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

[agula]

"Of course. A shrewd negotiator," she says with a little smile.

Something about this speech unsettles Qi Yan. After a moment, she places the feeling. It's like sitting with Nangong Jingnu and her sisters while they discussed the fate of the land north of the Luo; involved deeply and personally, but needing to stay outwardly implacable. She was told to conceal her gender from the time she was old enough to speak. It would take a lot more than half a month in a strange place to be able to speak of it aloud.

"The Art of War counsels that the best way to conduct siege warfare is not to engage in siege warfare. It is a 'method of no alternative.' So if you find it difficult, take heart in knowing that Sun Tzu does as well." She cannot assume any shared frames of reference. "He is a great general and military tactician from my lands. Weiqi is a game of strategy, played with black and white stones on a board. Some believe it also trains the mind for warfare, if that's to your interest. And the xiao is an instrument." She briefly mimes playing it.

[summerdude]

"Oh, I've heard of Sun Tzu!" Magnus says. "Some of my friends really dig his stuff. Odin once did a whole motivational powerpoint with Art of War talking points. It... um, well." He doesn't want to say that it was, in effect, demotivational -- criticizing Odin isn't the best idea even if Magnus is outside of the Nine Worlds right now, because technically as one of the einherjar he's in service to the god. "It was very interesting." That much is true.

More formally, he adds, "I would like to learn all of these things."

[agula]

"Then I'm sure we can arrange an exchange, or several. Why don't we start with what a chickpea is, and I can describe to you how the Emperor of the Wei kingdom dealt with the occupied castle cities of Huainan?"

[summerdude]

"Perfect," Magnus says. "There's chickpeas in the kitchen, if you wanna go there now?"

[agula]

She gestures to him to lead the way. Qi Yan still doesn't know where all the kitchens are, nor their various purposes.

[summerdude]

Magnus leads Qi Yan up to the kitchen he's more familiar with, and rummages around in the cabinets until the Mansion produces chickpeas: some dried; some canned.

"So these are chickpeas," he says, opening both the bag and the can and passing them over to Qi Yan. "Uncooked, in this form. The most noble of legumes."

[agula]

She sniffs the bag of dried chickpeas first; nearly odorless, but slightly musty. The chickpeas sitting in liquid are nearly twice their size, and the odor is much more pronounced. "Like soybeans," she guesses.

[summerdude]

"Yeah, kind of, I think!" Magnus says. He picks one out of the can and squeezes it between his fingers, watching as it squishes. "I was reading a cookbook earlier to try and teach myself how to, you know, cook? And it was saying that for falafel you really should cook from dried chickpeas instead of from canned ones. I'm not really sure why, though."

[agula]

"I am ignorant when it comes to cooking." Qi Yan can cook noodles, and put meat on the fire until it is roasted, but that is about the extent of her abilities. "My skills are entirely impractical. If you fry it, does it not become harder and less palatable?" She eyes the dried chickpeas doubtfully.

[summerdude]

"Oh, you do things with them first." Magnus goes to the refrigerator and thinks at it very hard for a moment, then opens the door. Triumph!

"This is falafel," he says, bringing the plate over to Qi Yan. He picks one up and breaks it apart. "See? You do something to turn it into a meal, and then a batter, I guess? And then you fry it." He pops a piece in his mouth. "The Mansion makes it drier than Fadlan's Falafel, unfortunately, but it's so much better than nothing."

[agula]

The most intriguing part of this is the demonstration of the fridge, which Qi Yan has not used yet. But she puts that aside for now and bites into one of the falafels. It's delicious; spiced with flavors Qi Yan has never experienced, and satisfyingly crisp. She takes her time eating it, devoting all her attention to the experience out of respect for Magnus.

"It's very good." It seems important to Magnus for her to think so, so she wants him to know. "I am honored to be introduced to it. I can think of something that may go well with it, if you'll allow me the liberty." She gestures to the fridge. "How does it produce what you request?"

[summerdude]

"Mostly I just think very hard at it about what I want," Magnus says. He's very glad Qi Yan liked the falafel. "It works about... 90% of the time?"

[agula]

Qi Yan focuses on what she wants, and indeed, when she opens the fridge it reveals a small bowl of dark green paste. "Chive flower paste," she says, taking it out. "Where I come from, we do not grow crops, so our diet is mainly meat. But we have this seasonally, when the wild chives blossom in the spring. It is a very good accompaniment to food that is fried or fatty." She is speaking of where she actually comes from, despite having told many people that she's from the Jin province; if it doesn't mean anything here, then she doesn't have to worry about anyone noticing discrepancies in her background.

[summerdude]

"Oh, cool," Magnus says, leaning over and giving it a sniff. "I love a good paste."

[agula]

Qi Yan spoons a small dab of the paste onto one of the falafel balls and takes a bite. It adds a satisfying sharpness, and masks the slight dryness that Magnus lamented. She offers him the bowl, raising her eyebrows as a question.

[summerdude]

Magnus scoops some onto a falafel of his own and shoves it into his mouth in one bite. "Thish ish very good," he says enthusiastically, his mouth full. (Valhalla isn't huge on dining manners.)

[agula]

Luckily, Qi Yan finds young people with poor manners very likable. "This humble scholar is pleased to have been of service."

[summerdude]

Magnus swallows. "Do you want to try some of the sauces that usually come with falafel?" he asks. "Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with this and I'm glad you showed me! But there are some pretty good ones if you wanted to try them out."

[agula]

"Of course. I must complete my education, right?"

[summerdude]

So Magnus goes back to the fridge and gets an assortment: jajik and toum and tahini and the spicy sauce whose name he doesn't know. Other dips, for good measure, just in case: baba ghanoush and hummus -- the latter so he can show off the range of the humble, exalted chickpea.

He sets these out in front of Qi Yan and points to each one in turn. "That one's made out of yogurt and cucumber and mint," he says. "And that one is mostly garlic. That one is mostly sesame. The others are less commonly eaten with falafel, as far as I know, but they're also so good. Eggplant, and more chickpeas."

[agula]

Since this is Magnus' end of their skill exchange, Qi Yan takes it as seriously as she hopes Magnus will take her upcoming instruction on warfare. She tries each of the sauces both alone and with the falafel, and tries to give each of them her full consideration.

The food in the imperial court is very good, but these flavors are new to her. She enjoys the sharpness of the garlic in many of the sauces, and it's well-balanced by bright hits of acid, grassy herbs and creamy yogurt. Eggplant she knows, but never prepared this way, and between the falafel and the hummus, the chickpeas prove impressively versatile. The spice, though, makes her eyes water—the grass plains don't use many spices, and while they eat spicy food in some parts of the Wei kingdom, Nangong Jingnu doesn't favor it. She wipes them with her sleeve with a self-deprecating smile. "This is a cultural education well worth the trade."

[summerdude]

"I'm glad," Magnus says, satisfied. "When I was still homeless, Fadlan's Falafels... um, this restaurant where I'm from that serves falafel and other Iraqi food? They gave me so many free hot meals with product that was slightly too old to sell. Amir -- he's the son of the owner -- he's betrothed to my valkyrie, so I still get it a lot now, except now I can pay for it."

[agula]

Qi Yan's heart goes out to him; she knows how it is not to have a home. "I am glad to hear that times are better for you now." The fact that Magnus now patronizes the business who helped him through times of struggle also gives her a very favorable impression of him. She dips a piece of falafel in the toum and pops it in her mouth. "Have you found some profession, then?"

[summerdude]

"Sort of," Magnus says. "I like, died? Technically? It's really easy to come by red gold in Valhalla, both as a reward for quests and as, like -- a lot of einherjar choose to stay there all the time instead of spending a ton of time in the outside worlds, and so they no longer have use for their money."

[agula]

Qi Yan doesn't know what to make of this. She often considers herself someone who has died, symbolically, but that doesn't seem to be what Magnus means. She decides not to question it for now. "Then I'm glad that fortune has been kinder to you. She has another taste of the baba ghanoush—it is delicious. "It is in Valhalla that you must study warfare, then? Would you like to discuss it now, while we eat?"