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]

Magnus nods. Unable -- and completely disinterested -- in hiding his smile at the memory of Galahad giving him a new name-sign, he says, "Mine is this," and signs M-sunlight. "It's M, and sunlight. It used to be M, and crown," and here he demonstrates that, too, "as kind of a joke from my friends because Mom named me after all those Swedish kings, but Galahad picked a new one." He's not saying 'better,' but he's thinking it. "But we should go through the rest of the alphabet first. Um, it's based on the English alphabet?" He's starting to get that people here might be speaking different languages, and just hearing what they're used to.

[timebethine]

"Ay, Denmark also uses the Latin alphabet; I'll follow." Laertes is already thinking of how he might name himself--whether he would define himself as a brother, or as a student, or a fencer. His hands hover over his lap, eager to begin.

[summerdude]

So Magnus walks Laertes slowly through the alphabet. "This is good for when you don't know the actual word," he explains, once he's given Laertes an initial introduction to all the letters. "Or names, as until you get a name-sign." He scratches his head. "I'm happy to give you one, by the way, if you don't want to pick. Or you could ask someone else -- you're friends with Claudius, right? I'm teaching him sign. He might have some ideas."

[timebethine]

"I'm sure he will," says Laertes; he thinks privately that Claudius would like little better than to select a name for him, as though it were a doublet or a hat. He practices the letters to himself, spelling the names of everyone he knows: Tress and Sagramore, Lancelot and Ophelia. "What words hast thou found most useful to know?"

[summerdude]

Magnus catches the Lancelot and decides to pretend like he didn't. He hates the dude and thinks he should wake up every day with a splinter under his fingernails, but he hates people who try to drag friends into a vendetta even more.

He puts his vague thoughts of a name for Laertes out of his mind and focuses on Laertes's question. Laughing, he holds his left hand flat in front of him, puts his right index finger -- palm facing outward -- up between the index and middle fingers on his left hand, and then pulls it free and to the side. "That means run away," he says.

[timebethine]

"I have never in my life needed to say that, which makes me gladder of my life than I can say," Laertes laughs.

[summerdude]

"Then I advise you to never run afoul of angry svartalfs," Magnus says. "Or jotuns." He thinks for a moment, and then signs sword. It's a really obvious gesture, so he raises his eyebrows at Laertes. "I bet you can guess what that one was."

[timebethine]

Laertes immediately recognizes it, that flourishing swish (like a foil, he thinks, a light and whippy blade), and grins. "Couldst show me the sheath of it again? I missed that part."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, for sure," Magnus says, and repeats the motion, much more slowly. "You can also just do it one-handed, with the swish. It means the same basic thing."

[timebethine]

"Like saying only 'didst' instead of 'thou didst'--the conjugation implies the subject, as the act of unsheathing implies the sheath," says Laertes musingly. He copies the motion, but makes an L for the sheath. "This might make a fine name. It's pleasing to my hands."

[summerdude]

"That's good," Magnus says. "That's important. You want a name to feel right." Lightly blushing, he adds, "I was also kinda thinking-- I mean, obviously, pick what works for you, or have someone you really care about pick for you, but..." He makes two fists, one on top of the other, and bumps them together, first with the backs of his hands facing outward, then his knuckles. Then he repeats the gesture, but instead makes an L with his top hand on the second bump.

[timebethine]

Laertes copies the gesture--he mirrors, at first, left hand doing what Magnus's right hand does, then corrects himself. "What does it mean?"

[summerdude]

"Make," Magnus says. "Or create." He gives Laertes a crooked smile. "It seemed appropriate. Plus --" and this is something he privately finds very funny and cute; he's been thinking about sign names for everyone here since Galahad gave him a new one, and about this possibility in particular since Nina started to teach him about flirting -- "your husband likes coffee, right? The sign for that is really similar." He demonstrates this, dominant hand maintaining contact and moving in a circle instead of bumping against his other fist. "You could just... exaggerate the S, I guess. If you wanted to match."

Something occurs to him, then. "And actually you had it right the first time; I'm left-handed so I have a different dominant hand. The dominant hand goes on top."

[timebethine]

"Oh--make." For a long moment, Laertes just sits there, practicing the sign, first with and then without the L.

It's overwhelming to him, that the first thing people think about when they think of him is no longer the sword. It's no longer his gentlemanly graces, his polite manners. The first things that Magnus thinks of are the things he shapes with care and straining hope, like the boat or the tarte tatin.

Magnus threw off the sign of the crown and embraced the sunlight, and it shines in him. He is more than his father's summer; he is a light all his own, and he illuminates everyone he touches so that they might better see themselves.

"Yes," says Laertes quietly. "Yes, that is a fine name."

[summerdude]

"You like it?" Magnus asks, half-eager and half-embarrassed. "You don't have to keep it if you don't want to, though. Like I said."

[timebethine]

"I love it," says Laertes. His voice is a little thick; he clears his throat and continues, "And I like Sagramore's, too, although I'll happily call him by any name he chooses." He signs S-coffee idly, making sure to mirror rather than reverse Magnus's signs.

[summerdude]

Magnus hesitates for a moment, still a little flushed, then says, "The sign I've been using the most since I got here is this one," and hooks his index fingers together twice, switching the orientation of his hands in between. "It means friend."

[timebethine]

"Ay, Galahad showed me that one--I think I'll use it often." And he signs Magnus, friend, easily and fluently, as though it is the most natural thing in the world to say.

[summerdude]

Magnus grins. Laertes, friend, he signs back. And then, signing and talking at the same time, he says, "Oh, dude, on that note --" (it's not) "-- I figured it out."

[timebethine]

"Oh?" Figured it out is a fun one to copy, both hands making vees.

[summerdude]

It occurs to Magnus, abruptly, that he's calling back to a conversation they had nearly three weeks -- four weeks? In Mansion time? Twenty days -- ago. Oh well, nothing to for it; Laertes is the one who really got him thinking about this in the first place, so Magnus is going to tell him. "How--" old he is? Long he's been dead? "--long I've been around," he says. "Aziraphale told me what year it was, back home."

[timebethine]

"How old art thou?" Laertes asks, leaning forward a little.

[summerdude]

"Twenty-four," Magnus says, and wrinkles his nose. "Aziraphale said I could count my age as the years since I'd been born, not just when I died. Except Hanguang-jun said I didn't have to be sixteen or twenty-four or an ageless being. I can just pick."

For Hanguang-jun, without thinking, he makes the following sign: Hand, held up, fingers outstretched and palm out; thumb tapping against his temple and then dragged across his forehead like a head ribbon.

[timebethine]

Laertes copies that sign, too, committing it to memory. "What hast thou chosen--hast thou chosen?"

[summerdude]

Magnus touches the jade token hanging next to his Jack pendant for a moment, and then continues signing and talking: "I haven't, yet," he says, and smiles at Laertes. "I know I don't feel sixteen, but I know I look sixteen, and that's about as far as I've gotten. What do you think?"