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]

"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?"

[summerdude]

Magnus nods. "Are hours different for you?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"They're not all the same. Some are longer, and in the summer they're all longer and all shorter in winter, because the day is shorter."

[summerdude]

Magnus considers this. "Are they based on daylight? What's the longest hour?" Oops. Multiple questions. He makes an apologetic face.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad signs slow down, but he smiles at Magnus too. "They're the hours for prayer. Matins and Lauds are early in the morning, and some people go back to sleep after until Prime, but--" But he needs that time before Prime to convince himself to get out of bed every day. "Prime is the first hour of the day, and it lasts three hours, to Terce. Then Sext at noon, Nones in the afternoon, Vespers at sunset, and Compline before bed."

[summerdude]

Sorry, Magnus signs, and says it as he signs it. Then he blinks. "There's a sexting hour? And it's noon?"

He realizes, as he says it, that of course it's not a sexting hour. Probably the only person with a smartphone-style device back then was Heimdall, and Magnus shudders to think about -- that.

"Never mind," he says, wrinkling his nose. "I wasn't thinking. Um, sexting is a thing in my time where -- okay, so, texting is when you send instantaneous written messages to someone using devices like... kind of, vaguely, like SecUnit's? And sexting is... That, but specifically... well."

[onthewillowsthere]

"It's Latin for six," flushing. "The sixth hour." He is very intentionally not thinking about sexual written messages.

[summerdude]

"Latin does make a lot more sense," says Magnus, who is also blushing. "That's cool though. Flexible hours. Wild." He pauses. "Actually, that probably explains why some of the other einherjar struggle with the schedules in Valhalla these days."

[onthewillowsthere]

"We use the sun. That's why it's shorter in the winter."

[summerdude]

"That's so reasonable," Magnus says. "Our hours are a lot more... identical. Um, if you want and you're okay with me using your stuff, I can sketch a clock?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods and hands the sketchbook and pencils over.

[summerdude]

Magnus takes them, thinking for a moment before carefully drawing a circle and marking the twelve hours. "So the way these are usually made," Magnus says, "There's a big hand and a little hand. The big hand is the minute hand, and it goes around the circle once an hour. The little hand is the hour hand, and it goes around the circle twice a day."

He considers, then discards, the idea of also mentioning the second hand. That seems like a lot for a guy's first clock experience.

"So if you're looking at it, and the big hand is on the six and the little hand is on the three, that means it's 6:15, because each number represents an hour for the little hand, and five minutes for the big hand."

[onthewillowsthere]

"And it's the same all the time? All year?"

[summerdude]

Magnus so does not understand Daylight Savings well enough to try to explain it to someone else. "Yeah, pretty much."

[onthewillowsthere]

He hasn't decided yet whether he likes this better, but the specificity of it is pleasing. "And this," touching Magnus' picture, "is a thing that can be worn."

[summerdude]

"Yeah! They call it a watch," Magnus says. "I don't know why. Maybe because you use it to watch the time?"

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad wants a watch. It would make it so much easier to keep the hours -- he's already thinking about how he'd map them onto the twenty-four equal hours, and then he'd know exactly when to pray. It would make it easier to be home (he doesn't realize that he thinks of Claudius' rooms as home, but that's the place he's envisioning) when he wants to be. It would be easier to know when to eat, since his body rarely registers hunger in a clear way. It would be easier to match his understanding to someone else's, especially since Magnus has made the variation acutely clear. He longs for a watch, and compared to some of his other longings this feels safe and uncomplicated.

"Thank you." He means for explaining all this.

[summerdude]

"You bet, man," Magnus says, and signs. "Thank you for telling me about how time works for you. I never really thought about it before."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Will you show me how to say thank you?"

[summerdude]

Magnus nods. He brings his hand, flat, to his face so that his fingers are touching his chin, and then moves the hand forward. "That's basic thanks," he says. "Two hands" -- and here he demonstrates that -- "Add emphasis. Thank you very much. There's also a version where you move your hand more, like this," stroking vertical circles in front of his chin, "that also emphasizes it."

He considers, and then says, "If you say no first" -- and here he demonstrates again, palm out, fingers splayed, waving briefly as he shakes his head, and then signing thanks again, "That means no thanks. If someone gives you information that you like or need, you can also say thank you like you're tipping a hat... I think that might also be after your time, but it's like this." He demonstrates.

"And then there's thankful, which is the same thing as grateful, which is --" He makes the same hand-shape as thank you very much, but taps them each to the sides of his chin a few times instead of the center.

Then he sits back, ready to walk Galahad through any of the signs again.

[onthewillowsthere]

There's also something relieving in the fact that all these nuances can be expressed by gesture, rather than tone: he doesn't need to sound right, because it's included in the sign. He goes through each of the signs one by one, looking to Magnus for confirmation.