ELIOT WAUGH + KYNA HANSON-MALCOLM-WAUGH
PG | COMPLETE
FATHER AND DAUGHTER BONDING WHILE BUILDING FRAY A TREEHOUSE
Eliot was, on the whole, a good father. He might not have embraced it at the very start, given how everything went, but growing into love had happened, and all manner of protectiveness or charming endearment hit the rooftop level and it was smooth sailing from there on out. Fillory, both past and present, had helped to temper him some.
So it hadn’t taken much of a stretch to figure out Fray was upset as soon as Kyna arrived - and he’d known why. It was still early enough in their father-daughter relationship to suddenly have a child with magic and fully grown pop up, and leave her feeling unthreatened.
But, sentimental words wasn’t Eliot’s way right off the bat, and just telling Fray she was no less important wasn’t going to do the trick.
So he stopped by the Physical Kids cottage and stuck his head in where his daughter was, gesturing for her to follow him to the edge of the forest. “I, your brilliant father, have a plan and I could use your help. Normally I would ask your mother, but I figured father-daughter bonding time isn’t completely out of the question?”
That little spat with her mom about an orgy or whatever hadn’t by far been their first one and probably wouldn’t be their last. Sometimes they were too much alike, and no one had ever said her mom was an easy person to deal with. Kyna was a little more chill, she liked to think, but every so often… well. Apples and trees. Still, being here and getting told to go away hadn’t really sat well with her, so she had retreated into the Cottage to lick her wounds and stay out of her mom’s way until she decided (if she decided) to come get her. Figuratively or literally.
In the meantime, she had been ecstatic to look up and find Dad Eliot calling for her, having followed with a spring in her step all the way to the forest. “It’s the opposite of out of the question, even. It’s very welcomed and encouraged.” Kyna hugged Eliot’s shoulder briefly. “What’s the plan?”
“Hopefully that means you’re just as emotional as I am,” Eliot bumped her slightly with his shoulder, and then held his hand out to display the perfect tree, right on the edge of the forest. “Simba, all the light touches will be yours one day…”
Joking aside, he stepped forward, as if inspecting the tree with a very serious eye. It was going to be tricky magic, getting the illusion to stick permanently, and without worrying that it was suddenly going to disappear on Fray when she was in it. “I want to build something for your sister - a treehouse. She likes to climb these things to get away from everything when it’s overwhelming, but it’s far too cold out here and there might be bears. So,” He looked at Kyna over his shoulder. “How’s your illusion or creation magic?”
“I have my moments. But I love you guys too much to ever say no to anything you want me to do. Use your power wisely.” Kyna looked up, eyes filling with that splendorous forest, and for a second she stood in awe. After that second was up, however, she turned to Eliot and flattened her lips into a completely false, joyless smile. “I don’t want these.”
Standing back, she waited for her dad to do whatever he was doing in silence; when he revealed what he really wanted, Kyna’s face opened into a grin, which then turned into an endeared look. “Awww! That’s such a good idea. Is she okay? I think I did okay in our chat when I got here, right? I tried really hard to make it clear she’s amazing and I love her. I kinda look up to her. She’s a badass.”
As Kyna visualized what was needed for this thing to work, she wished she’d brought some kind of notebook. She started to type some notes into her tablet for lack of something better. “Not as good as my physical stuff but I studied really hard. I wanted to be well rounded. I’m not good for a McMansion but I think I can help with a treehouse she can feel safe in.”
Eliot smiled down at Kyna - not nearly as far of a distance as he had to smile down at Margo, which made him chuckle a little - and watched as she went full nerd on the whole thing. “She’s good. Not great, but she hasn’t completely disappeared on me yet.” He peeked over Kyna’s shoulder, nosy as always. “Things with Fray are still pretty fragile, on the whole. She hasn’t quite gotten the idea that family doesn’t have to be blood, but I’m slowly working her down.”
His own preparations had been in his head, the illusion magic working it’s way into a plan, but permanency would be the slightly more tricky part - getting illusions to become real was only possible in some types of creation magic, but at least Eliot had done his homework on this one. “Small is fine, I think she’d get overwhelmed with anything too big. Did we teach you?”
It was impossible not to feel her heart warming while seeing a young dad Eliot smile at her like that. It wasn’t that her own time’s Eliot didn’t, it was that she could make him smile at any age. Kyna nodded in understanding, fully aware that the situation with Fray had once been dicey and whatever those fairies had drilled into her head couldn’t have helped. “I told her she doesn’t have to be biological to be loved. And it’s true, I love her, I love dad Ian, I love all my aunts and uncles and cousins…”
A bird landed on a branch nearby, and before it could fly away again Kyna set about copying it to make it look like there were two identical birds perching there. She was pleased with how it was holding, though at times it was too much of a mirror image of the original. Ah, well. Needed better focus and planning, probably. “You did. You all did. And you didn’t confine me to one main discipline. And because of dad Ian’s influence I got really good at math so I got into metacomposition. The inner workings and how to manipulate them, you know.”
Eliot’s smile was full but teasing, as he glanced down at her. “God, you really are a nerd. I love it. I hope you’re consistently better at everything than all of your cousins.” Cousins? Cousins. It seemed like the best way to describe the children of other Magicians, given that they were all in a weird familial relationship with one another. If it wasn’t for the focus on magic, he would have pulled her in to dip a kiss onto her head. But Eliot was sappy even on the best of days, so it wasn’t a new feeling.
With a flourish of his hands, the tree in front of them bent and molded in a certain way, giving break to the magic that was engulfing it, and building new around the branches and bird. He always put on a little bit of a show, snapping his fingers or moving his hands in a showy way that was entirely unnecessary, but Eliot could still let himself be distracted by stupid questions he had no right to ask about. “I know, spoilers, but is it just you three girls? Fray, you, Astrid?” Yes, technically Astrid was Thor’s, but any child of Margo’s was half Eliot’s. “Or are there more that come along?”
“Guess all of you nerds didn’t cancel each other out, you gave life to a meganerd. But… I’m not. I think. I don’t know. I don’t have an ever updating flowchart. I’m pretty damn good, that’s all I care about.”
Kyna smiled as she watched her dad bend the whole damn tree and putting on a little show. It was winter, so the trees were pretty bare, but Kyna focused and brought her A-game, making the same tree flourish as if it had bypassed winter all the way to springtime in a few seconds. She smiled up at her dad. “Not that I know of, but you know all of us being here might have unforeseen effects on the timeline. And it’ll probably have to do with progeny. So since we haven’t disappeared like that guy from that movie (yet), maybe there’ll be more of us.”
She dispelled the tree leaves. “So how do you want to start? Molding the tree for a foundation, then building access, then the house?”
Eliot moved forward, focusing his face on the tree ahead just so he didn’t show her any slight disappointment at the knowledge of others. Well, it was a longshot, anyway. He did smile at how she sounded just like Ian with discussions of timelines and worlds. “You sound like your dad. He’s always going on about how timelines are shit. Nothing is in one straight line.”
He waved a hand dramatically - no magic attached. “I’m certainly not.”
Jokes aside, the tree was sitting in front of him, and he knew her course of action made the most sense. “I have a blueprint made and stored, so to speak.” Eliot pulled a crystal out of his pocket and wagged his eyebrows. “But we’re going to need to make some modifications. Steps built into the tree, first, I think.”
Kyna had an inkling over what Eliot might have been fishing for, but she wouldn’t lie to him. Maybe Ted would show up yet. Maybe she got home and he really had shown up and suddenly he would appear in all their memories like he had always been there. It happened! Probably. She didn’t say anything out loud, though. No need to press harder on the wound. Instead she chuckled, but was proud to hear she sounded like her dad. “He’s right. Except chaos theory never accounted at all for the magic of this place, this is a wild card by the most advanced projections.”
Life, glorious and wild and unpredictable, she thought briefly before her dad’s joke made her stop, tilt her head slightly and snicker. She raised a hand towards him. “And neither am I, high-five!”
Eyes widening with the promise of shiny, Kyna clasped her hands in excitement and readiness, balancing on the balls of her feet. Drawing on certain art pieces she had seen, as well as a slight fear of trying to climb rickety steps in heels, Kyna moved her hands in a series of movements that shaped the tree to have protrusions that looked very much like stairs instead of a ladder, but could still look like part of the tree if you didn’t know it was meant to be anything else. “Like this?”
Eliot was still laughing over the high-five, but his expression was one of pride with the work she did on the stairs. “It’s perfect. We may have to tweak it a bit, but--” Eliot shrugged, clearly not all that concerned with tweaking.
He held the crystal up, and it floated mid-air, in front of them, until his hands moved around it, and with the force of some telekinesis and levitation, it soared through the air to the tree, where it exploded in a sea of silent fireworks. The shaped wood expanded and took form, eventually coming together as a small, empty one room house. The stairs were off a little, and one of his walls needed work, but it was there and holding firm. With a beaming grin on his face, Eliot took a little bow. “What do you think? It can always be expanded on later, if she likes it. And obviously we’ll have to decorate it, but …?”
It was a great thing to have been born with both your father’s sense of humor and his tendency towards pride over queerness. There had never been any fear or concern about being herself at all, and it was such a blessing. A blessing Kyna was aware of, because dad Eliot hadn’t kept from her that he hadn’t been so lucky. It was probably why he was so accepting and open with her own process of figuring it all out.
There was always tweaking when it came to casting multiple spells and building multiple pieces. Kyna smiled proudly and settled to watch the crystal do its work. She could see where the stairs needed to be moved, and noticed the wall, but in all it was impressive and she could tell it was 100% real and it held. Kyna applauded for Eliot’s benefit. “I think it’s gorgeous! Do we want to tweak and improve it now, decorate later, or get through it all once then focus on the fine tuning?”
Eliot leaned over and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her in for a side hug and planting a kiss on the side of her head. It was a fairly typical move for him, with anyone that was close to him. Or just anyone nearby when he was in the mood to hug. “I’m cold and delicate. Let’s go get hot cocoa and gather supplies, and maybe grab Astrid or your mother for a little added decorated flare.”
“Sounds good!” Kyna replied, snuggling up to Eliot for a second before deeming the view seen and moving to leave.