summerdude | I Embrace My Inner Tarzan [open post]

There's a massive old oak about fifty yards west of Magnus's favorite clearing. It has thick, sturdy branches; he can climb nearly forty feet up it before he starts to worry about them holding his weight. There's a family of squirrels that lives nearby -- good squirrels, nothing like Ratatosk -- and Magnus likes to listen to them discuss their acorn deposits. Sometimes, when they're not looking, he'll grow and stash more acorns for them to discover; he's not sure how long the winters here get.

He's pretty sure it's cold outside, but it's not cold enough to affect him, and so he's still barefoot and in a t-shirt pretty much all the time.

Today, he's been scrounging in some of the out-buildings. There's a portable outdoor fireplace. While he doesn't feel the cold, he finds (contained) fires comforting, and it'll be nice to have some hot food, so he shoulders it and a makeshift grill surface, and lugs them to the base of his oak tree. Now he'll have an easier way of preparing the fish Mothwing sometimes leaves him than trying to summon the right amount of summer into them so that they cook and don't explode, at least.

He lights a modest fire, feeding it with fallen sticks. Then he shoves an apple, picked from another nearby tree, into his mouth and a book he'd pilfered from the library into the waistband of his pants, and climbs up an easy ten feet to his favorite branch. Things don't seem so bad, living out here.

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"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!"

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summerdude - 2023-12-01 02:29 (UTC) - Expand

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