I Lived, Grinch! [open post]

[summerdude]

The first thing Magnus does -- with Alex's help -- after fully healing is board up the hole in the side of the greenhouse where the cheetah ran through. The second thing, once he learns the full scope of Dark (it's different at camp; he'd already taken out a ton of camp-appropriate food for when Galahad and Laertes couldn't make it out there, and so he and Alex have been fine on the eating front) is go to the greenhouse again to figure out what plants in there yield edible produce. (Also, he tries to scrub his blood off the table. It... partially works?)

Partly it's that he's still feeling weird after the whole affair. The season doesn't help, but he does feel closer to his own mortality than pretty much any point since he died for real the first time. Being around growing plants helps that. Mostly, though, it's because he doesn't want anyone to get, like, scurvy living on bushels of rice alone.

He doesn't want to overtax any of the plants, but some can be cajoled into fruiting. Right now, he's got his hand on a kumquat tree, and he's trying to convince it that it can speed up the growth process by a few weeks. Drosera is with him, 'helping:' she's found a dead leaf, and she's chasing it down the pathway between some plants. If anyone shows up -- either because they've heard of his near-death experience and want to check in on him, or just to hang out, or even because they're drawn by the way it looks like sunlight is coming from the greenhouse itself -- he'll be glad for the company.

Comments

[summerdude]

"Nobody." Magnus pauses. "I mean, Hanguang-jun and Alex think it's somebody and that it was a targeted attack and when they figure out who, I kinda feel bad for the person, cuz it's probably going to get really bloody." He pauses, frowns, then adds, "Again." He shivers. "But nobody was there, and I don't think I've pissed anyone off? At least not enough to, like, attack me with a mystery sword. Especially since I, like, think I figured things out with everyone I've pissed off, like, before it happened."

[timebethine]

"Needst not speak on it," says Laertes--but then at once he asks, "Was it a sword like Jack or Bichen, attacking unwielded?"

[summerdude]

"It's more like it was falling really fast than it was flying. I was too busy ducking a falling ceiling fan to dodge the sword and the glass from its display case."

[timebethine]

"How horrifying!" But a frown is crossing Laertes's brow as he tries to envision it. He's been reading a fair bit about physics lately, and his reading has touched on acceleration due to gravity and the force equation. He can't imagine a sword in a display case accelerating sufficiently to gain enough force to impale someone to the floor, not even if it were a great massy blade like Sagramore's.

He understands now why Lan Wangji and Alex believe there was an unseen hand wielding the blade.

[summerdude]

"Yeah, it wasn't the best," Magnus says, wry.

[timebethine]

A faint smile. "What wouldst thou have me do? Turn thy mind to other pastimes?"

[summerdude]

Magnus shrugs. "I can answer more questions, if you have them," he says. It's okay to answer questions. He knows people have them because they care about him, which is, like, nice. If he thinks about it as helping out friends it's fine to dwell on the answers.

[timebethine]

Laertes hesitates, then asks, "The sword--how was it angled, ere it fell? How did it move, in falling? Did it shudder off of the wall and drop all at once, or did one end part from the wall before the other?" He makes a swiveling motion, his elbow the fulcrum.

[summerdude]

With a deep, careful breath, Magnus closes his eyes and tries to remember. "There were more swords. They were all propped up in glass display cases, like it was a museum. Like this." He gestures, holding his arm like it's a sword propped up for display. "One case was cracked. It, um. The crack looked like an M. It started to break further, and then the ceiling fan fell, and swung. It broke a case, and glass started to fall. I tried to dodge it. The case fell into another case, the one with the sword that got me. I was too busy dodging the fan swinging back to see exactly how the thing landed, but the way it did, it had the sword flying directly at me. Blade forward. I guess it was knocked into just right." He opens his eyes. "By the time Lancelot got there it was just the one sword and the broken glass. Everything else was, like, gone."

[timebethine]

"Like a dream." And ordinarily, that would mean nothing to Laertes ... but hasn't he been hearing stories of someone who can manipulate dreams?

[summerdude]

"I guess? But it definitely wasn't one. I was fully awake. It wasn't even like one of my special dreams."

[timebethine]

So perhaps unrelated to Galahad's dreams. "Is there anything thou needest?"

[summerdude]

"Actually, yes," Magnus says, eyes lighting up. "What makes a church a church?"

[timebethine]

This is such a wild swerve that Laertes actually takes a step back as he considers it. "Art thou asking because thou hast never seen a church before?" he asks. "Or because thou wishest to build one here?"

[summerdude]

"Yes," Magnus says, immediately, and then wrinkles his nose, takes fifteen mental steps back, and tries to explain: "I've been in churches before, but just, like, mostly the activity center parts? Never for a service. Me and mom were never really into religion." Yes, his father is a god. "I guess technically unless you count my funeral in an interfaith chapel, but that was just my first body. I was on a quest. But Galahad said that churches are more than basketball courts," essentially, "and I want him to be able to do his stuff in a meaningful space. You know? But I don't think I have a, um, tabernacle? Whatever that is. ...I'm pretty sure it's not what I think it is."

[timebethine]

A touch wryly, Laertes says, "This may go hard with thee--for I would say the thing most needed to make a church a church is a priest to perform the sacraments, and we have none here."

[summerdude]

"To do the what now?" Magnus runs through everything he knows about sacraments, which is the two precise things Galahad has described as sacraments. "Like crossing yourself and getting heterosexually married?"

[timebethine]

"Ay, marriages, baptisms, the Eucharist, confirmation, confession and penance, anointing the sick--all of these are a priest's charge." A frown. "What hath a basketball court to do with salvation?"

[summerdude]

"Getting bodies in the building? I dunno, dude, I only pretended to listen at all the christian soup kitchens. But you say 'church,' I think 'recreation center.' But Galahad acted really surprised about churches having games."

[timebethine]

"As well he should," says Laertes. "A wedding or a feast day are perhaps the gayest days one can hope for, in a church." The implication there is, Why dost thou think I've left the church along with all other miseries, in Denmark?

[summerdude]

"Maybe it's a denomination thing," Magnus says, scratching his head. "Are chapels different from churches?"

[timebethine]

"Ay, a chapel needs not a priest."

[summerdude]

"Why not?"

[timebethine]

"I know not why not--as easy to ask why the sun is not the moon, although both illuminate the heavens. The sun is a star, a distant globe of hydrogen and helium, vast and ever-burning. The moon, a satellite of a satellite, a proximate globe of dust--a mirror to the sun, but not its equal. Though both church and chapel permit the contemplation of God, a church hath a priest and a congregation; a chapel hath not. What they need defines what they are, as the composition of the sun and moon define them."

[summerdude]

"Okay, so what makes a chapel a chapel?"