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

[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.

[onthewillowsthere]

"It's all right. I just can't answer." He strokes his right hand over his left. It feels easy, easier than saying the words. He likes the way please feels, the little circles against his chest, soothing (he could teach Claudius that, he thinks, and it would feel good).

[summerdude]

"Oh, okay then. Cool," Magnus says, and he signs 'cool' as he says it: first the version with the wiggling fingers, and then the version that's essentially finger-spelling it.

[onthewillowsthere]

Oh, the wiggling fingers are so good. He loves how tactile the signs are, expressive of their meaning. It's so easy to sign something and then keep signing it, over and over. "How often can we have lessons?"

[summerdude]

"Literally anytime, man," Magnus says. He pauses in signing to gesture expansively at the world around them -- also staying silent, so it's hopefully clear that this is in fact just a gesture. Then he resumes: "I've actually really missed talking to Hearthstone like this, and it's not like there's a strict schedule around here. Plus..." Without verbalizing, he signs again: Galahad. Magnus. Friend. The briefest of hesitation, then he adds: Cool. Love time.

Time is a new sign, and Galahad might not get that Magnus tapping his wrist indicates a watch, but the gist, he thinks, is there.

[onthewillowsthere]

It's not, actually -- what Magnus is doing to indicate time is so abstracted from what Galahad would think that he doesn't make the connection at all -- but he gets the gist that Magnus likes this.

"We can talk any time, too. I like talking with you, and I like-- listening to you," he says. He's so at ease. It's so easy to talk to Magnus: his words still get trapped inside him, but less often, and he feels less the dread of needing to make sure everything comes out right, and because he feels that dread less he can say more. He taps his fingers against his wrist. "What does this mean?"

[summerdude]

"Time," Magnus says. He's a little overcome, by Galahad's words, actually? If he's gonna be here instead of Valhalla, he's so glad he can be here with a good friend like Galahad. The air around them is growing warmer and lighter still, like it's a midsummer afternoon instead of -- to be honest, Magnus still doesn't super understand how the calendar here works, even though he's puzzled over it since it appeared. Autumn though, he's pretty sure. "Because in my time, we wear clocks -- timepieces? -- around our wrists. Well, I don't, but a lot of people do."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad sits up a little straighter, the way he does when he's particularly interested. "The canonical hours on your wrists? Instead of bells?"

[summerdude]

"Canonical..." Magnus tilts his head. "Hey, quick question. How does time work? For you, where you're from. Like, do you have twenty-four hours in the day?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"There are seven hours. They're marked with bells. I wake for matins, but not everyone does."

[summerdude]

"Wow," Magnus says. "We have twenty-four, but most clocks only show twelve. So we have two sets of the twelve hours in each day. Are hours still sixty minutes for you?" He's trying to imagine a world in which a day is only seven hours long. Did the earth move differently back then? He's pretty sure it didn't, but then again, it's been a long time since he's had any science classes.

[onthewillowsthere]

"I don't know what a minute is."

[summerdude]

"It's sixty seconds," Magnus says. "Wait, I don't know if that's helpful. A second is like..." He taps out a few seconds on his knee: one-mississippi, two-mississippi, three.

[onthewillowsthere]

"It is a way that time passes? Seconds to a minute, and minutes to an hour? So every hour is the same?"