#but yeah anyway the only things i'm committed to here are the tongue-in-cheek references to magnus' lost memories

[words-writ-in-starlight]

TAZ FIC ASKS: I have my own interpretation that I'm enormously fond of, but how do you think one Julia Waxmen met one Magnus Burnsides?

Bless you.  I swear that Julia shows up at some point here, this just…got away from me in grand fashion.

Magnus Burnsides wakes up with what is frankly the most hideous hangover of his entire life.  It feels less like he’s been drinking and more like someone’s been rummaging through his brain, and if he had any marks to prove it, he’d think he’d had his clock cleaned to boot.  But he doesn’t have any marks, he just has the worst headache that the gods ever laid on a living being, and he’s in–well, he’s not sure where he is.

Magnus is only twenty-three and not necessarily an expert at waking up in unknown locations, but he flatters himself to be a professional at waking up hungover, so he lies there with his hands over his face for a while longer, and doesn’t try to take stock until it feels less like he’s holding the fragments of his head together.  Only then does he sit up–slowly–and look around.

He’s dressed, and he has his belt pouch with his coins, so he’s going to assume that he hasn’t been robbed.  Except for the headache and nausea–he can’t tell if the headache is causing the upset stomach or not, and doesn’t feel inclined to test it–he seems to be all right.  He’s in a room with the clean, impersonal look of an inn, somewhere that’s never really been someone’s home, and the heavy curtains are closed, which he appreciates as anything brighter than the light filtering through around the edges might actually kill him.

It takes a few more minutes to muster his strength to stand, and all his joints complain, like he’s been sleeping on the ground rather than a passably nice bed.  He’s not sure he can afford this inn, on closer consideration, but then he supposes that depends on how much money he spent on getting exceedingly drunk.

Someone in his immediate vicinity is baking fresh bread.  The nausea must be part of the headache, because he’s dying to have some.

Magnus follows his nose out into the hall–he only remembers to check his pockets after hearing the lock on his room click into place, and turns out drunk Magnus really knew his shit, because there’s a key fastened to his belt so he doesn’t lose it–and down a flight of stairs to a small tavern beneath the rooms.  There’s a Drow woman with her hair piled up in a thousand braids pulling loaves out of an oven in the kitchen, and a half-orc pulling chairs down from tables.

“Hey,” the half-orc says with a grin, “he’s alive.”

“Yeah,” Magnus says ruefully, shading his eyes as he steps far enough inside to take the sunlight right in the face.  “I’m not thrilled about it either.  What time is it?”

“Ten or so?  We expected you to sleep until dinner, with how hammered you were last night.”  The half-orc comes over and steers Magnus by the shoulder into a chair, then disappears for a moment and insinuates something into his hand.  It’s hot and tastes acrid and sharp, but something in Magnus says better finish that, kid and he knocks it back as fast as he can.  His eyes don’t feel like they’re being pried out of his skull anymore, once it’s gone, and he blinks.

“Last night?”

The Drow comes out of the kitchen, sweat beaded on her black skin and the sharp points of her teeth flashing at him.  “You must have been drunker than we thought.  We didn’t even get a name off you.”

“Magnus,” he says, toasting her with the empty cup.  “Magnus Burnsides.”

She nods and laughs and says, “Now that’s a goddamn name.  I’m Opal, and that’s Jolene.  You can call her Jolly.  How much do you remember, Magnus Burnsides?”

Magnus considers that question for a minute.

“Where…the fuck am I?”

Jolly whistles from behind the counter and Opal raises a white eyebrow.  “Bud,” she says, and she sounds almost impressed.  Magnus just sort of shrugs at her, because…well, yeah.  Fair enough.  “You’re at Red Door Inn, in the hostel column.  You feeling okay?”

“I feel kind of like my head’s been stomped on,” he says.  “And I’m actually gonna need a little more than ‘Red Door Inn.’“

Opal’s other eyebrow joins the first.  “Bud.  Do you–is there someone we can find for you?  Like, are people gonna be worried that you just–fuckin’ disappeared on them?”

Magnus frowns and thinks about that one.  “No,” he decides, because the most recent people he can think of is the merchant caravan he was traveling with, and that was a while ago.  “No, I can’t think of anyone.”

Opal sighs, swoops away the empty cup and replaces it with a mug full of what smells like very dark tea and a slice of bread with a small pot of jam, the bread still steaming gently.  “Here,” she says, in a tone of command.  “Eat something.  Careful with the–the all of it, it’s hot.”

“Thanks,” Magnus says, and stuffs the entire slice of bread into his mouth in four bites with absolutely no consideration for the temperature.  Once he’s done with it–it’s good, rich and warm and sweet and it soothes a little more of the headache–he swallows a couple mouthfuls of the black tea and looks up at Opal.  “Where did you say this was again?”

Opal smiles at him, and so does Jolly, from behind the bar.  “Welcome to Ravensroost, Magnus Burnsides.”

***

Opal and Jolly are nice enough to let him stay there at half-price, because drunk Magnus was apparently smart with his money but no version of Magnus is exactly rolling in gold, while he figures himself the hell out.  He takes the first day to recover from his headache, because the idea of facing unfiltered sunlight is just…bad.  It’s bad.  He’s not into it.  He talks to Opal and Jolly and lingers in the tavern while people trickle in and out for the lunch rush, but he can’t seem to get anything back about the night before, and he reluctantly writes the whole situation off as a loss.  Magnus wishes, idly, over dinner, that he had people to drink with, because he thinks that would be better.  At the very least, if he had some people who had stuck with him, they would be able to do things like say “hey, thug, you accidentally went walkabout while you were drunk and here’s where you started from.”  

Oh well.

The downside to Magnus’ largely itinerant lifestyle these days is that traveling costs money, it’s going to start getting cooler soon, and Magnus does not currently own a jacket or any other weather-appropriate gear that would enable him to travel, which costs more money.

So the day after he wakes up in Ravensroost, Magnus wanders downstairs–at a more reasonable hour, because he isn’t dying today–and asks Jolly where a guy could get some work in this town.

“Well,” Jolly says as she wipes down the counter and prepares to open.  Jolly is a methodical kind of person, steady and efficient at her job, and she looks intimidating for someone who apparently hides behind the counter when the elf she has a crush on comes inside.  “What kind of work?  You want to wait tables or some shit?  You look more like a brawler.”

“I don’t know,” Magnus says.  “Probably not waiting tables, though.”

“Yeah, you seem like your customer service could use some work.”  Jolly wrings out her rag thoughtfully.  “Well, there might be a merchant caravan in for the market, they might be looking for laborers there.  Short of that–I don’t know, we’re mostly a crafters town, you know what I’m saying?  Not exactly a lot of places looking for a dude the size of a brick wall.”

“Crafters?”

“Yeah, you know anything?”

Magnus looks down to where he’s absently playing with the knife in his hand–his grandfather’s knife.  His muscles know how to hold it to whittle a curve, to smooth a line.  “You got carpenters here?”

“Hell yeah!” Jolly says, grinning at him.  “You want directions?”

“No,” Magnus says.  “I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”

Magnus does not figure it out.  He’s managed to get handily lost by the time he washes up on the outskirts of a marketplace, and he would swear he was better at this directions thing, but apparently not.  He’s not even sure he can get back to the inn.  He’s lingering at a stand displaying scarves and kerchiefs and other cloth items, fingering something in a bright shade of crimson and trying to decide what to do, when someone behind him clears their throat, amused.

“Hey,” says a voice, rich and throaty, a little raspy and–laughing at him.  “Do you want to buy that scarf or take it out to dinner?”

Magnus turns, startled, and there’s a woman–human, middling skin freckled darker across her broad nose, wild curls pinned back–smirking at him.  She’s tall, less than a head shorter than Magnus and Magnus is very tall indeed, and she has a burn scar across the back of her forearm, and she’s…she’s something.

“What?” Magnus says, in a moment of dazzling charisma.

“I mean,” the woman goes on, “don’t let me stop you, hot shot, but I walked past twenty minutes ago and you were still here, so I’m starting to think maybe you’re lost.”

Magnus feels a little like he’s been slapped in the face, but in a good way?  His brain doesn’t seem to be agreeing with itself about this experience.

The woman’s face softens a little, although she doesn’t stop grinning at him.  “Seriously, though, are you lost?”

“Yeah,” Magnus says.  It surprises him a little that it didn’t even cross his mind to lie.  “I’m new in town and I kind of need…money.  I was trying to find a carpenter’s shop that might need an assistant or something.”

“Are you a carpenter?” the woman asks, curious.

“Not much of one,” Magnus admits.  “I haven’t had a lot of practice.  But I can whittle, and to be honest–uh, recent events sort of make me think I might need a new line of work.  Maybe a line of work with…a house or some shit like that.”

“Recent events?”

“I–sort of ended up here by…accident,” he says.  “I was…real hammered.”

The woman laughs properly at that, and it’s a loud, full sound that comes from the depths of her core and doesn’t seem to give a damn about anyone looking at her, and it drags a grin out of Magnus.  

“It’s destiny,” the woman proclaims, still laughing, and pawns a shockingly heavy bag on Magnus without missing a beat.  He takes a peek and sees metal ingots, of all things, inside–small ones, silver and even a small one made of gold, but still.  “Come on, hammer boy, let’s go.”

The woman is already walking away at a decent clip by the time Magnus catches up with her.

“Where are we going?”

“To my dad’s shop,” she says, grinning up at him.  She loops her arm through his and they fall into step and Magnus wonders, a little bit, if he’s been kidnapped, possibly.  “Waxmen’s Woodworks.  We’re thinking about a new name, now that I kind of work there too–I do metalwork, see?  So we gotta switch that up.  Dad likes Waxmen and Daughter, but I keep telling him that it needs to be catchier.”

“Your dad’s a carpenter?”

“Yeah, obviously.  Didn’t you hear me say some bullshit about destiny?  Keep up, hammer boy.”  She plows on ahead, still smiling warmly, and Magnus doesn’t remember the last time he felt like this–it’s not that she’s pretty, although she certainly is, but there’s a level of unthinking care for him, just because he was lost and she knew how to help him.  Compassion, maybe?  Something like being adopted on the spot, and Magnus doesn’t remember the last time a stranger offered him that.  Even Opal and Jolly, benevolent innkeepers by any measure, are being paid for their generosity.

“I could suck at carpentry, for all you know,” Magnus points out as they climb one of the columns, a spiral path winding around the outside and passing shop fronts every few yards.

“Well, do you?” she asks.  Magnus…isn’t sure, he realizes.  It must have been longer than he thought, since he whittled something.  He shrugs, and the woman seems to take his word for it, and nods decisively.  “I mean, Dad’s always saying that if you know which end of a knife to hold, you can probably figure it out, so if you suck, I guess you can just figure it out.  You’ll stop sucking eventually.  Besides, Dad’s in the market for an assistant, not a master craftsman.  You look like you could carry wood.”  She gives him a cheerful thump in the arm.

“I could be an axe murderer, for all you know.”

“Nah,” she says.  “I’ve got a good feeling about you.”  She jerks him into such a hard right he almost falls over, and she throws open a door to a room that smells of sawdust and smoke and lacquer.  “Dad!  I brought you a present!”

There’s a thump in a back room and a fondly exasperated voice precedes her father into the showroom.  “Baby girl, I swear to god–who’s this?”

“This is your present,” she says, and pushes Magnus forward like she’s displaying a particularly good find at the market.  Magnus supposes that she sort of is.  “Hammer boy, say hello to your new boss.  Daddy, you’re going to hire hammer boy.  You were talking about wanting an assistant, and he’s a kind of shitty carpenter who needs work and a place to live.  It’s fate.”

Her father–Waxmen, apparently–looks past Magnus to his daughter with a tolerantly amused look on his face.  “And do I get to interview hammer boy, or is he just hired now?”

She shrugs.  “I mean, interview him if you want, but just think how guilty you’d feel if you kicked him out on the street.”  Waxmen narrows his eyes at her, and she beams, sailing past Magnus to reclaim her bag full of ingots and kissing her father on the cheek as she passes him by.  “Thanks, Dad.  You have fun, hammer boy!” she calls over her shoulder, and then she’s gone into the back room, and Magnus is alone with, apparently, his new boss.

It’s only then, staring after her in shock, that Magnus realizes that he never got her name.