Magnus Chase | Magnus Chase (sonofnatalie) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2017-12-12 01:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | !closed, !completed gdoc, !log, ~2017 december, ~25 points, ~~~magnus chase (sonofnatalie) |
WHO: Briar Moss and Magnus Chase
WHAT: Having a nature-boy talk
WHEN: Last night
WHERE: The woods
WARNINGS: Nah
STATUS: Closed/Completed Gdoc
Magnus had been in a really good mood lately. Part of it was definitely due to the fact that he’d started dating Ian, which was awesome already. They hadn’t done much physically yet, but just spending time together and hanging out, and knowing that Ian liked liked him was pretty awesome.
That had helped him a lot in settling in here. He was pretty happy here, and didn’t really want to leave any time soon. Sure, it was a tiny place, and sure, he couldn’t travel the Nine realms here, but he could also be part of the world and didn’t have to get killed over and over again in Valhalla. He could definitely handle that.
It wasn’t unusual for him to be wandering around the woods in short sleeves, even in the middle of winter. He just didn’t feel the cold, thanks to his dad. He was kind of looking for a Christmas tree (to dig up, of course, Tefe was both freaky and kind of cool so he didn’t want to piss her off) when he realized he wasn’t alone.
He’d talked to Briar once or twice, but they didn’t know each other well enough to say that they were friends or anything.
Nonetheless, he smiled.
“Hey.”
***
Briar knew Magnus well enough to call him someone he liked being around. They had magic that wasn’t so different, based in life and a part of who they were, not unlike the way he’d bonded with the girls who had become as good as sisters. There was potential, but in the middle of winter there wasn’t much to do outdoors and so not much for them to bond over.
He hated winter here. Back in Emelan it was mild; if it snowed it was a dusting and it disappeared as quickly as it came, freezing rain was a little more common but only a little. Before that, Hajra hadn’t even gotten cold, the kind of place he could run around without shoes or sleeves no matter the time of year. Good, seeing as he’d never had either of those things. Madison Valley was the first place he’d ever really felt cold for so long. To the point it wasn’t even worth grumbling about, because it wasn’t getting any warmer and he knew better than to think he was about to get out of there.
Despite the cold, and despite hating it, he took the occasional walk out in the woods, hating being cooped up and feeling disconnected from the plants. And he tried to make sure those who were supposed to be sleeping were. With all the different sorts of Green magic around some plants got a little excited and woke up, growing when they should be resting for the winter.
Magnus was one of the people who got them wound up, though he knew it wasn’t intentional.
“Out wakin’ everyone up?” he joked easily as he ducked through the trees to join the other kid.
***
He didn’t mean to wake the plants up, but he really couldn’t help it. It was something integral to his very being - like that kid of the underworld Nico had his aura of death, Magnus had an aura of life.
“Not meaning to,” he said. “Just getting some fresh air.”
By the looks of things, Briar was too.
“With all of us, we could start a little greenhouse out here, you know. Make a nice warm place for the people to come and enjoy flowers in the winter.”
***
At the mention of a greenhouse, Briar immediately shook his head. “Better to let ‘em sleep when they should be.”
Dedicate Crane had a greenhouse, one of the only ones in all of Emelan, and Briar had spent a lot of hours in it, always feeling uncomfortable knowing that most of the plants in it were out of season. Rosethorn had driven into him that there was a natural cycle to life, and it was wrong to force plants to grow when they shouldn’t, where they shouldn’t. That they had to let nature be nature.
***
“But wouldn’t they be happier nice and warm and not sleeping? I could make it a totally natural warm. It doesn’t have to be heat lamps and stuff.”
Basically what Magnus knew about his power, he’d learned on his own. So he didn’t understand these nature cycles or sleeping plants or whatever. He just knew that flowers were pretty, and when they were blooming, it felt more like summer.
And he liked it that way.
***
“That’s not the way nature works,” Briar explained, surprising even himself with how patient he sounded about it. “Everything has its season to grow, and its season to rest. Like how you gotta sleep at night, except they’re awake a lot longer so they gotta sleep longer too.”
That was exactly how Rosethorn had first explained it to him, too. Briar had once thought that there was nothing wrong with using their magic to keep pants alive all year, had thought it would be great to have crops that were always growing, that kind of thing.
Until she’d explained to him why it was so important that plants had their seasons.
“Besides, keep ‘em growing all the time and they’re gonna suck all the good stuff outta their soil too quick.” Every plant he’d ever seen out of season got greedy.
***
Magnus didn’t actually have to sleep at night anymore, since he was dead and stuff. But he got the point so there was no need to be a smartass about it. Except of course that it was fun sometimes. But he’d skip it this time around.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, shrugging. He’d never actually thought of that before. He just thought it would be nice to have flowers in the winter. He was a simple sort of guy.
“So how long have you been able to do the plant stuff?”
***
There were winter flowers, some plants that actually flourished in the cold. Briar didn’t know any off the top of his head, hadn’t really ever encountered any himself, they weren’t native to where he came from, but he knew they existed.
“Always, I guess,” he said with a shrug. “You’re either born with magic or not. Never knew about it until a couple of years ago though.” He’d have died never knowing about it if it hadn’t been for Niko. “S’not the kind of magic people usually know about.”
His magic was rare, it was different, and it had taken someone with a special sight to recognize it.
***
“Yeah, I didn’t know I had any kind of magic, or that magic even existed, until I died.” It had all kind of happened all at once, when he’d been attacked, fought the Fire Jotunn and ended up in Valhalla. In a strange sense, dying had been the start of his life.
“I mean, I never thought my dad was a god, you know? He was never part of my life, but I’m kind of an atheist so I just assumed he was some loser guy who didn’t know how good he had it when he hooked up with my mom.”
***
Briar smirked a little, relating to that a lot. “Always figured whoever my da was was the same.”
He’d never been a part of Briar’s life, not a part of as much of it as he could remember anyway. But these days, he barely remembered his mother. She was just a faceless dark-haired figure fading into the shadow of his earliest memories, more distant as time went on. He’d been so young when she’d died that there wasn’t much to remember.
“Don’t know that I’d ever want to know who he was, though.” No chance of a god in Briar’s world; he didn’t consider himself very religious and his gods were minor compared to those of the Living Circle but they were there and they weren’t visiting the bed of any human cleaning woman.
***
“It never mattered much to me, as long as I had my mom.” She’d been a good mom, given him a good fourteen years of childhood before the wolves had killed her. It had been tough after that, though, and there was some relief in simply knowing that he still had family out there. That he wasn’t alone. There was Annabeth, and his dad, and his Norse god family...and all of it made him feel less alone.
And Frey wasn’t a bad guy. He definitely could have done worse in the dad department.
“But he’s okay. You know, for a god.” He could have done a lot worse. Like, well, Thor. His Thor. Not the one here. The one here seemed pretty cool, actually.
***
Briar was always a little jealous of kids who had gotten to know their parents a little. Like the girls or like the other kids running around Winding Circle for lessons, or the merchant kids in Summersea or any number of people he’d met along the way. Just a little. It didn’t bother him much, there wa sno reason to let it because it what was done was done and nothing was going to change if he went and got feelings about it. But most everyone had nothing but good to say about their mothers at least, ‘cept for maybe Tris but she never had nothing good to say about no one, and it made him wonder what kind of person his had been.
“Dunno what sort of dads gods make. Mine’d not be caught with any little ones running about the world.” If that was even possible. But Briar’s god was the trickster god, the patron of thieves and scoundrels. There wouldn’t be any kids.
***
“Wait, your dad’s a god?” He thought he’d been surprised at hearing that Magnus was a demigod, but then he seemed to imply…
“All of our gods have lots of kids. Can’t keep their pants fastened around mortals, it seems.”
***
“No,” Briar was quick to say. That wasn’t what he meant at all. “I mean Lakik, that’s the god I know, wouldn’t get caught with any little ones. He’s definitely not my da. Don’t even know who my da was.”
There were some who wouldn’t be so bad as parents, though, probably. Goddesses, more than gods. Yanna Healtouch or Mila of the Grain wouldn’t be so bad. They were the kind ones, gentle and loving. If gods could have children, those were the ones to do it.
***
“You know gods?” That was pretty cool, even in Magnus’s world. Even though they fathered children, it wasn’t like they were super friendly or anything. It wasn’t like they hung around with mortals just for the fun of it.
“Sorry. I didn’t know my dad for most of my life, so I know how that is.”
***
It wasn’t like that at all though. Briar stifled a sigh and gave up trying. Religion wasn’t really his thing, despite living and working for years in a temple. He only knew his god in the way anyone knew their god. By name and by feeling and the one he chose to follow. But it didn’t matter.
Instead he shrugged off the apology. “I had the Thief Lord. It was close enough.”
The man who’d taken him in when he’d been orphaned, given him shelter and food without cost, at least for a while, and taught him the trade. The gang had made Briar who he was, given him all his skills and without being one of them, to be caught and arrested three times, he’d never have been found by Niko. He had a pretty good life at home now, so he was glad of the way it had worked out.
***
Magnus still didn’t understand, but he seemed content enough about all of it. So he shrugged it off as well. That was one of the problems with all these different universes - things got really confusing sometimes.
“So, like, not meaning to be offensive or anything, but I’m really curious. Do plants like...mind when you eat them?”
***
Briar found the same thing. The way people talked in different places made them hard to understand sometimes, caused a lot of confusion, and him especially, he tended to revert to something halfway between the proper Common his teachers had instilled in him and the street dialect he’d always spoken before. It got a bit messy, a lot confusing, but he never fussed over it too much.
He laughed, surprised, at the question. “Never heard one complainin’ ‘bout it and we keep gardens for eating. Most of ‘em know their place in the world.”
There was just a natural way of things, a life cycle to them, and Briar had never once thought he was hurting a plant by harvesting it to eat.
***
“Good,” Magnus said. Sure, he ate meat and stuff and never felt bad about eating animals, but he’d had his whole life to get used to that. He’d just now, since arriving here, started thinking of plants as living breathing things.
“Guess I don’t have to feel guilty next time I want a chef salad, then.”
***
Plants were very much living and breathing things, but they weren’t people. They were plants. Some others with connections felt it a little differently but Briar saw them as what they were, and the world would starve if they worried about how plants felt about being eaten.
“They’re usually long dead by the time they get to you anyway,” he supplied, probably not helpfully. “No different than livestock.” Which was also for eating.
***
Magnus wasn’t sure he liked that idea. He really didn’t want to think of an apple the same way he thought of eating a hamburger. There was something very disturbing in that concept.. Magnus, through his birth, was a child of nature and the idea of causing harm to plants or animals had always bothered him, even before he knew that plants had thoughts and feelings.
Not enough to stop him from eating cheeseburgers, heck no, but still. The thoughts were there.
“Guess we’ve got to eat something.”
***
Briar couldn’t speak to the feelings of animals but: “That’s what the plants are there for. They don’t know no better.”
It wasn’t like they thought the way people did. They weren’t really similar. Plants had thoughts and feelings and opinions in a way, but it was different. How, Briar couldn’t quite put into words. It just was, and he’d certainly never felt badly for eating.
“Just let ‘em grow when they grow and they’re usually happy enough.”
***
“Yeah,” Magnus said, although he didn’t really understand. He just kind of went along with it because he was sure that Briar was right. He knew more about plants than he did and he was easy going enough that it didn’t bother him.
“Well, I’m meeting Ian in an hour so I guess I’d better head back home and get a shower. Plants’ll probably be happy I let them go back to sleep anyway.”
Since he couldn’t control the summeriness that just was part of who he was, the only way not to wake up the plants was simply not to be around them.
***
Briar was inclined to believe that yeah, they would be happy to get back to sleep. But he was sure that what would actually happen would be him having to use his magic to coerce them to do it now that they were all up and trying to grow again. Hopefully it wouldn’t take too much and he wouldn’t have the hangover from overextending his magic tomorrow.
“Probably,” he agreed. “See you around.”
At school, something they still unfortunately had to go to though Briar skipped out more often than not, if nowhere else.
***