I'm About As Organized As Ran, I Guess? [closed post]

[summerdude]

"And then we realized Frigg was knitting with clouds. Actual factual clouds," Magnus says, passing another box that, as it turns out, holds nothing useful down to Galahad. He climbs up another rung on the little stepladder and starts in on the next shelf. "How many boxes of Legos do we have so far?" He knows it's certainly not enough for a bachelorette party yet, but surely there's something they can go on. He'd kind of tonight that this far after Dark, there would be... more? "Do you think we should find another room to look in? Maybe the game room isn't the best choice."

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[summerdude]

Magnus, for once, misinterprets Galahad's meaning as being about making sure others can take care with this door. He turns the knob of the door again -- mostly trying to see if there's some kind of locking mechanism, so that nobody stumbles across it by accident -- but it swings right back open again instead.

The chasm is gone. Instead, behind the door, is a government cheese cave.

"Huh." With trepidation, Magnus pokes a toe onto the floor. It's not an illusion: his foot doesn't sink through it.

[onthewillowsthere]

Oh. All right. Endless shelves of cheese wheels are certainly less upsetting than the snake pit. Galahad is still signing to himself, but now it's just because his fingers have tasted the word and want to keep tasting it.

[summerdude]

"You think we need any cheese?" Magnus asks. His hand is still on the doorknob.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Last month."

[summerdude]

Magnus laughs. "Cheese and mushrooms both," he says, swinging the door closed again.

[onthewillowsthere]

"We should have looked." He starts. "The cat room."

[summerdude]

"What about it?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"It might have changed too."

[summerdude]

"Oh shit, yeah," Magnus says, turning to look for the marked door.

[onthewillowsthere]

Perhaps it's because they marked the door, perhaps it's just the vagaries of the mansion, but when Galahad opens it the cat-beetles are still cleaning the bones with their soft clicking jaws. He relaxes.

[summerdude]

"I wonder if any of the other doors are still the same," Magnus says, thoughtfully. He opens the mushroom cave door, and it's still a mushroom cave, so he borrows Galahad's charcoal and writes 'mushrooms!!' on it. Then he opens the door to the giant's house, and it's a different giant's house: this time, Aegir's underwater banquet hall. He shuts that door firmly and scrawls an X on it.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Which one was that?"

[summerdude]

"That house belonged to the husband of the goddess who has a bounty on my head," Magnus says, with a wry sort of laugh.

[onthewillowsthere]

"No. Thank you." He pokes the door with his shoe.

[summerdude]

"It's probably just a, like, scale model or whatever," Magnus says, thoughtfully. "But like, better safe than sorry, right?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Keep opening it until it changes."

[summerdude]

"You wanna give it a whirl? Maybe it'll be different for you."

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods, and opens the door, a touch more cautiously now that it's produced giants twice.

[summerdude]

Magnus catches half a glimpse of the interior and staggers back, slumping against the wall. Then he forces himself to peer through the doorway again. He takes in the worn off-blue carpet, the old brown couch, the camping gear waiting to be tucked away in a closet, the framed photos on the wall of a little kid and a beautiful woman with a blonde pixie cut grinning: holding up a fish in one; in front of a tent in another; playing in a pile of leaves in the park in a third.

He stares.

He reaches through the doorway.

He steps backward, again and again, until the knob of the door across the hall is digging into his back.

"I'm done with this door," he tells Galahad. "Close it. It's, like. Not giants."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad closes it. He knows what that room is. When the door is closed, he turns back to Magnus and opens his arms wordlessly.

[summerdude]

Magnus falls gladly into the hug. He definitely squeezes a little too hard for Galahad's current physical condition.

[onthewillowsthere]

He doesn't say anything about it; it hurts, but there have been things that hurt worse. It's more important to hold Magnus in his arms and be present, when the past is so determined to stay on Magnus' heels.

[summerdude]

"Anyway!" Magnus says, brightly, rallying. Seeing his old apartment is a good thing, right? It's proof that the Mansion isn't going to kick him and Alex back into Valhalla after they've worked so hard to embrace noping out of that entire experience. The apartment is exploded. It literally doesn't exist anymore. These things are just... echoes, maybe. "You wanna go next or shall I?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"You should." It's an irrational thought, but he wants Magnus to try again and get something better this time.

[summerdude]

"This one looks funky," Magnus says after walking up and down the hall, surveying his options. It looks a little fancier than the other doors: there are wrought iron elements, and sparkles reminiscent of crystal inlaid into what would, on other doors, be plain wood.

When he opens it, he gasps. It's so beautiful. There's a grassy knoll stretching out from the doorway, implausibly emerald, glittering with a nacre that casts off stunning little stained-glass rainbows where the sun hits it. And yet the grass is just grass, not crystal or glass. There are little rainbow flowers dotting the hillside, iridescent and shifting. The sky is streaked with a daytime aurora, shifting and dancing from color to color. Off in the distance, he can make out a smudge of trees. Even this far away, they're incandescent with impossible streaks of color. Shrimp colors, if you will, finally beheld by human eyes.

It is, frankly, an assault on the senses of a guy who likes to be outside because outside is outside-colored. Magnus likes wildflowers and rainbows, but this looks kind of like a world that Lisa Frank threw up. If he spent too much time here, he'd definitely end up with a headache.

Magnus has no way of knowing this, since he and Kade aren't particularly close, but this door to Prism is one of the few permanently interred in the Mansion. Kade and Antsy haven't talked about the vestigial Door to Prism she could have pulled out of his bedroom wall at the school with the slightest provocation, because they both know that Kade is done with that world. But the Goblin Empire wants their Prince-in-Waiting, and they are willing to wait a very long time for him to be sure. Magnus sees just a cute weird little facsimile the Mansion has brewed up for two guys having an interesting afternoon, but this is, in truth, one of the only true extant passages to another place outside of the Mansion's reach.

"What do you make of this?" he asks Galahad, eyes bright.