In The War Of The Pranks, You Ball Or You Die [closed post]

[summerdude]

Magnus has had an incredibly busy morning. The winter feels less oppressive in the wake of that totally insane blizzard the other day, so he spends the first few hours digging out camp with Alex (which does take some time, because they do take a couple of breaks for snow fights, make-out sessions, and snacks), and then digging out Galahad's church. In the process of tracking down a shovel to do said digging, he learns that the Mansion is making things again (thank gods), so he also takes advantage of that, once his home has been unearthed, to find another outdoor fireplace, a few candles and tiki torches, and a weird wooden chest thing filled with paper and markers. Plus some bells.

He takes all of these things back to the church, and works in earnest to continue setting it up. He writes TABERNACLE GOES HERE? on one of the papers, which he wedges in one of the slats of the box, demonstratively, and places it on his former reading branch, urging the branch to grow around the box a little more snugly. He threads bells through smaller branches, and then moves the branches like vines, securing them in place above the cross. The outdoor fireplace he puts next to the place where he imagines Galahad might sit or kneel or whatever, so he can stay warm; he places the candles on top of it, and then drags Dro's perch to the other side of the kneeling/sitting space. Finally, he shoves the torches into the frozen ground in a line leading up to the space.

Then, he decides, he can't do anything else without some sort of direction from Galahad. So he goes back to camp, gives Alex another big old kiss, and shoves his notebook into his backpack. "I'll be back by dinner," he promises her, "with dinner," and trots off to the Mansion to find Galahad.

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[summerdude]

"You're putting a lot of trust into a guy who infuriated Gu Xiang last time he tried cutting stuff," Magnus warns, getting a knife and a cutting board and then realizing he should probably wash stuff first. Peel it? Didn't his mom have some kind of contraption to help peel stuff?

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad glances over at him. "Wash them and you don't need to peel anything. The zucchini is a soft vegetable so it will cook faster. The others can be in smaller pieces."

[summerdude]

"Okay," says Magnus, and proceeds to do his best. Which is... fine. His knife skills are still mostly in the realm of stabbing giants with them, so the vegetables end up in fairly different sizes like the last time he tried to chop them, too (for Gu Xiang); when Galahad next looks over, Magnus will be frowning, trying to make things look more... even by carefully cutting down some of the bigger pieces.

[onthewillowsthere]

What Galahad likes in a recipe is precision -- if it says to dice vegetables in 1/4" chunks, he will do it, and his deepest loathing is reserved for salt and pepper to taste. He's beginning to think Magnus may be the same.

"Here," he says, and goes to the everything drawer. There's a little sheep shaped tape measure inside. "Try to make them one inch."

[summerdude]

Some of them are already smaller than that, and some of them he can either make into one-inch and partial-inch pieces, or equally-sized pieces that are a little under one inch. Still, he takes the tape measure gratefully and does his best with the remaining bits of vegetables.

[onthewillowsthere]

In the meantime, Galahad has the soybean paste and anchovies simmering into a stock, and he begins mincing garlic.

[summerdude]

Eventually, Magnus pushes the cutting board of mangled produce away. "I give up," he says. "It's probably good enough. Now what?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"What is that?" nodding at the tofu.

[summerdude]

"Tofu," Magnus says, reverently. "It's, like, soybean curd? I know exactly what to do with the tofu. We cube it and it goes in last cuz it's so fragile."

[onthewillowsthere]

That's easy, then. "I think once the broth is ready we can add the vegetables."

[summerdude]

"Cool." Magnus crowds in next to Galahad. "When's the broth done? How do you know?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I don't know. For beef and chicken, it's hours, but there are bones in it."

[summerdude]

"Maybe we should just go ahead and put the vegetables in?" Magnus guesses. "Since it's, like. Not that?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Then I need to strain out the fish."

[summerdude]

Magnus hesitates. "Your call," he decides. "You know more about cooking than I do."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Five more minutes," he says decisively, checking his watch.

[summerdude]

"Cool." Magnus slumps against Galahad's side, sharing warmth. "So when you told Shen Yuan you wanted to do Pokemon for your bachelorette party, was that just the ruse, or do you also want to do Pokemon for your bachelorette party?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"How would we do Pokémon for the party? We don't have the right things."

[summerdude]

"I dunno, maybe you wanted people to design their own?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He considers. "We should have a chart of types, then. So people can choose."

[summerdude]

"Sure. Oh man, I should have taken more notes when Shen Yuan was talking."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I remember some things. Do you think he said everything?"

[summerdude]

"He said a lot. I'm gonna be honest with you though, I still don't get most of the categories." Magnus pauses. "Maybe there's, like. A book?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"We can look."

[summerdude]

"Awesome. So maybe-Pokemon, definitely Legos?"