You Say Overkill, I Say Due Diligence [open post]

[summerdude]

Magnus copies the sign onto seven different pieces of paper. It reads:

WANT TO LEARN NEW SKILLS? ME FREAKING TOO. I (Magnus Chase) Will Trade Lessons In Any Of The Following For Something You Know:

• ASL (Alf/American Sign Language)


• Camping (pitching tents, campfire safety, celestial navigation)


• What To Do If You Find Yourself Lost In The World Tree Yggdrasil


• Pickpocketing (But only if you promise to use it for good (stealing ONLY from dickhead rich people) and ONLY if you have to!)


• Swordfighting for Beginners (I am intermediate but Jack is advanced and he can help!)


• What It REALLY Feels Like To Die (NOT ADVICE!!!)


• (Trans)Gender Identity and Fluidity (from the perspective of a cis guy) (Alex-approved content only)


• What To Do If The God You're Talking To Is Super Obnoxious Particular


• Why Falafel is the Best Food in the World

All skills welcome! But if you know any of the following I am especially interested: Cooking, Geometry, How To Declare Your Love To Your Partner, Hand-to-Hand Combat, Balancing a Budget, Writing Poetry, Social Studies, Codebreaking.

(Sorry but I will not learn pottery from anyone but ♥Alex Fierro♥. I hope you understand.)

PS if there's enough interest we can maybe do full classes where everybody gets to take turns teaching and learning?

He adds a note about the areas where he can most frequently be found and then posts one sign in each of the two kitchens he's encountered, one by the welcome table, one on the door to the greenhouses, one in the library, one on his bedroom door, and one by what he believes to be the most-populated lounge. Then, with a great deal of eager anticipation, he goes about his day.


[A note from Magnus's typist: Open indefinitely!]

Comments

[summerdude]

"Anytime, friend."

[onthewillowsthere]

For a while he says nothing else. He's grateful that with Magnus he can be quiet when he needs to be quiet, grateful for the unhurried space Magnus is so good at making. Percival was like that too. They both know when to fill the silence and when to let it gain depth on its own.

Eventually, though, he says, "You said Hearthstone speaks with signs."

[summerdude]

"Yeah!" Magnus re-engages in the conversation; he's been drifting and daydreaming, comfortable -- frankly, cuddling against Galahad's side. "I learned them all from him so we could talk. I'm probably fluent at this point."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Will you teach me something?"

[summerdude]

"Heck yeah, my dude," Magnus says. He straightens up, regretfully letting go of Galahad's hand, and maneuvers until he's sitting cross-legged in front of Galahad. "This is the alphabet; it's the most basic foundation," he says, and slowly goes through each letter in turn, waiting for Galahad to repeat each one.

Then it occurs to him that he doesn't know if knights from Camelot know how to read. Oh, but hadn't Galahad mentioned something about monks, or nuns, or something? Surely there was some kind of literacy there.

[onthewillowsthere]

Perhaps not for everyone, but Galahad was a titled lady's son, raised in a convent, and he can read and write in English, French, and Latin. He copies each letter back to Magnus, in the very serious way he has -- they aren't just abstract concepts, they have meaning, and he wants to commit that meaning to heart. After Magnus gives him the alphabet he spells out both their names, half to himself.

[summerdude]

"Yeah," Magnus says, encouragingly. "Finger-spelling is great especially for when there's a word you don't have a sign for, like names or like when Hearthstone is trying to tell me about all the different runes. With people you know, you can make up a name-sign that's usually the first letter and then something about them - either another word, or something illustrative about them."

He rolls his eyes. "Since my mom got my name from a bunch of Scandinavian kings, my friends back home like to tease me by making my name sign the combination of M and crown." He demonstrates this, and then smiles. "For you... you could pick what you want. Maybe..." He holds up both hands, left hand open-palmed and facing him, right hand plucking the air above his fingers twice. He turns the second pluck into a G, and then moves the G from the right side of his nose to his left. Choice, flower. "But it can be anything that feels right or good."

[onthewillowsthere]

Warmth suffuses him. His name has never been his -- it is his father's name, it is a faraway land, it is something he uses because no alternative have ever occurred to him, even knowing he did choose for himself once. But Magnus has made his name into something new, something that hasn't ever belonged to something else.

"What does that mean?" as he copies Magnus' gesture.

[summerdude]

"It can mean Galahad," Magnus says. He finds that he's actually a little anxious about this -- Galahad doesn't have to use it, but he wants him to like it. "It's the signs for choice," and here he signs choice again, "G for Galahad, and a variation on flower." He shows Galahad both the official sign for flower, with appropriate finger positioning, and then the modified g-version again. "If I said that to Hearth without telling him your full name first, he'd interpret it as G Flower-Choice. Um, but if that's too much..."

[onthewillowsthere]

His face is blank, as it often is when he's overwhelmed. He makes the sign again, and his heart cramps the way it does when Claudius calls him beloved.

"Thank you," quietly. "It's good."

[summerdude]

"Good," Magnus says, greatly relieved. He signs the word as he says it -- hand to chin, dropping firmly. Then he hooks his index fingers together, twice, switching the orientation of his palms each time. "That's friend." He signs: Galahad. Magnus. Friend..

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad signs it back, once or twice to feel comfortable with it: Friend, friend, friend. It's the best thing he's ever learned. He could embrace Magnus, he could weep, he could try to speak and tell him how glad he is to be his friend. Instead he signs the word; it's so much easier than talking.

[summerdude]

The air around them is warming. Magnus, largely impervious to temperature, doesn't totally realize that he's summoning summer in his happiness; he's more focused on Galahad saying friend. He wants to let both of them sit with this, for the moment, but if truth be told, he also has a bit of an agenda: He'd taught Claudius how to say 'I love you,' and he wants Galahad to be able to understand it for what it is if Claudius ever says it to him.

He signs friend back.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you," he says again. He always runs cold, as he told Shen Qingqiu, and he's grateful for the warmth, even if he hasn't quite processed that it's Magnus' doing.

[summerdude]

"Oh, here's another one that uses the alphabet," Magnus says, as if it's just occurred to him. "If you combine I, L, and Y with the same hand at the same time, it means 'I love you.'" He demonstrates, first forming each letter individually and then presenting the final sign.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Like this?" holding up his hand. He likes that these signs build on each other, he likes it better than spelling the words out. It reminds him of the Eucharist, the transubstantiation, of how one thing can become another thing in a way that's almost beautiful. Homoousios, consubstantiation, light from light.

[summerdude]

"Yes, exactly like," Magnus says. "The other way is to use the signs for the actual words." He forms loose fists and crosses his wrists in front of his heart. "This is the other way to say love."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad copies this sign too -- the crossed wrists also feel good, but he likes the sign with his fingers better.

[summerdude]

"The full version is--" Magnus points at himself, then signs love, and then points at Galahad. "So you can make it a little more clear if you're directing it at a specific person, I guess."

[onthewillowsthere]

He can gather the significance of the pointing, the I and the you, and it strikes him then that this is a language. When Shen Qingqiu had talked about there being signs and showed him the one for eating, Galahad imagined something like a pidgin, something that would let him communicate in the most rudimentary way -- but this is like the difference between English and French, it's two wholly different systems of speaking, a language where names aren't just a literal string of letters but something imbued with their own meaning. He wants to learn it. He wants to learn all of it.

"Will you teach me more? Are-- are there books to study?"

[summerdude]

"I'm sure there are," Magnus says, and then: "Wait. Hang on." He starts over again, signing as he talks. It's always a bit of a mental exercise to do it, especially after not doing it for a while, since words are usually in a different order and sentences have different compositions in sign language. "I'm sure there are -- we can look for some together, if you want. But even if there aren't, I'm happy to teach you. I don't know how good I'll be at explaining the grammar, but I know how to use it, so that's a start."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad's expressions tend to go either blank and unreadable or incredibly transparent, and in this case, it's obvious that he's entranced. He watches Magnus' hands instead of his face, and although Magnus is too quick for him to copy along Galahad's hands move along with him, catching the occasional letter or word to echo. "That would be-- that would be good. Thank you."

[summerdude]

Magnus does catch Galahad's expression, and his mimicry of some of the signs, and smiles. "Is there anything in particular you really want to be able to say right now?" he asks, still signing as he talks -- slower now, so it's easier to follow along. "I could teach you that first."

[onthewillowsthere]

One of his word-gathering silences, which by now Magnus must be getting used to, and maybe even recognizes the meaning of. "When someone asks too many questions, it's hard for me to answer," he says at last. "If I could ask for one at a time, or-- ask him to wait. Or say when something is too much."

[summerdude]

Magnus gives Galahad a rueful little smile. "Sorry I can be Questions Guy sometimes, by the way," he says, still signing. "Let me think. Um." He holds his right arm out, flat from palm to elbow. "I'm doing this this way because I'm left-handed, by the way," he says. "The non-dominant arm is flat." Then he strokes his left hand over his right hand, down to his wrist. "That's 'slow down.' Slow down, please is--" He repeats the motion, and then moves his hand straight on to rubbing his chest, small circles.

"Then we have wait, hold on, and too much," he says, demonstrating each sign twice before moving on to the next one.