I Turn, Um... Uh... Sixteen? For The Tenth? Time???? [open post]

[summerdude]

It's Magnus's birthday and he is a man with a surplus of plans. And many, many plastic recorders.

He's still a little overstimulated from the birthday party Galahad got Claudius to throw for the two of them — he loves all his friends, but that was a lot of people in one space, most of whom were also feeling many, many things about their visitors — and so it's been a quiet few days. Sunny is still a little subdued, so they've been having muted hangouts in the mornings; Galahad, also overstimulated from their birthday party, has fortunately been on Magnus's wavelength about just sailing around aimlessly on the Big Banana with many snacks and very little conversation during their daily hangs for the past few days. He drags himself to sword practice with Lancelot once or twice, has his weekly dinner at Hanguang-jun's, spends a great solo afternoon cleaning out Little John's cave in case anyone else wants to use it at some point, and lets Alex tease him into wrestling and, um, other stuff after dinner basically every night.

But on this, the twenty-sixth anniversary of Magnus's actual birth, most of his energy has returned to him. He's made birthday dinner plans with just his immediate family (and also Alex and Hanguang-jun) at their house for the evening. He's had his liveliest morning of the week. And with his newly regained energy he's found critical supplies for his afternoon: a roll of duct tape, several trash bags, eight recorders, a handful of hollow pens, and a dream. He's sitting cross-legged in the middle of the Mansion's lawn, a look of grave concentration on his face, as he makes little holes in a bag, duct tapes two recorders and one pen here and there, and then seals it all up.

And then he takes a deep breath, fits his mouth to the hollow pen, and blows the bag up. When he places it under his arm and squeezes, he's gratified to find that his makeshift bagpipes work perfectly. And he still has supplies for a couple more!



I know everyone is still busy with visitor's day so feel free to take your time on this one... but I would love to ultimately have a ton of Chaos Thread Opportunities.

Comments

[biteybaby]

She thinks about that for what feels like a reeeaaaally long time before she finally says, “Boys can stand up?”

[summerdude]

Magnus is officially taking this conversation very seriously. When he thinks of it as an important big-brotherly moment, it stops being something to blush about and becomes something to just... walk Sunny through as clearly as possible. "Yeah. The way I learned it, boys have penises and girls have vaginas. That's not... universally true. Some girls have penises and some boys have vaginas. Some people have both. But penises usually come with testicles, and are the ones you can stand up to go potty with. Vaginas usually come with uteruses and ovaries, and are the ones you sit down to go potty with."

It's probably too much to explain that pee doesn't come from a vagina, right? He can do that after the first round of explaining?

"People who have ovaries inside will, um, lay their eggs through their vaginas, but not until they're teenagers. I'm guessing one of the girls here will help explain that whole process to you when you become a teenager, since I'm pretty sure you're the only person in our family with a vagina."

A sudden mental image flashes through Magnus's mind, though, of him and their dads poring over the What's Happening To My Body? Book For Girls or The Care and Keeping of You and taking very detailed notes, and for a weird little moment, his heart clenches. It's nice, to think of their little family having a long and caring future.

[biteybaby]

She listens very closely to everything Magnu is explaining. "I gonna have to pee out eggs when I'm big?"

[summerdude]

"Um. Not... exactly. But... kind of?" Periods are almost definitely too much to explain to a two-year-old, right?

[biteybaby]

"I don't wanna pee out eggs, Magnu!" Sunny says, dangerously close to crying. It honestly is a bit of a mood, to tell the truth. Anyone would understand her concerns.

[summerdude]

Yeah, there's no way he's going to tell her it's actually bleeding out eggs for at least a few years. With a surfeit of unearned confidence, he promises, "It won't hurt," and leans in to give her a bit of a snuggle, too.

[biteybaby]

"Still weird though!"

[summerdude]

"Bodies are very weird most of the time," Magnus agrees, kissing the top of her head. "Like, so weird. And kind of gross. That's what makes them cool, though, right?" He pauses for a moment, then adds, "And anyway, my point is that sperm help, um, plant the eggs in someone's uterus -- which is in their tummy -- and that's what grows into a baby."

[biteybaby]

"In a tummy? Like food?"

[summerdude]

"In the uterus, yeah. Before you came here did you ever see someone with a really big, round tummy?"

[biteybaby]

"Lots."

[summerdude]

"Then there's a chance they were growing a baby in there."

[biteybaby]

"But," she says, really thinking all of this over, "I camed from the hospital." A hospital is distinctly not a tummy.

[summerdude]

"Yeah, mommies will usually go to the hospitals so that the doctors can help the babies come out of their tummies."

[biteybaby]

"How I get out?"

[summerdude]

"I haven't studied that part of medicine yet," Magnus says, which is true -- he's mostly studied the parts of the body so far, in his quest to better understand how to make his alf seidr work -- but also eliding the specifics of childbirth. Then he says another true but imprecise thing: "I know that doctors do something to help make it happen."

[biteybaby]

“I ask Aire, maybe hims know. Magnu, you know if Aire has testicles or overseys?”

[summerdude]

"I don't know. I haven't asked. I only know a hundred percent for sure about about me, Alex, Shen Yuan, and Galahad." And Aornis, who doesn't count. And Hanguang-jun, but he's repressing that knowledge. And--

Anyway. The good news is that if Sunny asks Grantaire, he'll probably do a good job answering her questions. He was pretty good about it when Magnus asked for The Talk.

[biteybaby]

"I ask hims later."

[summerdude]

Magnus so wants to be there when she asks, but also, in a very real way, he doesn't need (or particularly want) to know the answer. "Good idea," he tells her.

[biteybaby]

"Investigative journalism," she says.

[summerdude]

"Smart," he tells her. "Are you gonna start writing down articles about what you've learned with your journalism?"

[biteybaby]

“I can’t write yet!” she tells him, as if it is an important fact that might have slipped his mind.

[summerdude]

"Really? But I saw your sign-up for Wanderer's Gather."

[biteybaby]

"Just drawed on it."