Magnus says, thoughtfully. "She's really good at fighting, though. Hey, did I ever tell you that she's a shapeshifter?"

That is, in fact, a surprise, and Lan Wangji gives Magnus a glance of muted but interested curiosity. His expression should speak for itself, he hopes.

"It's unrelated to her gender," Magnus clarifies, because that seems to be a fairly common misconception at the Mansion. "But yeah. She can do any animal. She has a really good flamingo. And a great elephant. And cheetah; she was a cheetah when I met her."

Lan Wangji is not certain what Alex's gender has to do with any of this¹, but the shapeshifting aspect of Magnus' beloved seems to be more interesting regardless. He struggles to imagine this, which only serves to make him more interested. "I hope to meet Alex." He wonders, not aloud, how he might feel if Wei Ying could do the same, then becomes very briefly distracted.

¹For those playing along at home, this is because he and she sound the same aloud in Mandarin, so Lan Wangji has not noticed that Magnus is switching back and forth.

"I hope you do, too," Magnus says. "She beheaded me the day we met, too." This is said happily, in tones of great reverence, but it occurs to him that the statement might alarm Lan Wangji. "It was to keep her mom from exploding my brain," he clarifies. "There was a whole dream-traveling situation."

Indeed, predictably, Lan Wangji shoots a startled look down at Magnus, and tightens his arm around him. He settles at Magnus' reassurance and explanation, but uneasily. If this beheading was ultimately to protect Magnus, he won't object, but even the thought of it is distressing. After a moment, though, he says, "Great skill can be very charming."

"They are," Magnus agrees. "Alex is good at basically everything. Pottery, fighting, wearing cool clothes, k--" He blushes. "A lot of stuff. One time we had to fight a giant in a weirdly ceremonial way, and she made a ceramic warrior overnight and brought it to life and it kicked ass."

There truly is a comfort, and an uncomplicated sweetness, in the unabashed admiration with which Magnus describes his Alex. Lan Wangji sincerely would like to meet this person. He gives Magnus' shoulder a gentle squeeze, to show that he is listening, and duly impressed, if Magnus would like to continue enumerating Alex's virtues.

A strange thought crosses Magnus's mind: he can't introduce Alex to his mom, so he would like to introduce him to Lan Wangji. He snuggles closer to Lan Wangji about it. "She wears really loud clothes," he says. "Pinks and greens, but they look great on her. She's snarky and sarcastic and sweet. Since Loki is Samirah's dad, sometimes when Alex is a guy, since he's technically a male relative, he'll chaperone Sam and her fiance. He always gets so funny and so serious about that."

At this point Lan Wangji does, in fact, become aware that the matter of Alex's gender may be more complicated than he realized. It doesn't sound like anything in his experience, but then, he has encountered several things outside of his experience at this mansion. It also sounds like something that does not invite prying, so he won't. He thinks on this latest information, and then asks, "Samirah?"

"My valkyrie," Magnus clarifies. "And best friend, outside of Galahad. Wait, do you know what that is?"

"Mn," Lan Wangji confirms. "I sought a book on the gods and myths of your world." He is quite grateful that he did; he has stood a slightly better chance of understanding Magnus' words as a result of his reading. "Samirah took you to Valhalla?"

"Yeah," Magnus says. "It was a really controversial decision. She almost got fired from being a valkyrie for it, since I dropped my sword and nobody believed the fire-giant I was fighting was Surt. Even though it was. Every new einherji gets their story told during their first feast in Valhalla, you see. The story of how they died. And then their future is read. There are these seers who will determine what their future in Valhalla is, and if they have a godly parent or if they're just someone with a specific sort of belief in honor. Literally no one else in Valhalla has a Vanir god for a parent, except me. It's all Aesir... I don't know if your book said this, but the Aesir are mostly gods of war and the Vanir are gods of nature? But instead of the regular seers coming to read my future, the Norns came. The Norns," he explains, "Are these giant women who control fate. And they gave me a prophecy."

He closes his eyes, and quotes: "'Wrongly chosen, wrongly slain; a hero Valhalla cannot contain. Nine days hence the sun must go east, ere Sword of Summer unbinds the beast.' The Sword of Summer is Jack; he's destined to set Fenris Wolf loose at the start of Ragnarok. Everyone thought that the prophecy meant Sam chose me wrongly, but it turned out it meant that Loki marked me for death wrongly. He thought that I could be controlled into retrieving Jack, who had been lost for centuries, and then letting it go so that he could be freed. I couldn't." He thinks for a moment, then adds: "Because Sam actually did such a good job, though, Odin basically made her his special projects right-hand valkyrie."

Something occurs to Magnus, mid-stream. "I wonder if, if me and Jack just stay here, Ragnarok won't start?"

Edited 2023-11-26 21:41 (UTC)

As ever, Lan Wangji listens attentively, and does his utmost to understand. It goes much better than it typically might, both due to his own reading and due to the fact that Magnus is making a slightly more consistent effort to explain his terminology than he typically does.

A small frown tugs at his face in answer to the last question. It is tempting, to some degree, to imagine that Magnus may simply never return to his world, never face any of what is supposedly in store for him. "Would you stay?"

"I," Magnus says, and stops. He wants to say that, if it stopped Ragnarok, he'd never go back. That he would make that choice even if it meant never seeing another friend from home again. Or if he could hide Jack here, at least, so that what was prophesied could never come to pass. "I have responsibilities that are hard to turn away from. Even if they mean eventually I'll need to fight and die."

That is the answer Lan Wangji anticipated. If Magnus were not so diligent and dedicated, Lan Wangji would not have grown to care for him so deeply, but now he wants nothing more than to keep him from all potential harm for as long as he can. The arm around Magnus' shoulder tightens, just a little. "I understand," he says, and he does.

"It's the Chase Space," Magnus explains. "That's -- my reward for defeating Loki was that the gods granted me the resources to turn my uncle's horrible old mansion into a shelter for homeless kids, like I used to be. Me and Alex run it together. Hearthstone and Blitzen help. I feel... I can't just drop it because it's easier to stay here." He frowns. "But if I knew for certain that I could stop Ragnarok forever by just staying here..." He rests his head against Lan Wangji's shoulder. "What about you?" he asks.

A shelter for homeless kids, naturally. Children like the child Wei Ying once was, fighting dogs in the streets for rancid scraps of leftover food. Lan Wangji experiences that familiar ache in his chest, another tripping step forward into loving someone new. He cannot pretend at surprise. He said it himself to Claudius, not long ago: this mansion will be a turning point for everyone who walks through its doors.

As is his way, he thinks on the question before he answers it, watching as, three trees away from them, a squirrel darts its way up into the thick autumn leaves. The mansion has its own beauty. "I miss the Cloud Recesses," he says. "I worry for my brother and my uncle. My disciples will get by without me, but I miss them, too."

Magnus nods. "That's how I feel about my friends, too," he says.

The next silence is longer, Lan Wangji's thoughts stretching out slowly so that he is certain of them before he speaks them aloud. "I would return if I could," he says, "but I believe I would regret leaving this place as well." That is the first time he has expressed this aloud to anyone but Wei Ying. It is troubling, because there is no solution to it. He cannot have both.

"It's hard," Magnus agrees. "There are people I love in both places." He shifts a little, so he can curl up harder against Lan Wangji's side. The branch barely sways. He sighs. "Even if I wanted to -- even if I tried -- I know I can't be here forever, though."

Thoughtful still, Lan Wangji slides the hand curled around Magnus' shoulder down to bestow a fond squeeze upon his elbow. The thought of being parted from Magnus is painful. So is the thought of never again seeing the Cloud Recesses, the impeccably-tended gardens and the bamboo and the inside of the jingshi. "That jade token grants you entry without question to the Cloud Recesses." Clearly, this is more than a little wishful thinking. If they were granted the ability to leave, it seems unlikely that every world would become open to every other. Still; he wants Magnus to know.

Magnus twists his head to stare up at Lan Wangji, shocked. Absently, he brings a hand up and touches the jade pendant strung on his necklace next to Jack. "I know I'm leaving someday because it's been prophesied that I'll get to talk to my mom again, before Ragnarok," he says. "I don't know where she went when she died. All I know is it wasn't Valhalla or Helheim." He fidgets, fingers stroking over the smooth surface of the token, so touched he can't bring himself to voice his feelings about it. If it wasn't for that, and the Chase Space, and Alex, he really thinks he might prefer to stay. Or to go to Lan Wangji's world, and see his home.

Obviously, it is vital that Magnus see his mother again, even if only once. Lan Wangji can hardly imagine what he might do in the pursuit of speaking with his own mother a final time. He hopes that he would be able to speak at all, to tell her everything that she missed and to explain Wei Ying to her. He knows that she would love his husband.

It takes a noticeable moment for Lan Wangji to master himself after that thought, and he breathes carefully through it. "You must talk with her if you can," he agrees. "But my home is open to you if it becomes possible."

"Hanguang-jun," Magnus says, blinking^*. "Thank you."

*He's the personification of :pleading_face: right now. FYI.

Again, there is nothing Lan Wangji can say that does not amount to slicing himself open on a tree branch in the middle of the woods. He has, for now, had enough of being bared to the world. So he looks down at Magnus, terribly and dangerously fond for a moment, and then returns to watching the small and varied movements of the forest around them.

Magnus is content to let the silence settle around them, but he does have further questions, so eventually he stirs. "There's something else I've been wondering," he says, quietly.

Immediately attentive, Lan Wangji settles his gaze back on Magnus' face, as much as he can while they are seated like this. "What is it?"

"It's my age," Magnus says. "I don't know how old I should think of myself as."

Lan Wangji frowns, although he makes the effort to subsequently smooth his features shortly thereafter. "What is the trouble?"

"Like, I died on my sixteenth birthday," Magnus says. "And I'm always going to look like this. So maybe I'm sixteen? But that was eight years ago, and it's not like I haven't grown up in Valhalla, mentally. So maybe I'm twenty-four? Or maybe I'm just, like, an ageless being now."

Lan Wangji had been so entirely convinced that Magnus was roughly the same age as Sizhui that this does take a moment to sink in properly, and his face is blank during this process. He does, however, apply himself to thinking about the answer before he speaks.

"One of the aims of cultivation is immortality," he says, "and high cultivation can slow the aging process even if immortality is not attained." This is why he looks approximately ten years younger than he is, for instance. "With the passage of time, wisdom is always accrued. You may be neither sixteen nor twenty-four." Ageless being certainly isn't right, either. Magnus is no distant and aloof immortal atop a lofty peak. He is warmth and life personified. "You are yourself. It may be that you need to discover what that means as you go along."

Magnus considers this carefully. He thinks it makes a lot of sense. It's nice to hear he doesn't have to decide right away. "Aziraphale told me I could be twenty-four," he says. "Sometimes I still feel sixteen, I think. Sometimes I feel like I haven't had a normal life since my mom died, and there's no good way to pin myself down."

He glances up at Lan Wangji. "How old do I seem to you? Out of curiosity."

Some very subtle sheepishness crosses Lan Wangji's expression for a fraction of a moment. This is difficult for him to answer objectively. The first time he saw Magnus, he saw the echo of his own memories, of the first time Sizhui held a sword and Lan Wangji talked him through the first steps of the Lan clan's most basic sword forms.

He considers him, the fall of his freshly-neatened hair and the grey of his eyes, the impression of ghosts within them. There is something of a gravity to Magnus, something that Sizhui and Jingyi and their peers do not have most days. Maybe it is the additional years or maybe it is the bloodshed that Magnus has seen, the unchecked violence that Lan Wangji has been so relieved to spare his students from witnessing. They all performed beautifully during the second siege of the Burial Mounds, and he is proud -- but he wishes they had not needed to.

"Neither sixteen nor twenty-four," he says again, with a fresh measure of deliberation, but he has to admit, soft with that precipitous fondness, "but I see my disciples when I look at you."

Magnus's hand comes up and he touches the jade token again, reflexively. He remembers what Lan Wangji said about a particularly special disciple, back when Magnus accused Lan Wangji of being a deadbeat dad. His heart thuds. "Okay," he says, smiling down at his lap. "I can take that."

When Lan Wangji emerged from his seclusion, scars tight and still painful on his back, he felt as though he had forgotten every carefully-gathered scrap of knowledge about how to be a part of the world. He was encased in a sheet of ice, brittle with grief and too aware that his life was a gift handed to him by his uncle, who loved him too much to punish him as harshly as he deserved. It was a gift he was only barely certain he wanted. He had meditated for days on end, time enough that the yawning wound of his grief had just begun to scab over with the understanding that Wei Ying was gone. The loss was permanent, and nothing would ever again be as it was.

A-Yuan had grown in his absence, and his fever had washed away his memory of the Burial Mounds and the Wen remnants. Lan Qiren handed the child to Lan Wangji with tempered irritation, as though to say Here, you wanted him, and Lan Wangji was frozen. He was in Yiling again, A-Yuan's tears soaking through his robes and all the passersby laughing about Lan Wangji's stiffness, his unsuitability to caring for a child.

The two of them had to learn one another. By then, A-Yuan recognized Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren more readily, and would cry and ask for them. Lan Wangji, who wanted to give him everything he asked for, complied, until the first time that A-Yuan drifted to sleep in his arms instead. Lan Wangji stared down at him in shock. There was a stirring in him, new life green and tender through the coating of frost. A-Yuan was warm, heavier than Lan Wangji could have imagined for a child so small and sweet. Lan Wangji held him until he awoke, the skin and bones of his chest feeling so thin that a breeze could have carried his heart away if it so wished.

Here, now, with Magnus a steady warmth on his side, he is immensely grateful for every slow change that time has visited upon him. He knows now how to be gentle, how to watch a young person grow with pride and love, how to accept the gift of trust that comes with another person relaxing into his hold and believing without fear that Lan Wangji will allow no harm to come to them.

He smiles, quick, just a hint of it like sunlight catching on a white jade token at the perfect angle. Magnus may leave. They may be parted, and Lan Wangji may know a new kind of grief. Still: he is glad for this day, this tree, and this boy.

"I've been practicing my handstands," Magnus offers, since it seems to be topical.

The smile is gone, but its warmth does remain as Lan Wangji looks at Magnus. "And?"

"I'm getting pretty good at them," Magnus says. He hesitates a moment, then says, "Would you teach me something else?"

Of course Magnus is getting good at handstands. Lan Wangji is unsurprised, but pleased nonetheless. "We discussed painting," he recalls. "Or is there something else in particular?"

"I do want to learn to paint," Magnus says. He shrugs. Very casually, he asks, "What do your disciples learn?"

With alarming clarity, Lan Wangji pictures Magnus Chase wearing a forehead ribbon. The image is so charming that it comes shockingly close to making him smile again.

"Lan clan sword techniques," he recites, taking the question at face value even as he understands that there is something else beneath it. "Musical cultivation; some play the qin, as I do, but others play the xiao. As I said before: painting, calligraphy, and weiqi. There is a great deal of theory to study as well. When I deem them ready, they can apply it in practice and embark on night-hunts. Initially, I supervise. With time, I allow them to go alone, as long as they carry the signal flare that can alert me immediately if they need my assistance."

Even more exceedingly casually, Magnus says, "Do you think I could learn any of that stuff? Maybe not the sword techniques right now. Unless you can just teach them to Jack, I guess; he isn't taking a break from fighting to try and figure out other options."

Lan Wangji pauses, although he is certain of his answer. He tucks Magnus a little more firmly against his side. "Any of the gentlemanly arts, yes, with time. I'm not certain if you can learn to cultivate, with your demigodly nature already in evidence, but I will teach you to meditate, too, if you like. Whatever you wish to try, you may."

"Okay, Hanguang-jun," Magnus says, satisfied. "It turns out I really like learning things when I'm not forced to learn them to escape certain death. I haven't really had the opportunity to do anything school-y since my mom died."

"It is rewarding," Lan Wangji agrees. Magnus always deserved better than the fate he was dealt, time on the streets and a mother torn from him by violence. There is no going back, but Lan Wangji can give him something softer now.

"I'm not, like, great at a bunch of stuff," Magnus says. He doesn't want Lan Wangji to think he's going to be some kind of wunderkind and then get disappointed when Magnus takes a while to pick things up. "Beyond the basics I get being Frey's son and an einherji, my skills are basically having really awesome friends, and dying less often than I used to. Having a good community around me and being good to them, too." Here, he leans his head against Lan Wangji's shoulder again. "But I don't mind it. I like trying anyway."

Still terribly fond, Lan Wangji removes his hand from Magnus' shoulder in order to cup the back of his head for a moment, securing it where it rests on his own shoulder. "Mn. The journey is worthwhile regardless of the destination."

Edited 2023-11-28 13:11 (UTC)

Magnus nods. "I think so, too."

After another small stretch of silence, Lan Wangji picks up a lock of Magnus' freshly-combed hair and rubs it between two fingers. He considers how best to phrase this, particularly now that he knows Magnus is older than he appears. "Your room is empty. I have tended to the plants. Are you caring for yourself?"

"Yeah," Magnus says. There's something about Lan Wangji -- Magnus feels like he can tell him anything, and he'll be listened to and understood, and not judged. Possibly because Lan Wangji has seen him at his worst in two very different ways, and still takes this kind of time to be there for him, talking through Magnus's questions, holding him like a -- like a --

Adult-shaped adult, Magnus tells himself, firmly.

"Do you know what a panic attack is?" Galahad hadn't, until Magnus explained them; he's trying to do better about his assumptions of common knowledge.

Lan Wangji can make some guesses based on the phrase, but assumptions without clarification rarely serve anyone. "Tell me," he says quietly, somewhere between a request and a directive.

Magnus studies the branches of the cedar tree about ten yards in front of him. "I guess they're different for everyone. For me, it's like when I had asthma, before I died. Asthma is this thing -- it means you have trouble breathing, for... some reason, and sometimes it flares up into a full-on attack where the symptoms get really bad, really fast. I got a total glow-up when I died, so I don't have asthma anymore, but..." He shrugs. "It's this feeling like I can't breathe -- like something is crushing my chest, and something really terrible is going to happen. Heart racing, I actually feel temperatures, or something like them. When I was a kid, I would have really bad attacks when I was sleeping inside unless my room was totally empty and totally dark. Going outside helped."

It's not a complete explanation, but he doesn't know what else to say. He trusts Lan Wangji to asks the questions he needs.

It is enough for Lan Wangji to understand it. He frowns, and gives Magnus' shoulder another squeeze. He remembers that Magnus' father is a god associated with the outdoors, and that, too, helps him to understand. "You are more at peace outside?"

"As long as there are no wolves around," Magnus jokes, and then nods. "Yeah. Usually it's just crowds, or wolves, or stuff that reminds me of asthma that makes it happen, but... with the broken window, and the whole reaction I had to fighting those zombies, it's just really, really hard to be inside right now." He leans harder against Lan Wangji. "Thank you for taking care of my plants. I was worried about them."

Lan Wangji releases a quiet breath, and turns to rest his forehead against the top of Magnus' head, just for another one or two of those breaths. "I will care for them if you care for yourself. And," he adds, slipping indulgently into precisely the tone he would use to tell Jingyi to sit properly, "comb your hair."

Magnus grins. "Yes, sir," he says. More seriously, with a glance at the fire still crackling in his outdoor fireplace, he adds, "I really am okay out here. I don't get cold, except for in Niflheim, where the warmest it ever gets is forty below. I've slept outside through plenty of snowstorms and been totally fine. Bonus of being Summer Guy."

"Mn," Lan Wangji says, this one an mn of understanding. He chooses to trust that Magnus knows himself and his own limitations, as much as he would like to briskly bundle him up and carry him into a warmer environment. "I will see to it that your window is repaired, if you ever do wish to come back inside."

"Thank you," Magnus says, once more snuggling against Lan Wangji's side. "I will eventually, I think. I just need to give it a little time."

Time can, as Lan Wangji knows, do a considerable amount of work toward healing. He understands that, too. He nods, and resettles his arm around Magnus. He's content to sit here as long as Magnus would like.

Because Magnus is his best friend, Galahad has part of a tarte tatin for him (this is very important). He's aware that Magnus is in the tree, and Percival did teach him to climb trees, but he isn't certain whether Magnus wants company today. His primary errand is to leave the tarte tatin and A Lady for a Duke, since they talked about it, and he'll be happy either way.

Edited 2023-11-25 21:29 (UTC)

It take Magnus a moment to notice Galahad, but when he does, he grins. "Dude," he calls. "Do you wanna come up, or should I come down?"

"I can't carry this up. May I leave it?"

"Yeah, of course," Magnus says. "Wherever is good. My bag is on the other side of the trunk, if that's easier?"

He nods, realizes Magnus might not be able to hear him, and says, "Yes," before leaving the book and the tarte tatin with Magnus' things. Then he pulls himself ungracefully into the tree. Percival taught him to do this, but Percival had been climbing trees since he was a child his mother would set in the branches, and Galahad was only a poor student next to his innate confidence. He does manage to get up to where Magnus is, though.

Magnus holds out a hand in case Galahad wants it, either to lever himself into a seat, or just to hold. "Hi," he says, smiling. He signs friend, quickly, and then puts his hand back between them.

He settles close enough to lean against Magnus' shoulder and takes his hand. "Are you here because you don't want to go back to your room?"

Magnus nods. "Inside is... hard, right now."

Galahad nods too: this makes absolute sense, based on their conversation last week. "I brought you something I made with Laertes. It's a pastry with apples."

"Oh, awesome," Magnus says. "I love that kind of thing, thanks dude."

"And a book."

"A book! Which one?"

"The one where the lady is transgender. It's a romance."

"Oh, right." Magnus remembers Galahad mentioning it now; he's excited to read it. "Think it'll give me any ideas?"

"For Alex?" He pauses to consider that. "No. The characters aren't like you. Either of you."

Magnus nods, accepting this. "I'm excited to read it anyway," he says, and tilts his head so that his is resting on Galahad's. "What have you been up to? Besides making apple pastries."

"We're getting the garden ready for winter. Some of the plants have to come inside, but some of them can be covered up in the garden. Some of them are all right as they are."

"I like how much your boyfriend likes gardening," Magnus tells Galahad. "I've been thinking about asking him to teach me some stuff, actually, because, like -- I can grow pretty much any plant, obviously, but I don't know how to do it the regular way." He wiggles his fingers, to indicate his alf seidr. "There was a park I slept in a bunch, when I was homeless, and I always found it really interesting to see how the plants changed through the year."

"He knows about every plant," with a touch of pride, and then he amends it: "Almost every. But if you ask, he'll tell you about them, and what they need." He pauses. "What do you mean when you say homeless?"

"Does 'living on the streets' clarify anything?" It's a genuine question; Magnus isn't sure if he knows how to explain the idea to someone from hundreds of years ago.

"You mean landless, like a beggar?" He's not certain this is entirely equivalent, but it seems to fit .

"I mean..." Magnus thinks for a minute or two, grateful that Galahad is the kind of guy who doesn't mind long, thought-searching silences. "So when I'm from, most people have a home of some kind. You might own it, or you might pay the person who owns it for the right to live there. It can be a house, or just a set of rooms in a bigger building. If you don't have a regular place to live -- if you have to sleep in your car... um, cars are like horseless carriages?... or outside, or even in a hotel... that's like an inn, if you have those? -- If there's no permanent place you usually stay at, then you're homeless. Sometimes there are shelters -- basically, places that have food and beds and other resources, like medical aid or clothes. There were a few decent kids shelters in Boston. But they were really crowded, and you were usually only allowed to stay a few days without the authorities being notified, if you're a kid. So I mostly avoided them." He thinks back over what he said. "That was convoluted. What parts can I explain better?"

There's an equally thinking silence from Galahad. There are bits he can get from context, and he's trying instead to draw a through-line on the things he knows about Magnus. "And you have panic attacks, from being inside, too. So you slept outside."

Magnus nods, cheek rubbing against Galahad's hair. "It didn't help that, like," he says, and makes a face. He told Hanguang-jun about this, and he even mentioned it to Nina once, but it's not really an easy thing to say. "When I was fourteen, my mom was murdered by, basically, magic wolves? She told me to run, and that she would meet me later, so I ran, but they made our apartment -- the rooms we were renting -- exploded. And since I had a disciplinary record, the police --" What was it Sagramore had called them? "--Sagramore said police are like reeves? I don't know what a reeve is, though. But anyway, they thought I did it, so they were trying to find me, so I had to move around. Avoid the shelters unless the weather was terrible or I couldn't find food elsewhere, stuff like that. Even if they weren't crowded and cluttered and therefore, like, triggering, they'd be hard."

This is a lot to absorb, and he almost signs overwhelmed, but it feels suddenly very important that he not, that he take all of this and process it, even if that takes a little while. Magnus is so bright, summer sun and warmth, and though Galahad is aware that he has sadnesses and worries, most of them feel within the scope of what he can easily understand: purpose, love. This is something else, harder to grasp and unravel. This is the loss of a parent by violence, unjust condemnation for the same, the struggle for survival.

He doesn't know what to say, of course. He squeezes Magnus' hand tightly instead. Then, after a moment he says, also, "I'm sorry."

"Thanks," Magnus says "It was like ten years ago, so I've had some time to come to terms with it. But I was homeless until I died. So that was kind of a sucky two years ." He tries to remember how they got on the topic. "But on the plus side, I got a really good sense of how plants change through the year?"

Right. Galahad nods. "He would like to talk about that. And if you know any plants that are clever, he'd like that too."

"Clever?" Magnus asks. He's never really thought about that before. "Like what, for instance?"

"He told me there's one by the lake that traps flies to eat. It smells good to them and it's smooth inside so they can't fly away. He liked that."

"Oh, like a venus flytrap!" Magnus says. "Or maybe a pitcher plant? Yeah, those are really clever. There weren't so many like that outside in Boston proper, but there were a few in this place Mom and I used to go camping." There had been a museum demonstration once, too, that he'd wanted to go see, but he couldn't afford the tickets and since he was a street kid, he didn't have any of the necessary paperwork to get in for free.

"A pitcher plant," he agrees, pleased that Magnus knew. "I want to learn more about plants like that, and draw them."

Magnus wishes that his plant powers extended to being able to create something from nothing, just so he could conjure up some other plants for Galahad to draw. "Maybe there are seeds somewhere, inside the Mansion," he says, trusting Galahad to follow what is, largely, a non sequitur.

Galahad, whose mind often does something similar, nods. "I can look." He tilts his head at Magnus. "I can bring you things you need from inside, too, if you want. So you don't have to go in."

Warmth floods Magnus's chest and spills over; the temperature around them raises a few degrees. "Thanks, man, I love you," he says.

"I love thee too," softly.

Magnus squeezes Galahad's hand happily. "I don't know how much longer I'm going to stay out here," he admits, because Galahad is safe, and his best friend, and Magnus can share his insecurities freely. "I should probably try to get used to being inside again soon. I don't know how the weather gets here in the winter."

He nods. Since Magnus has said inside is easier with someone else, he adds, "If you want company, I can stay with you at first. If you need it."

This, frankly, shocks Magnus. A good shock, but totally unexpected nonetheless. "Really?" he asks.

"If you want me to," with a touch of shyness now -- he's second-guessing whether he read the situation right.

"I'd love that," Magnus says, thinking of the easy comfort he felt when they were curled up around each other right after the zombie attack. "I think it would really help. You really wouldn't mind?" He had it in his mind that Galahad really likes the fact that he lives with Claudius. Not that Galahad would be moving in, really, but still.

He's fairly confident Claudius will understand this -- Claudius likes Magnus, he's said so at length, and it won't be a long time. Galahad can think of ways to make that easier. "Thou art my best friend."

"You're mine." Magnus is fiercely grateful to know Galahad. "I'm not ready yet, but when I am -- I'll take you up on the offer. Thank you."

He nods: that's fine. Whenever Magnus is ready.

After a companionable stretch of silence, Magnus says, "I wish I could show you Boston." It's a new thought, not something he's been ruminating on, but it hits him like a brick, how much he wants this.

"Tell me about it."

"It's the center of the universe," Magnus says, with a half-laugh. "By which I mean, it's at the trunk of the World Tree. Most people not from Boston would argue it's not the center of the world at all. It's, like, fine? As a city? I don't actually have a lot to compare it to. Lots of buildings, lots of bridges, lots of angry drivers. But it has some of my favorite things in the world. Fadlan's Falafel, for example, the best restaurant in Midgard. My friend Blitzen has a clothes store. The Chase Space is there. It's -- it was my uncle Randolph's house. He left it to me and my cousin Annabeth in his will, and when I stopped Loki the gods did some magical paperwork so that I could turn it into a better shelter for kids. Alex helps me run it. Hearth and Blitz help out, too."

"You made something good there. It's your home."

Magnus is quiet for a long time. Eventually: "It's one of them."

It's Galahad's turn to be quiet, waiting. Although his hands tend to be cold, the rest of his body is a warm weight against Magnus'.

"Do you want to stay here? At the Mansion, I mean."

He's still quiet; that bears thinking over properly. "I want to be where Claudius is, and you, and Shen Yuan," finally.

Magnus nods. As they're talking, he registers the chill in Galahad's fingers, where they're tangled with his own, and sends the warmth he's feeling in his chest at what Galahad's saying down along his arm and into their joined hands. "I was talking to Hanguang-jun out here earlier," he says. "About Ragnarok."

"Your fight?"

"Yeah, the apocalypse battle." Magnus is quiet for a moment, swinging his legs, grateful -- not for the first, or second, or even tenth time that day alone -- that Galahad is the kind of guy who lets him gather his thoughts. He loves his friends back home, but Mallory in particular loves quick, witty banter. He can keep up, but this is... nice. (He doesn't want to think 'nicer.')

"I had this thought. About the prophesies."

Galahad waits for him.

"Jack has another name," Magnus says, touching his Jack-pendant, which hum sleepily at him, and then moving his hand to hold Lan Wangji's jade token, instead. "Sumarbrander. The Sword of Summer. I forget if I've told you his story before."

To be honest, Magnus tells him so many things, of which he understands only a fraction, that Galahad can't actually remember, so he just says, "Tell me."

"He was Frey's sword, first," Magnus says. "They were together for centuries. Then Frey fell in love with the frost giant, Gerd. He had to give Sumarbrander up to his servant, the god Skirnir, as payment for Skirnir entreating Gerd on his behalf. Or kidnapping her? Legends vary, and I haven't exactly asked him if he was cool about consent." Magnus is clearly embarrassed by this. "Anyway, Sumarbrander was so upset that Frey gave him up for love that he vowed never to be his sword again. One of Skirnir's demigod kids was maybe Leif Erikson? Or maybe some other explorer, who bore Sumarbrander on a ship to America -- um, it's across the ocean from England; it's where I'm from. The ship went down; Sumarbrander got lost under the water for centuries. Only a child of Frey can call him, so he was lost in the water until my uncle made me rescue him." He makes a face. "That's how I died, actually. Surt -- a fire giant -- is destined to bear Sumarbrander during Ragnarok. He wanted to take Jack the second I got him out of the river. I didn't let him."

He's quiet for a few minutes, partly to let Galahad digest the information, and partly because it's harder, now, to talk about his own death than it was when he first arrived in the Mansion. Then he says, "Surt is destined to kill Frey with Sumarbrander at Ragnarok, because Sumarbrander is the strongest and sharpest sword in the Nine Worlds, and Frey gave him away for love. Frey will only get these wicked sharp antlers to defend himself. He's going to kill a lot of giants with them first, but. Well. You know."

A shrug -- a careful one; he doesn't want to dislodge their mini-cuddle. "But Sumarbrander is supposed to kickstart Ragnarok, basically. Like, there are other events, too: a worldwide winter, the World Tree dying, certain mythological animals will trumpet the alarm -- but nothing can really kick off until Surt takes Jack and frees the Wolf, and Surt leads the giants into attacking Asgard, the world of the war-y gods. So I've been thinking. What if Ragnarok can't happen at all, because Jack isn't in the Nine Worlds and can't fall into Surt's hands? At the very least, my dad..."

He trails off.

Galahad listens to all this in silence, attentively, holding Magnus' hand in his. He thinks he actually understands this. Claudius sometimes says that he would never go back to his own world because of his fate there -- that it's better to remain here, knowing that without him the outcome can't be achieved. Galahad thinks he can't be the only one. He himself wants Percival to be the Grail Knight instead, because Percival is so brave and luminous and holy, and he deserves to be the one who heals with it; he doesn't want to die, and he would ask God for some better reward. He would surely do more than Galahad has. He should be loved and honored and maybe if Galahad isn't there he would be.

If this place removes them from their worlds and doesn't replace them, then it's possible. It's possible that if Magnus brings Sumarbrander here where Surt can never find him to lift against Frey, Ragnarok can never happen, and the world can never end. Magnus' friends and father will never truly die. And Magnus can stop preparing for the end-of-the-world war, because it isn't coming. He would truly be free to choose something else.

Galahad nods, squeezing his hand.

"My only thing is," Magnus says, squeezing back. "Really, even more than my -- my friends, who I miss so much, but not enough to doom them all to Ragnarok... is the Chase Space. I hate feeling like I've abandoned it."

This, too, makes perfect sense. The Chase Space is something Magnus built for children like he was, to address the limitations of the shelters he avoided when he was homeless. It's his boon from his Gods. But the word abandoned raises some protective instinct in Galahad, the same thing that bared its teeth when Claudius spoke of killing himself. "You didn't choose to come here," a little sharply.

Magnus looks at Galahad, a little surprised. He's only sort of heard Galahad sound something like this, once, when Claudius was injured. He always listens to Galahad, both the things Galahad says and what Magnus can make out of the things he doesn't, but he really makes himself internalize this particular statement. "You're right," he agrees. "I didn't." He's quiet for a moment, thoughtful. "It's hard not to feel responsible though, you know? Especially since..." a little guilt infuses his tone. "I'm happy here."

He flushes slightly, but doesn't drop his gaze from Magnus. "You're allowed to be happy. We both are."

Magnus heaves a heavy sigh. It's mostly put-upon, overly dramatic. He wishes he had some friends from home here, but he doesn't want to constrain them to being caught here, especially if only one of them could come. People here seem to come in twos, most frequently, except for maybe the Camelot crew. And all of his friends have other attachments back home; he'd feel bad breaking anyone else up.

(Alex. There's Alex, of course, always Alex. He misses her so much, and he knows that he's her biggest attachment in Valhalla -- he's not the kind of guy to deny that -- but he also knows just how much she hates feeling trapped. He wants her here, but he wants her to be able to choose.)

"We are," he tells Galahad, nudging him with his shoulder. "I'm glad you're here to remind me."

He nudges back. "I will."

"Good. Me, too. Whenever you need it."

"Thank you."

Magnus curls up against Galahad, working on allowing himself be quietly happy, letting the sounds of the forest fill his ears. The family of squirrels below starts chattering, loudly; he picks up the occasional scrap of conversation. He nudges Galahad, nodding toward the louder of the juveniles.

Galahad looks down, and signs what? with just one hand (because Magnus holds his hand so much, he often signs the mirrored two-handed signs this way) before clarifying it to what did it say?

Magnus thinks for a moment, and then reluctantly lets go of Galahad's hand and uncurls from his side. He twists, carefully shifting his balance, so his torso is oriented a little more in Galahad's direction; his knee nudges against Galahad's leg. Hortense, he finger-spells. And Henrietta.. Launching into regular sign, he adds, Children. They're bickering.

What about? (Do children bicker? he wonders. He was the only child in the nunnery. He has no idea what normal children do, ones who aren't raised in service to God or like wild creatures in the woods. Did Percival squabble with his sister?)

Magnus listens for a moment. Hortense -- this time he just spells h-o, to differentiate -- ate something Henrietta was saving. I think...

He's not familiar with the way Hortense is describing the food, and it takes him a moment to place a likely suspect. Raisin? Now she's saying Henrietta stole her favorite part of the nest.

It's pleasant to listen to the smallness of it as Magnus describes it. He loves watching other people sign -- when Magnus does it, it's like the way he talks, quick, unspooling his thoughts as they come to him, correcting or changing as he learns more, like watching water rush down a fall of rocks. Shen Yuan is more measured, but often there's a playfulness to his hands, sometimes self-deprecating, often relaxed, and graceful, above all, as if the body he inhabits can't help bringing a sense of dignity in spite of Shen Yuan's friendly nature. The two contrasts always feel present. Claudius signs the way he talks, with flourishes, with teases, with hidden meanings that Galahad can read more easily when they're hinted at by fingers rather than expressions. Even his signs carry the emphasis he likes to lay on words.

He watches Magnus' hands and feels peaceful.

The mom is Hildegard, Magnus says. Dad is Horatio. I don't know what's up with all these names. They have a son named Hubert but he has a nest with a squirrel the girls only call 'Bessie Bushy-Tail' in a maple tree deeper in the forest.

Galahad laughs. When we met, you asked if I had been named after someone too. Who are you named after?"

Me? Magnus asks, a little surprised. A bunch Swedish kings. Hence-- He makes his name-sign, M-crown, with a little eye-roll. I looked them up once. A lot of them did war on your boyfriend's country. This time, his face is apologetic, even though he wasn't the Magnus waging war on Denmark. One of them was gay and ended t-h-r-a-l-l^* slavery, which is cool.

Honestly, the Swedish Magnuses seemed kind of lamer than the Norwegian Magnuses, when Magnus was younger. The Norwegian ones did sound a lot more bloodthirsty, though. Maybe it's good his mom wasn't thinking of them when she picked his name.

*So typed because this is finger-spelled.

Edited 2023-11-28 17:08 (UTC)

The waging of war on Denmark by a king who may or may not have been Magnus' ancestor is so fully abstract (and, he thinks, probably doesn't matter to Claudius) as to be insignificant. You don't like your name?

Magnus purses his lips, thinking about this. My mom gave it to me, he decides. With a laugh -- this is one of his favorite jokes, even though no one else has ever found it funny -- And it rhymes with s-w-a-g-n-e-s-s.

What does that spell?

"Swagness," Magnus says aloud, with another laugh. It's a slang term. It means cooler than cool. He laughs again. I want to be clear that this is a super lame joke. Everyone rolls their eyes. I'm the least cool person most of my friends know.

This last is signed fondly, with a smile and another roll of his eyes.

Cool? That's good?

Cool is good. Cool means... swag. Magnus laughs again. If you had told him two months ago that he'd be defining 'cool' to a knight... well, actually, he'd probably believe it; his life has been weird for years. But he's happy to be doing it. Since he's starting to use signs he hasn't specifically taught Galahad before, and he's not sure they're in the books he knows Galahad has been reading, he speaks quietly along with his next set of signs. It means a lot of things, I guess. Awesome. Kickass. Interesting. Excellent. It can also mean acceptable or all right, depending on how it's used. When I say all my friends are cooler than me, I mean they stand out or make things look effortless or whatever. I'm just some guy, and I have to work hard. He grins at Galahad. This doesn't bother him at all; he knows he's still okay at a bunch of stuff, and he loves his friends. Falling silent again, he adds, In my book, you're very cool.

I think you're cool too. Galahad hesitates, and then makes a letter M and uses it to make the sign for sunlight, circling it over his temple and then throwing his fingers open.

Magnus stares for a minute before he fully makes the connection, and then he launches himself at Galahad. It's only his einherji reflexes that keep him from toppling them both off the branch, but he braces one hand against the trunk of the tree as he pulls Galahad into a hug and stabilizes them both in time. "Sorry," he says, once he knows neither of them are going to fall, and then: "I love you so much, man. Thank you."

Galahad hugs him back tightly, and murmurs, "I love thee too."

It must be said that, in this moment, Magnus is feeling a lot less conflicted about the prospect of averting Ragnarok forever by just staying here. "You wanna get out of this tree?" he asks Galahad. "I wanna try that thing you made before the squirrels realize it's there. And," he gestures down at the fire pit. "Mothwing keeps bringing me fish, if you're hungry?" He knows it's not the most appealing of prospects -- fish badly seasoned with some stuff he's pilfered from the kitchens, cooked over an open fire -- so he's not committed to pushing it.

A beat, and then he says, in a testing voice, "I hate fish," as if he expects to be struck down by God's hand from on high for saying it; when this doesn't happen, he says again, "I hate fish," with a faint smile. "Thank you, though."

Magnus laughs. "Good," he says. "Frankly it's terrible, but it's all I -- oh wait, no it's not, hold on."

He leaps from the branch, landing neatly on his feet, and then goes to rummage through his backpack, carefully lifting the pastry Galahad left there out of the way. There are some protein and energy bars tucked away into a side pocket, for when he gets peckish and doesn't feel like putting in any effort. He grabs them, and then, bars and pastry in hand, circles back to look up at Galahad still on the branch. "Wanna try?"

Galahad carefully slides off the branch, with none of Magnus' assured physicality, and lands in a crouch. "Yes," giving Magnus a faintly amused look, because he knows by now that Galahad likes to try all new things.

Magnus grins. "I knew you would," he says, and offers Galahad the fistful of bars. There's a decent assortment of brands and flavors; he'd been most excited when the Mansion yielded his mom's favorite carrot cake clif bars on a recent dive through the kitchens, but there's at least six other types in his hand, including a couple he'd never heard of before the Mansion. "Any of these sound good to you, man?"

He sorts through the different flavors with interest -- what he'd really like, obviously, is to do a tasting like they did with all the drinks back when they first met, but if Magnus is planning to stay outside for a while then it won't be easy for him to just get the kitchen to generate more. With that in mind, he finally selects a German chocolate cake flavor.

While Galahad sorts through the bars, Magnus samples the pastry. "Oh my gods, Galahad, this is amazing," he says, licking his fingers clean. It's going to be so hard not to house the entire thing in three bites. "I should probably warn you that protein bars are terrible compared to this kind of thing."

Galahad shifts a little closer to Magnus' fire -- he's starting to get cold again -- and opens the wrapper on the protein bar before taking an experimental bite. Then he makes a face at Magnus.

Magnus laughs. He leans forward, adding some more wood to the fire, and then moves closer to Galahad. It's a chilly day, and he doesn't want to drain himself by calling too much summer, but he can share his body heat. "Sorry, dude," he says, and taps the carrot cake one with the back of his knuckle. "Try this one? It's less awful. It was my mom's favorite."

He makes another face, but he's always willing to try, and he takes it. "Why does it exist? Is it a food for penance?"

"Nah, it's like, really calorie-dense or something," Magnus says, laughing. He really likes how funny Galahad is. "It's good for if you're, like, hiking, or rock climbing, or doing anything else active where you could use more energy or protein. I mostly associate them with camping."

Edited 2023-11-30 05:11 (UTC)

"So it doesn't matter whether it's good or not," breaking off a little piece of the carrot cake bar to try. It's not nearly as bad -- thanks different brand entirely -- but it's still not something he'd actually try to eat again, and he resolves to bring Magnus food more regularly so he doesn't have to either.

"It doesn't," Magnus agrees. He grins at Galahad. "Some people really love these things, though. I have a friend back home who is obsessed."

"Really?" It's about as openly dubious as Magnus (or anybody, really) has ever heard him.

"Yeah. One of the Eriks. He can't get enough of the stuff." He shrugs. "Probably because he went on tons of really long voyages when he was alive and these are better than whatever he ate on the boats."

"It must be easy to fast on boats."

Magnus is quiet for a long moment, at that. Then: "Samirah was fasting, when we sailed to defeat Loki. Do you know what Ramadan is?"

A shake of his head.

"Muslims? Islam?" He tries to think of words that might be familiar to someone from Galahad's time. "I think there were a bunch in Spain in your time." He thinks for another moment. Sam has been giving impromptu history lessons on Floor 19 for a while now, but her focus is mostly on Norse-Iraqi relations than anything else. One word swims up through his memory, though: "Sara... um, Saracens?"

"Yes," with recognition. "I know what Saracens are. I didn't know they fast too."

"They do," Magnus says. "It's a religious thing. A month of daily fasting and prayer. No food from dawn till dusk. We were kind of worried, when Sam was fasting during our voyage? Partially because technically you're allowed to break your fast if you're traveling or in danger, both of which we were. Alex and Amir -- Sam's betrothed -- were both particularly concerned that she'd be physically weaker from it. It worked out for her, though; she said her focus on her faith protected her from freezing to death in Niflheim, the same way that Alex kissing me saved me. Um, maybe both of us, actually, because after she kissed me I could call up some warmth again." He's blushing, remembering that kiss. "Fasting made Samirah stronger against Loki, too. But the actual fasting on the actual boat was clearly really hard on her. So I guess... maybe?" He nudges Galahad. "Did you fast a bunch? Back home?"

Galahad absorbs this story in silence. He likes hearing Magnus talk about his friends -- Magnus' ferocious love for his friends is one of the many things Galahad likes about him, and the freedom with which he shares it.

"I still do." He bumps his shoulder back against Magnus. "It's almost Advent. I'll fast until Epiphany."

"Can you tell me about why? I don't actually know a lot about your religion besides what you've already told me."

Another space of silence, as he gathers all the different threads together in his hand, where they can be easily kept together and followed. Finally, he says, "It's not for one reason. There are different kinds of fasts for different seasons. It can be a penance. It humbles the body to be hungry. It teaches us not to rely on fleshly things." He draws his knees up to his chest and gazes at the fire. "In Lent it's because Jesus Himself went without food and water for forty days and forty nights before he came to Jerusalem, and we walk in His footsteps. We are like the desert in which He walked, and the fast makes us ready to receive the spiritual rain at Easter. Lent is a time of grieving, and Easter lets us be joyful again.

"In Advent it's called the Nativity Fast. We temper the bodily desire for food, which tempers other passions as well. The soul turns away from worldly things to things of the spirit. We draw closer to Christ as we prepare for Him to be born."

He glances at Magnus. "Is that too much?" signing it as he asks it.

"No, it's fascinating," Magnus says. "'Turning to things of the spirit' sounds a lot like Ramadan, according to Sam. Only I don't think there's anything about Jesus in Ramadan. Just a lot of stuff about connecting to god and abstaining from... uh, most things." Food, sex, et cetera. He shrugs. "So this Advent fast. How long is it? Is it just during the day, or something else?"

He cuts himself off after the two questions.

Thank you. "When I told you about sin, I said some things were different for me. The Nativity Fast was a Black Fast once. I may only eat once a day, after Nones, and it should be bread, vegetables, and water. I may not have meat or wine or lacticinia." It has the air of recitation, as is often this case when he talks about this sort of thing. "But most people eat throughout the day and just keep the diet."

"Nones," Magnus repeats, trying to remember what he's read since he and Galahad first started talking about time. "That's... midafternoon? Late afternoon?" He's not sure what lacticinia means, but it sounds kind of like lactose, so it's probably milky.

"Three hours after the middle of the day." A flickering smile. "You have not forgotten the middle of the day?"

As soon as he says it his expression changes subtly. He teased Magnus. He has no idea how it happened and no idea how to make it happen again, but it felt new and good and-- something that he could do because he knows Magnus, because there's so much shared speech between them, things that have happened that only they know about. Because Magnus makes him feel at ease, and he thinks less about every word he says. It doesn't matter whether Magnus has noticed or not; Galahad is grateful to know it was possible.

Magnus laughs, delighted. He's noticed the teasing because he loves being teased. "Dude," he says.

He blushes, but he also smiles again, less briefly this time.

"I don't think I could ever fast," Magnus says, thoughtful. Not least because he an atheist, so there's probably no point. "When I was on the streets, especially before I met Amir's dad and he started giving me free falafel, it was hard to know when and where my next meal would come from. That was enough fleshly hunger for me for one lifetime."

He scoots over a little more, so that his side is pressed against Galahad's. "But when Samirah was fasting -- during Ramadan, after sunset, you always break your fast with dates. The food kind, not the double kind. And she and I would sit on the deck of the Big Banana -- our boat; Frey sent it to me and we called it that because it was bright yellow -- and look at the stars and the water and she'd share her dates with me. Because it's best to do that kind of thing in community." He glances sideways at Galahad. "I don't know what it's like for you and your kind of fasting, but if there's some kind of ritual you want to share with a friend who doesn't really get it, I'm your guy."

"Fasting should mean something," seriously. He remembers how it felt to begin letting his hands move and touch with Claudius, and he allows himself to take a little of Magnus' shirt between his fingers and thumb and rub the fabric. "If it doesn't mean anything to you, then you shouldn't do it. You don't need to."

Magnus glances down at the tug, and then relaxes against Galahad. "For sure, dude, I wouldn't want to appropriate or anything," he says. "I just mean -- if there's a non-fasting part of fasting where you want companionship and it doesn't matter that the only reason I'm there is because friendship, then I wanna do it."

The t-shirt fabric is thinner and springier than either his old linen and wool tunics or the soft sweaters and slacks he's been wearing; he likes the lightness of it, though he thinks he would be too cold to wear something like it. He feels the pressure of Magnus against his body, the heat that radiates out of him even when he isn't conjuring summer. Fasting has always been a solitary thing: in the nunnery he was often alone -- except at mealtimes, which were taken in silence, and at mass and prayers, when he sat by himself in the first pew and no one spoke to him except God -- and in Camelot he fasted more seriously than anyone else, even Percival.

He only remembers a handful of times when it ended in something like camaraderie: once when he drank too much wine too quickly at Easter and afterwards blushed and laughed at everything Percival said; once at Epiphany when he ate meat again and Percival had twelfth cake with fruit and found the broad bean in it. All his happy memories of breaking fast are like that: Percival is there.

Suddenly he feels so sad that it takes his breath away. He doesn't know whether he'll ever see Percival again. The person he was in Camelot feels as distant and unfamiliar to him as any other knight there -- impossible to read or sympathize with, a stone statue of a man with God's voice in his ear, someone who never questioned anything until Claudius asked him if he doubted his purpose -- but that person would have defined himself by Percival's friendship. He misses Percival's light, his chatter, his stories, his touch. He misses watching him catch fish and build fires, misses praying beside him, misses his Welsh accent and the way he knew about every natural thing. He misses everything.

He tries to imagine Magnus instead. He tries to imagine sitting by the water, looking at the stars, eating dates, the sweetness on his tongue.

"Thank you," he says at last.

"Yeah, 'course," Magnus says, blithely. He slings an arm around Galahad's shoulders and squeezes.

It's a cold day indeed, and Ragnelle has been slowing down. Her blood, like sap, gets thicker and more sluggish in the winter, preparing her to settle down for a season when trees never do much besides rest and conserve and wait. Magnus, however, has changed the equation.

She's found a new dress with a shorter hem, so that it's not always dragging on the ground, and has bundled all her hair into a huge thick braid. She appears at the foot of Magnus' tree, and begins to scramble up to him without asking.

"Magnus! Wouldst thou know what this one thinks?"

"Always, Ragnelle," Magnus says, wedging his book in the crook of a nearby branch and scooting out on the limb a little to give her ample space to sit.

She pulls herself up beside him, flushed and pleased. "First, summer."

Magnus grins; he can't not. He closes his eyes and lets the warmth of companionship with who he has decided is a like-minded woman flood his chest; it spreads from him like a space heater. The air warms; the day lightens; three branches away, the oak puts out a leaf-bud. "Better?"

The traveler's joy blossoms all along her braid, in great feathery white flowers, and she grins, holding out her hands as if warming them before a fire. She already has more energy. "Mary, that is well! Thou art as good as Óengus."

"Óengus?" Magnus asks, politely.

"Ay, he's an old one, older than me. The God of summer and the hazel wood."

Magnus flips quickly through his mental rolodex of gods, gleaned during his intensive deep-dive into world mythologies back when he still thought Lan Wangji was a god. Irish, he thinks, or maybe Celtic. Gaelic? A guy who, objectively, might look to others like he's using an interest in Viking cultures to be a weird, gross asshole to women and people of color should probably become better versed in the cultures his heritage raided and attacked in the name of (among others) his father, he thinks. He should get back to those books.

Still, Ragnelle's description gives him enough to go off of. "Oh, so like my dad," he says, with a nod. He wonders if Óengus is a local version of Frey, or if the similarities are a coincidence. Another thing to look up.

"Ay, like thy father," she agrees. "Now, thy tree. I cannot teach thee, I said, but I will tell thee about it."

Magnus sits up straighter. "I'm listening," he says, reaching down to trace his fingers along the grain of the wood of the branch underneath him. He is, too; he's focusing just on Ragnelle and the sound of the trees, shutting out all the voices of the squirrels and chipmunks and birds rustling about beyond them.

She puts her hands down on the trunk and closes her eyes. She likes oaks -- for nut-trees, they're reasonably curious. They live so long and get so broad and tall that they see plenty; they know things about the deep earth and the sky. They do have a poor sense of the passage of time, but what else would you expect from something several hundred years old? "It is old," she says. "But it thinks the house hath been here all along. It remembers when it was an acorn, hidden under a bit of bark. It hath seen colder autumns than this one. It remembers the sun goes out sometimes here."

Then she starts laughing. "It thinks thou art a great squirrel. It's waiting for thee to bundle up a nest of leaves in its crown to stay warm. Wilt thou do that?"

Magnus laughs, too. "Maybe," he says, and tells Ragnelle a story he thinks she might get a kick out of: "There's a giant squirrel called Ratatosk that lives in the World Tree -- the ash, Yggdrasil, that I told you about? And he spends his entire day running from Vedrfolnir the hawk at the top to Nidhogg the dragon at the bottom and back, spreading rumors and lies and trying to get them to shake the world apart. He's really mean -- he can literally insult you to death if he runs into you. I think it would be fun to live like a squirrel for a time, but not like that one."

That makes her laugh again. "A great rude squirrel! Mary, I could countenance it!" She leans in. "They say the Merlin made Arthur a squirrel once."

"I bet you could stand your own against him," Magnus says, thoughtfully and with great respect. "But his insults do cause actual, physical pain, so be careful. Did Arthur deserve it?" He doesn't remember a lot about King Arthur myths, but he's pretty sure Arthur is probably a controversial figure. Kings usually are.

"I would sport with him still. --Nay, nay, it was lesson or some such. I care not for the Merlin and his lessons, but I would fain have seen the king a small scurrying beast."

"I would like to see most kings like that," Magnus admits. "Do you talk back to trees, or do you just listen to them?"

"I can tell them a little. Hast thou aught to say to thine?"

"That I thank it for its branches, but I won't be making a nest. There's already a family of squirrels here that keeps talking about setting up another home before the snows come; I'll let them have the honor instead."

She nods and puts her hand flat on the tree trunk again, letting it know generally this, but in simpler terms: she sends the tree the warm feeling of gratitude for its sturdiness and the inviting way its branches are arranged, perfect for climbing, the way its turning leaves create a safe good place to rest. Then, because this does not clarify anything vis-a-vis squirrelhood, she adds a reminder of what a squirrel looks like and what a Magnus looks like.

Magnus can't tell what Ragnelle is saying, but he can tell that something is happening. He smiles at her. "Thanks."

Ragnelle laughs. "Mary, that is simple. I will do't any time thou wouldst."

"It's so cool that you can talk to plants," Magnus sighs. He wonders if any gods can do that.

"An thou wast half a tree, thou wouldst speak to them too. I have seen thee speak with the animals, and I cannot do that."

"If you ever want to know what they say, I can tell you," Magnus says, and nods at a nearby cardinal. "Like, for example, she's sad the summer bugs are gone."

"See thou, that is good too."

"It is," Magnus agrees. Definitely the best-case scenario outcome of eating your friend's dad's heart and taking on his characteristics.

"We shall not envy each other's gifts. That's a trickster's bargain in the making."

"Okay, yeah." That's a fair point, and Magnus knows better than to treat with tricksters. "I just think it's so cool that you can talk to trees, is all."

She laughs again. "Ay, Mary, it is cool."

"I'm glad I know you, Ragnelle," Magnus decides. She's the coolest person... person-shaped thing? It's a little unclear... he's met since Gu Xiang. "How are you doing without Inglewood?"

"Well enough. I was in Camelot three years before I came here, and I might have stayed another two."

Oh, good. So she's not in any immediate danger, then. He's been worried. "I'm glad to hear it."

"Wast thou feared for me, little God?"

Magnus shoots her a crooked grin. "I just want you to be well, Ragnelle."

"I am well. And when I'm not, I'll come to thee and steal thy warmth."

"Good!" Magnus says. He likes using his power for peace, instead of evading certain death.

She won't admit that she has nothing to give him in return -- for one thing, she rarely acknowledges her own weaknesses, and for another, she doesn't care that much about fair trades -- but she grins at him, sits in silence for a moment, and then swings out of the tree to the ground with a thump and a flurry of skirt. "I'll find thee again!" she shouts up at him before disappearing.

From a tree above him, Gu Xiang swings her head down in a cascade of long black hair and beads. "Hey," she says, "did you piss someone off or something?"

"I don't think so?" Magnus says. He drops his book to the ground, bites partway into his apple to keep hold of it, and climbs up a few more branches so that he and Gu Xiang are on a level. He straddles a likely-looking branch and takes the apple out of his mouth again. "I'm just... chilling."

"You're not going anywhere. You don't need to camp out here. Why are you out in the cold?" Unhooking her legs from the branch, Gu Xiang descends to balance daintily on Magnus's bough. "If you pissed someone off, you can tell me. I'll put horse shit in their bed for you."

Magnus gives a surprised bark of laughter. "I appreciate the offer, Gu Xiang, but I really don't think I've pissed anyone off. I just wanted to be outside for awhile, you know?" Gu Xiang makes him feel playful, and so gives in to whim and hooks his legs over the branch, then leans all the way back until he's dangling by his knees. Unlike earlier, he's careful to tuck his shirt in his waistband as he leans so it doesn't fall over his face. "And the cold never bothered me anyway; I can sleep outside through a snowstorm and the only thing that affects me is if I get wet from it."

"Oh, wow." She gives due consideration to the benefits of being so warm that a snowstorm is barely an inconvenience. For one thing, she wouldn't have to carry nearly so much firewood! "So you just like it out here?"

"I do," Magnus says. He leans up, bending at the waist, and then drops back, letting the force of that lead him into rocking back and forth, still hanging by his knees. "Camping reminds me of my mom." And his dad, but since Frey isn't answering his prayer, that's increasingly less of a draw.

On an upswing, he raises his eyebrows at Gu Xiang. "What have you been up to lately?" he asks her. "Wreck any cool devastation upon your enemies since our competition?"

"No." She sighs, then wraps her legs around the branch and hangs upside down with him. "I don't have any enemies here. I'm so bored! And I'm supposed to be writing bad poems, but I don't know what to write about!"

Magnus considers this with all of the gravity it deserves (so, all the gravity). "You could write a poem about my sword," he offers. "Jack has been bugging me to get poems written about him for years now. But if you don't want to do my dirty work for me... A poem about how much you miss having enemies? What you would do if one emerged? Or an ode to someone with really phenomenal eyebrows. The best trick you ever played on someone. The feeling of hanging upside down on a big tree. I can keep going, if you want?"

Gu Xiang folds her arms. "How would you write a poem about hanging upside down on a big tree?" she asks, hanging upside down o a big tree.

Magnus, who knows almost nothing about poetry, says, "Well, what are you feeling right now?"

"Upside down, obviously!" she says, making a little abortive lunge at him that's mostly with her eyes. "I like to sleep like this. When I was traveling with my master, I'd hang from the rafters of his room sometimes and sleep that way."

"That's so cool," Magnus enthuses. Gu Xiang is so cool. Maybe he'll try sleeping like this -- on a lower branch, probably, just in case. "So you could write a poem about how you like sleeping upside down. Any fun memories you have about it, that kind of thing." He pauses as something occurs to him. "I'm pretty sure poetry is different in different places. How do poems where you're from typically go?"

"Oh, you know." She sucks in a breath and holds it in her cheeks, then blows it all out at once and recites, "'I went up the mountain and you weren't there, I knocked on your door and looked in the window, maybe you're doing something cool like riding around in your carriage or going fishing, but right now you're not here so I guess I'm going away now.¹'"

¹ The poem that Gu Xiang is mangling here is 'After Missing the Recluse on the Western Mountain.'

"I took some Poetry Recitation to the Death classes in Valhalla," Magnus tells Gu Xiang. He tries to remember a snippet that might interest her. "'Dew of corpses flowed over the, um, beach? together with the blood of the attack-elf to the ground, where there were piles of hewn arms and legs. The ale-dispenser fell head-first into a well mixed with blood; the battle is painted on the leaf of the trees of the lands of the sea-king.'"

He's pretty sure he got some words wrong, but the gist is there, at least.

"Oh, wow, no one writes poems like that where I come from. Do you like those kinds of poems?"

"Not as much as some of the people I know," Magnus says, with a laugh. "My friend Halfborn is really into that stuff."

"Is Halfborn here?" she asks--maybe Halfborn can give her tips!

"I wish," Magnus says, with great feeling.

"Huh." Gu Xiang considers a little longer. She isn't sure why, but she cares about Magnus and wants to protect him. She knows he can take care of himself in a fight--probably better than her, even!--but there's something about him that's vulnerable in a way she recognizes. It's the kind of vulnerability that makes you want to pluck a child or a dog from the riverbank, because even if you don't have anything to give, your nothing and their nothing are not the same.

"When I was little, Wen Kexing found me on a riverbank," she says. "He was just a kid, and he didn't have a real home or anything, but he picked me up anyway. He saved my life. In Ghost Valley, people don't save other people--but he saved me." She smiles a little, upside down, swaying. "And now I want to get my teeth into everything, because I lived, and he taught me how to bite."

"I love that," Magnus says. "Wen Kexing sounds great." He swings for a moment, then says, "My friends Hearthstone and Blitzen did basically the same with me, but I was a little older -- fourteen. Hearthstone is an elf, who needs the sun, and Blitzen is a dwarf, who can't stand the sun, so Hearth took the day shift and Blitz took the night shift when I was homeless. They'd help me out, clue me in to the places where people dumped good food, make sure I didn't get beaten up or caught by the police. Or the wolves." Thoughtfully: "I'm not as much of a biter, but they put so much into keeping me alive -- apparently they saved me, like, seven separate times -- that I don't want my death to go to waste."

"Wow, how did you pay them back?" Because obviously you have to pay someone back for saving your life. That's just how it works.

"Oh, our relationship isn't like that," Magnus says. For one, their initial caretaking was a job given to them by Mimir, so the help they gave him was paying off a debt to a god. But that changed pretty quickly, and they did it just because they liked him after that. "But I guess I have healed them a few times." He purses his lips. This isn't the story he loves sharing, but he's pretty sure it's the sort of story Gu Xiang would love hearing, so: "Also once I turned Hearthstone's dad into a dragon and then killed him and ate his heart. But it wasn't paying him back for his help, it was just the kind of thing you do for a friend."

She nods, as though this is indeed a perfectly normal thing to do for a friend. "I don't know if Wen Kexing really wanted me to pay him back, either," she says, admitting it to herself aloud for the first time. "But he wanted me to have a reason to stick around, so he made me his servant, and now he relies on me for everything. I do his washing, manage his money, make sure he remembers to eat and drink--back when it was just the two of us, he needed me. Now ... maybe not."

"No? What changed?"

There are two answers she can give to this--one is, He became the Master of Ghost Valley, and we went from scrounging and suffering to living in a palace. But closer to her heart is the moment when he outpaced her, when he left her with no duties or expectations in a hard rain. "He fell in love with someone," she says, her voice a little smaller. "Someone who was dying. And I guess laundry and money and food and drink didn't matter so much anymore."

"Oh, Gu Xiang, that's so rough," Magnus says. He stills his swinging and looks over at her. "I'm sorry."

"Well, it's better if he doesn't need me anymore, because I'm here now, and he's not!" she says briskly. "I just have to figure out what to do with myself if I'm not his servant anymore!"

"So you're working on bad poetry, and you're great at kicking ass," Magnus says, now contemplative. "What else do you like?"

"Eating," Gu Xiang says promptly. "What about you?"

"Also eating," Magnus laughs. "Have you ever had falafel? And in Valhalla there's a beast called Saehrimnir that's bigger than a city, and each of his flanks are a different kind of meat, and he's slain for the feast every night. and reborn every morning. Every inch of that guy is delicious."

"What's falafel?" she asks. "Is it one of the kinds of meat?"

"Nah, it's vegetarian, actually," Magnus says. "Though Saehrimnir does have a vegetarian flank too that's all beans and tofu. Falafel is made out of chickpeas? I don't know if you would know what those are. Qi Yan didn't. But it's got great spices. And texture."

"So Saehrimnir's just like the box in the kitchen, except with more slaying," Gu Xiang surmises, proud of herself for having figured it out. "You should give me falafel so that I can make the box give it to me."

"Hell yeah," Magnus says. "I consider it my sacred duty to introduce everyone to the wonders of falafel." He thinks for a moment, swaying. "Sometimes me and Galahad will do taste tests of different varieties of foods so we can decide what we like best. You could join in, since you like eating."

"Yes! I'll come for you if you don't invite me, and--" it feels a little mean to threaten him with physical violence right now, and while normally Gu Xiang doesn't mind being mean, Magnus has been spilling his guts for her, which she guesses means he's her problem now "--and I'll put vinegar in everything."

A pause. "Wait, will Galahad want to fight me? Should I dress up? Do I need a sword?"

Edited 2023-11-30 04:04 (UTC)

"Ooooh, I wonder if vinegar would make things better or worse," Magnus says, scratching his head. "We'll have to try that too. And, um, you can dress up if you want to, but me and Galahad are taking a break from fighting for right now." He grins at her. "Unless the jiangshi come. Then you and me are going to have to kick ass together. I think I can beat you this time."

"Galahad's taking a break from fighting, too?" It's impossible to stamp her foot while hanging upside down, but there is a kind of foot-stamping aura about her. "The best fighter here, and I missed it! You have to tell me everything about him!"

"I mean, he'll probably show you if you ask," Magnus says, smiling again. Gu Xiang is so fun to (literally) hang out with! "He did say he'd fight my girlfriend if she ever showed up here so I can watch. He's really good. He can disarm me in three seconds flat, like it's as easy for him as breathing. And I'm pretty decent at swords." He grins wider; it's a sappy one. "But my girlfriend is a shapeshifter, and the other best fighter I know, so I think they'd be more evenly matched."

"I know people who can change their faces," Gu Xiang says thoughtfully. She's heard of the Green Siren--everybody has--and of course there's whatever the fuck is going on with Zhou Xu. "Is it like that?"

"Nah, Alex can turn into any animal you can think of. Elephant, cat, flamingo, fly... anything."

Gu Xiang goggles. "I want to see Galahad fight a cat! Is she dead like you?"

Magnus nods; given his current position, the visual effect is largely just that of his hair shaking. "Yep, he's an einherji too."

The shifting pronoun sails right past her, lost in translation. "Can you change your shape?"

"Nah," Magnus says. "That's a child-of-Loki thing. Loki is the trickster god, and he's lowkey evil. His kids are the best though. Alex, obviously, and then Samirah is our valkyrie -- she picked us for our afterlife. I can only heal things, and do summer stuff. Light, warmth, growing shit..." To demonstrate, he reaches out and encourages a leaf-bud to form on a branch directly in Gu Xiang's line of vision.

Gu Xiang watches, spellbound, curling up to brush those tender green buds with her fingertips. "It's warm," she says. Her eyes are wide; there's something fragile in her expression, as soft as those new oak leaves. It's the first time she's ever seen someone use this kind of power for something other than to fight or mock or deceive.

"That happens sometimes," Magnus says, a little embarrassed. "I didn't really start using this stuff outside of, like, defense until I got here, so I'm still figuring a lot of it out."

"Oh, so you could use a vine like a whip? Or to trip someone up?"

"No, but that's not a bad idea," says Magnus. "More like... burning away illusion magic, or... this one time, I caused a cave-in on some draugr... they're like zombies, but scarier than the ones we fought. I can do that if it means calling the light of the actual sun, or if there's roots to break apart the stones."

"You have to show me what you can do with this leaf," says Gu Xiang, unclenching her abs so that she swings back down again. "It doesn't have to be fighting! Maybe just see if you can pick me up off this branch and put me on the ground!"

Magnus laughs. "I can't make plants do anything they wouldn't normally be able to do, though," he says. "Or else I'd try."

"When we were fighting zombies, I saw someone cut them apart with grass," she says. "I forgot his name, but he was very handsome! Maybe he can teach you how!"

"Whoa," Magnus breathes. "With grass? Who was it? I mean -- what did he look like? Besides handsome."

"I don't know! He acted like a Taoist priest, except he wore--he was only wearing two layers, and the sleeves were see-through, like he was some kind of prostitute," she says. She doesn't seem to have any negative associations for "prostitute"; it's only another job to her, and she says it just like she'd say he looked like a butcher if he wore a bloody apron.

Magnus considers this description, and then exclaims, "Shen Yuan can kill zombies with grass??????! He never told me that!"

"Yeah, that was him! You know him? You should make him show you all his grass powers!"

"I sure fucking will," Magnus says, emphatically.

Then, with a mighty push of her thighs, Gu Xiang releases her branch and somersaults gracefully to the forest floor. "I'm going to go eat now," she says. "But next time you and Galahad taste lots of things, you'd better invite me!"

"Of course I will," Magnus promises. "Good luck with your bad poetry, Gu Xiang! Write something about your next meal!"

Sticking her tongue out at him, dragging her thumb insultingly across her cheek, Gu Xiang leaps off and toward the mansion again.

Later on, Magnus will find a note stuck under a rock near his fireplace:

Frying black stinky tofu
Smells like pure shit
Tastes like pure heaven
I gobble it up

I Embrace My Inner Tarzan [open post]

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