I Embrace My Inner Tarzan [open post]

[summerdude]

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.

Comments

[summerdude]

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

[agula]

"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.

[summerdude]

"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."

[agula]

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."

[summerdude]

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

[agula]

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."

[summerdude]

"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."

[agula]

"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."

[summerdude]

"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.