Me and My Best Friend Put On A Show That Would Make Freya Totally Jealous [closed post]

[summerdude]

Magnus wakes up, normal again except for how he's in an unfamiliar room. Not Galahad's old room, either. A nondescript one that, as far as he can tell, just has a bunch of clothes and stuff. Also he's wearing silky pajamas he'd never pick out automatically on his own?

It doesn't take long for him to feel like the walls are closing in on him. It's out of respect for Aornis that he stumbles out of her room through the door (barefoot and in the silky pajamas) and goes outside the normal way. Once outside, he flops into the snow, calling summer and feeling the way the snow steams against his skin as it melts.

He's not feeling totally regular again when he sits bolt upright, remembering that Drosera is probably in Galahad's old room with two people that aren't Magnus or Galahad. Existential crisis over, there's a child to retrieve! And hopefully, he'll run into Galahad in the halls.

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[summerdude]

Magnus opens the door and reaches up to ease Drosera back to the floor. "Why can't I have wings, talons, and a tail? Four out of ten."

[onthewillowsthere]

Drosera hops off his shoulder and down to the floor, tail lashing, and begins preening her pinfeathers -- she spreads out one of her wings to do so, and while it looks pretty skrunkly right now, there's a sense of how broad and powerful it will be when the flight feathers are grown in.

Galahad, meanwhile, sits on the side of the bed to watch her.

[summerdude]

Magnus plops down next to him. "I love her," he says. "She's perfect. I wonder if we could teach her tricks?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Some birds can do tricks," thoughtfully. "Once a raven followed us and traded things with Percival."

[summerdude]

"Okay, that's extremely cool. What sort of things?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Pieces of string and nails and a copper ring. Percival said they were gifts. He gave it meat." He rubs his watchband. "He said ravens are the cleverest animal because of Brân Fendigaidd."

[summerdude]

"Who's that?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"A king in old Welsh stories. Percival said his mother used to tell him all the stories when he was a boy."

[summerdude]

"Oh! Cool. Was he, like, a history king, or a mythology king? Not that there's a huge difference between the two, ultimately, I guess."

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods. "People talk about them like they're the same thing. I don't know. In the story he was Welsh king and he gave his sister Branwen to be married to an Irish king. Their half-brother Efnysien was angry that he wasn't asked about the marriage. He maimed the Irish king's horses, and Brân Fendigaidd gave the king a magic cauldron as recompense. It could return the dead to life."

He can't tell the story like Percival would -- Percival would fill in the details around the things that happened, and make the story lusher and more full, like a garden in summer. Galahad can only tell the framework of it, the stalks left over in winter that tell where everything grew. But he wants to at least try. At Wanderers Gather he realized he was never going to see Percival again; it feels like keeping a little part of Percival with him to be able to tell Magnus something he learned from him.

"But the Irish were angry because of what Efnysien had done, even with the gift, and Branwen was mistreated and made to work in the kitchens. She taught a starling to speak and sent it across the sea to Brân Fendigaidd to tell him what had happened to her."

[summerdude]

Magnus thinks that Galahad's storytelling is just fine, actually. The story has the same sort of cadence as some of the myths he learned about, before he learned that they weren't myths and were instead just reality. "What did he do?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"He waded across the sea to Ireland to rescue her, and his brother Manawydan and an army followed him in ships. The Irish welcomed them, but it was a trick. They told Brân Fendigaidd and the Britons to stay in a lodge they had built, full of supplies, but the sacks were hiding warriors. Brân Fendigaidd's half-brother Efnysien, who had started the trouble in the first place, suspected this treachery, and he killed all the Irish warriors within the sacks. Meanwhile Matholwch, the Irish king, held a feast for the Britons. At the feast, Efnysien thought he was being insulted by one of the Irishmen, and he burned Branwen's son Gwarl to death. Suddenly everyone was fighting."

He remembers the first time Percival told him this story, late at night, sitting up around a wakefire on St. John's Eve. Percival explained, Efnysien makes all the trouble, doesn't he, on both sides -- everything that goes wrong is because of him and Galahad listened raptly, but now he thinks of Cain, of Judas, of Claudius, and wonders whether there's something missing, whether Efnysien has a reason that nobody knows or a purpose chosen by some greater power that he has no choice but to fulfill.

"In the great battle, Efnysien realized that the Irishmen were using the magic cauldron to revive their own soldiers, and because of that it didn't matter how many of them were killed. He leapt into the cauldron and destroyed it from the inside. When he did this he perished."

[summerdude]

"Whoa," Magnus breathes. "That was metal of him. That's the kind of thing that would land a guy in Valhalla."

[onthewillowsthere]

"In the end only seven men survived -- Brân Fendigaidd's brother Manawydan and Taliesin the bard were two of them. Branwen died of a broken heart because of her son's murder. Brân Fendigaidd was mortally wounded, and he told the survivors to cut off his head and take it back with them to Britain." He's still rubbing the band of his watch. "They first stayed in Harlech, and then Ynys Gwales, with the head speaking to them and telling them tales. They stayed for eighty years without realizing that time had passed, until one day Heilyn fab Gwyn opened the door facing Cornwall and they suddenly all realized what had happened to them. Everyone they loved had died in the battle or in their absence and they were alone. Brân Fendigaidd's head no longer spoke. As he had bidden them once, they took the head to Gwynfryn and buried it facing France. That's the end of the story."

[summerdude]

"Why do so many of these stories end up so sad?" Magnus wonders, and then, "I wonder if there's any connection between him and Mimir?" and then, "Wait, but why did he make ravens smart? Or was that because of Branwen's starling?" and finally, "Sorry, too many questions, I'll stop now."

[onthewillowsthere]

He laughs, mostly just at Magnus being able to tell on his own now when it's too many questions. "I don't know. But Brân means raven."

[summerdude]

"I once made a deal with a murder of crows to murder a giant with me," Magnus says, thoughtfully. "Crows are similar to ravens, right?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Percival says they're cousins."

[summerdude]

"That makes sense," Magnus says. "I paid them with the freshly-sharpened silver scythes of some jotunn thralls I, um. Tricked into killing each other earlier." He makes a face. "Dude, I'm so glad to be done with killing." For now, at least. "But I think crows like trading gifts the same way ravens do." He looks up. "Hey, Dro, remind me to teach you about guest rights when you're older."

[onthewillowsthere]

Dro looks up from her preening. guest baby??? Rights food??? She's been doing this as she gets more new words, slotting them into her existing vocabulary.

[summerdude]

"If you claim guest rights, you can get food," Magnus tells her, fondly. "Guest rights means that the guest and host have to be hospitable and can't kill each other."

[onthewillowsthere]

kill food!!!!!! kill guest rights!!!! Her little shrieks have become very enthusiastic, and Galahad laughs.

"What did she say?"

[summerdude]

Magnus translates for her, then says, "We'll work on this again when she's a little older, I think."

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods. It does seem fair that guest rights might be a little advanced for a chick-kitten.

"Clothes?"

[summerdude]

"Clothes!" Magnus confirms. "What do you wanna start out with?"