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]

"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?"

[timebethine]

Laertes considers the question, sitting back with his hands sinking into the mossy ground. "When I was sixteen," he says slowly, "I held myself apart from boys of mine own age. In part because I was awakening to new desire, which I was at great pains to conceal--but in greater part because I had been trained since mine earliest youth to do nothing foolish or immoderate that might stain my father's reputation. And so I fear I missed much of what other boys learned, in each other's company. Now, although I've passed thirty years, a part of me that was held frozen at sixteen is beginning to quicken and thaw ... and I think it may be the same for thee, as well. Twenty-four thou mayest be, but that part of thee that was sixteen still craves fulfillment."

[summerdude]

Magnus reflects on this seriously for a few long moments. His signs are slower, more reflective when he starts talking again. "My mom died and I went on the run when I was fourteen," he says. "I don't know if that makes me feel younger or older. I don't really have an easy, like, way to compare my stuff to anyone else's, though. Two years on the streets, and then I died, and then eight in Valhalla. And now I'm here." He quirks a smile at Laertes. "Sounds like you don't either though, dude. Do you mean -- you don't have to say. But. Desire for guys?"

[timebethine]

"Ay, and women, too--but that much, I might have shared with them, if I dared." He shrugs a little. "For all that, I led an easy life. I never wanted for food or shelter. My father yet lives, and loves me, and would do all in his power to see me untouched by suffering or scandal. I don't mean to set myself within thy sphere. Only ... only, I suppose, to say that thou art not alone."

[summerdude]

Magnus gives Laertes an assessing sort of look. Slowly, guessing with each word, he says, "Just because a dad loves you and doesn't want you hurt, doesn't mean it's actually... easy. Especially when people have a particular, like, image of him."

[timebethine]

Laertes privately notes that the sign for dad looks almost identical to the sign for Hanguang-jun, but it's only a passing thought. "Ay," he says, remembering all he'd said under the influence of the truth spell. "When I was traveling abroad, he set spies on me, and hired my friends to inform on all my doings--and only then did I realize that he must have done the same in Denmark. His way of loving was to exert control in all things, and even mine own mind became an instrument to that purpose. I knew no greater virtue than discipline, unless it was moderation. And still there was no thing I could be that would please him. He ... he loves me, but I doubt he likes me. And he would like me less, to know all that I've done here. He would see my happiness as a problem to be managed, and manage it he would."

[summerdude]

That's so fucked up??? That's so fucked up. Magnus considers his words for a second.

"My father," he says, finger-spelling F-R-E-Y instead of signing 'dad,' "Is one of the good ones, I guess. He loved my mom, and sometimes he helps me out on my quests to save the world." He shrugs. "Loki tries to command everything Sam and Alex do. Including their heartbeats, if they're fighting him. Mr. Alderman -- my friend Hearthstone's dad -- wanted him to be a different son than the one he was. Not Deaf, for one, but also willing to fall in line with Mr. Alderman's picture of a perfect, like, I don't know. I hesitate to say 'family.'" A reflexive, fleeting grin. "I should probably say that I've defeated Loki in a couple of different ways, and Mr. Alderman twice. I, um. Got Mr. Alderman turned into a ring dragon, and then I killed him, and accidentally ate his hearts-blood. That's why I can talk to animals."

It's not an offer, per se, but Magnus does think that all his friends who clearly have really bad dads should know that his main talent, besides being a good friend, is defeating bad dads.

[timebethine]

Laertes blinks. "An thou art offering to turn my father into a dragon, please stay thy hand."

[summerdude]

"Oh, I'm not," Magnus says, quickly, and then half-jokes: "We got rid of that ring, anyway."

[timebethine]

Laertes signs dragon, ring, mimicking to help fix the signs in his mind. "In any case--whatever age thou feel'st thyself to be, that age thou art."

[summerdude]

Magnus isn't sure he knows what it feels like to be any age, at this point. "Okay," he says, nodding. "Can I ask what you meant by your sixteen year old self 'quickening and thawing?'"

[timebethine]

"Only--I've started to make friends," he says, with a kind of trembling gladness. "True friends, not people who wanted my father's ear. I've fallen in love, and may yet fall in love again. I've done foolish things for the joy of foolery, and made mistakes that harrowed me to my heart. All those things that I felt I couldn't do, when I was sixteen, I've begun to do in earnest."

[summerdude]

"So, in the immortal words of Mrs Frizzle, the best character in any children's book I've ever read," Magnus says, smiling at the joy he can see spreading across Laertes's face. "You're taking chances, making mistakes, and getting messy? To learn about the world and how things work outside of your own earlier experiences?"

[timebethine]

"Yes," says Laertes, smiling in answer. "That's just what I'm doing."

[summerdude]

"Good," Magnus says, fiercely, and then: "Me too, I think. Not quite in the same way."

[timebethine]

"Say on," says Laertes, shifting his posture to one of attention--leaning forward a little, hands neutral at his sides, careful not to sign or fidget in a way that might distract.

[summerdude]

"I mean, I was already in love with Alex when I got here, and that's not gonna change, but I've been picking friends for reasons other than, you know, questing together and stuff. Figuring out what I like to do when I can choose to do basically anything. And... but...." He pauses, then barrels on. "So. I've been living out here." A gesture at the clearing. "Since the zombies. They were... hard, for me, in a way I didn't expect? And I've just been out here, thinking about things. Like how I really didn't miss fighting for my life." He takes a deep breath. "Hanguang-jun said I could find another path than just Battle Practice all the time until I die in Ragnarok. I don't know if that's actually possible, but if it is... I'm trying to figure out what it could be."

[timebethine]

"What pulls at thee? What catches thy heart and makes thee glad?" Laertes signs make, make, make.

[summerdude]

"My friends," Magnus says, immediately. "That's... about as far as I've gotten."

[timebethine]

"Then be with them--those that are here with thee. Give them joy and comfort. That's a path, and in my eyes, a noble one."

[summerdude]

"I'm trying," Magnus says, with a quick grin. "Oh, here's something that makes me feel sixteen: I kinda wish I could go to school. I like learning things."

[timebethine]

"The prince of Denmark was at university when I was drawn here, and he has thirty years," Laertes says, grinning. "Thou shouldst speak to Nina--we have a sort of club for learning new things together. I think she'd welcome thee."

[summerdude]

"Oh, sick," Magnus says, pleased, and then: "Wait, dude, I've noticed someone else has been harvesting from the clay you told me about. Is that you? Or Nina? Or someone else?"