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[closed post -- hé hafað óþre gecynd]
Aug. 8th, 2025 10:36 amIt's spring, and Gaheris has been thinking about boats.
He's seen the one in the lake, the one Laertes built -- it's not the most beautiful boat he's ever seen, and he's not sure he'd take it out on the sea, but he poked around it and the construction is solid. Laertes is good with his hands (Laertes is good at just about everything, including building kilns and outbuildings, if Magnus is to be believed, but Gaheris strives not to believe at least a third of everything Magnus tells him).
The wistful way Tress talked about her crew was unmissable. Gaheris knows she has a fellow back home, that's not what this is about. The thing about there being so many girls around is that he's starting to realize that girls are just people, and can do normal people things like missing home and wanting something familiar rather than just floating around aloof and beautiful. Gu Xiang, for example, is terrifying and strong and descends on him like a lightning strike over the moor, but she watches him eat her offerings of too-spicy food with an intensity that he thinks is just... she wants him to like it? He loves listening to her talk about all the people she's killed and beat up and how she thinks things should be run and how to make him less pathetic. And Nina is worldly and funny and so pretty it makes his throat close up, but Lady Claudius is right: she's bored. Like anyone would be, probably, if they'd been here two years already and hadn't yet ready every issue of Amazing Spider-Man.
(Maybe, if he can get a boat done, he can find an adventure for her.)
Anyway, that's all a long way of explaining why he's standing at the door of the cabin on the hill, summoning the courage to face the Amazing Laertes for the first time. He made sure Sagramore was out first; it's weird that his brother's on-again off-again is forty and married. But Magnus never shuts up about what a great dad Laertes is, and how he can make anything, and Gaheris needs somebody who can make anything.
The moment he finally knocks is the moment the door opens, so of course he ends up banging Laertes square in the chest with his first.
He's seen the one in the lake, the one Laertes built -- it's not the most beautiful boat he's ever seen, and he's not sure he'd take it out on the sea, but he poked around it and the construction is solid. Laertes is good with his hands (Laertes is good at just about everything, including building kilns and outbuildings, if Magnus is to be believed, but Gaheris strives not to believe at least a third of everything Magnus tells him).
The wistful way Tress talked about her crew was unmissable. Gaheris knows she has a fellow back home, that's not what this is about. The thing about there being so many girls around is that he's starting to realize that girls are just people, and can do normal people things like missing home and wanting something familiar rather than just floating around aloof and beautiful. Gu Xiang, for example, is terrifying and strong and descends on him like a lightning strike over the moor, but she watches him eat her offerings of too-spicy food with an intensity that he thinks is just... she wants him to like it? He loves listening to her talk about all the people she's killed and beat up and how she thinks things should be run and how to make him less pathetic. And Nina is worldly and funny and so pretty it makes his throat close up, but Lady Claudius is right: she's bored. Like anyone would be, probably, if they'd been here two years already and hadn't yet ready every issue of Amazing Spider-Man.
(Maybe, if he can get a boat done, he can find an adventure for her.)
Anyway, that's all a long way of explaining why he's standing at the door of the cabin on the hill, summoning the courage to face the Amazing Laertes for the first time. He made sure Sagramore was out first; it's weird that his brother's on-again off-again is forty and married. But Magnus never shuts up about what a great dad Laertes is, and how he can make anything, and Gaheris needs somebody who can make anything.
The moment he finally knocks is the moment the door opens, so of course he ends up banging Laertes square in the chest with his first.
