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]

Magnus doesn't know what that means, but he thinks he can guess. "Okay then," he says. "I'm listening."

[sagramore]

"I was a prince once. My father was the king of Hungary."

[summerdude]

"You what?" Magnus asks, startled. "Whoa. My condolences. ...sorry, was that rude?" Whatever, Sagramore already knows all his opinions about positions of power.

[sagramore]

He laughs. "I ran away from it."

[summerdude]

"Good for you," says Magnus, who sort of technically ran away from his heritage when he came here.

[sagramore]

"I was fifteen and I stole away from the city in the middle of the night. Of course, now I'm quite sure the queen helped that happen -- she didn't think much of me."

[summerdude]

"You stole away?" That sounds kind of like the sort of thing people do in books, not real life! But, Magnus supposes, Sagramore is from the past, which is sort of the same thing.

[sagramore]

"I did!" with a laugh. He's gratified that Magnus at least finds this somewhat remarkable and it's not as much a letdown as his opinions. "I ran away to Britain to be a knight, because my stepfather told grand tales."

[summerdude]

Magnus is picturing Sagramore clinging to walls and darting between spots of darkness through Istanbul (no, Constantinople) all the way to Britain. "Whoa."

[sagramore]

Very Assassins Creed of you, Magnus. "I mean, I wasn't a very good prince, to be clear. I hated learning things and I was a nuisance during state dinners."

[summerdude]

Magnus shakes his head. "Horrifying," he says. "Unacceptable. How dare you be a child."

[sagramore]

Sagramore laughs. "I was fifteen by the time I left."

[summerdude]

"Yeah?" Most fifteen year olds are kids, in Magnus's book. Even he was a kid even though he'd had to grow up so fast when he hit fourteen.

[sagramore]

"Well. I certainly thought I was a grown man."

[summerdude]

"Even in retrospect?"

[sagramore]

He remembers threatening the mansion spirits not to improve him, when he was cooking with Tress, and he sighs. "No, thou'rt right. In retrospect I was a child, running away from a life I hated and hoping I'd find something better, with no idea what I was getting into."

[summerdude]

"I thought I knew better than everyone else in the world when I was fifteen," Magnus admits. As he's talking, something dawns on him. "...honestly, I feel younger now than I did then."

[sagramore]

"Why dost thou think that should be?"

[summerdude]

"I mean, when I was fifteen I was homeless, hiding from the cops, and pulling a total Robin Hood with the wealthy assholes of Boston but the only 'needy' I was giving to was myself. My mom had just been murdered, my home blown up... and then in Valhalla it's, like, you're there forever and things get pretty same-y, but you're largely responsible for yourself. Or, like, the fate of the entire worlds." He shrugs modestly. "Now I'm in a place where there are, like, actual adult-shaped adults--" here, he gives Sagramore a crooked grin "--and I'm not dying all the time and I have a lot less, like, responsibility for preventing the apocalypse, so I guess I have a chance to, like, be a kid again. Or whatever. Even though I'm twenty-five."

[sagramore]

"Thou hadst manhood thrust on thee, and now thou hast the chance for boyhood. That's well -- thou shouldst taste that savor if thou canst now."

[summerdude]

"Your husband said the same thing." Basically. Different context. Mostly he'd just said Magnus shouldn't necessarily force himself to pick an age. Same difference?

[sagramore]

"My husband is a very wise man."

[summerdude]

Magnus grins at him, and then raises his eyebrows. "Wait, were you the secret prince you were talking about?"

[sagramore]

"Yes, exactly."

[summerdude]

"So you want me to ask you to knight me?"