aterat | [Closed] It's A Matter Of Scale

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[Closed] It's A Matter Of Scale

Who; Nida, Mono
What; Master and Student Climbing Lessons
Where; Outside of the Historium
When; Late November
Warnings; None

There was always a time in the evenings when Nida was free, and tonight he had plans. He had sent Mono a message, cleared that the young man was ready for some work tonight, and then told him to meet outside of the Historium before dinner. Because this wasn't the sort of thing that one should do on a full stomach, not when you were learning.

Nida waited outside of the building, clad in tight clothing and he was pulling on his gloves. Another pair waited in his pocket for the child, and he waited for his young student. Time to have some fun while they can.

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Just make sure not to tell his husband, Mono. Ignis would no doubt fret over this behavior. As it was Nida smiled and pulled off his gloves. For this level of training he wanted to make sure that his hands were free and bare to better feel the stone.

He started by standing back to look over the wall, and while he did so he did a running commentary to Mono so the boy would understand what his reasonings were on the route that he was outlining verbally. He even acknowledged that no plan was set in stone (which made him chuckle), and then he moved to the wall and started his careful climb.

Mono had definitely been realizing after a few recent conversations that sometimes it was best to not tell Ignis about some things. The man definitely would worry… So the secret was safe with him.

The child listened carefully to the commentary while he watched Nida scaling the wall. He even asked a few curious questions about what one should do in certain situations if he made a mistake. It was useful information, after all. Mono was definitely an attentive student, and this was a little easier for him to follow than other things he had to figure out in this world.

But one thing was for sure, Nida definitely knew what he was doing.

Yes, Ignis worried. And that was alright. Nida didn’t mind that his lover worried. In fact, he very much appreciated that most of the time. But the fact of the matter was that he truly had been doing this more than long enough to be certain. So he looped the rope around his shoulder so he could play it out the way he wanted it to, and then he started up the wall. He made careful pauses, and always made sure that he’d stop with one free hand so he could put in a spike to anchor a carabiner on and then go and advance. He stopped when he was about two stories up and perched on a wide overhang from a window.

It was nearly a foot wide. He could dance on this thing.

“Give me a moment and I’ll come back down.”

Mono just wasn’t really good at handling people worrying. He needed to get a little more used to that. Too used to running around doing things that most people would consider dangerous, which included climbing tall structures and finding creative ways down said structures.

But the kid watched what Nida was doing carefully, having never really seen climbing like this before. His eyes wide, entirely fascinated as he watched Nida get the spikes in place to set things up. At the other’s words he nodded quickly, “Okay!! I’m not going anywhere.” He added, just so Nida knew he wasn’t going to just run off.

Mono was too curious about how Nida would get down, and what might come next in the lesson to get bored enough to wander away.

Being worried over wasn’t a strong spot for Nida either, until the last few years. It had been strange, and learning to adapt was not easy.

For down, Nida had options. HE could go back down the way he had set up for Mono. He could rappel down on the line he’d brought up. Or…

“Hey Mono? Don’t do what I’m about to do.”

Good thing Ignis wasn’t here. His husband would not approve of the swan dive into a somersault to land, dispersing all of that energy and the force from the fall into the roll and other movement. This was something he was trained in after all, and he had Siren’s magic to back it up for him.

“And this is where I say ‘don’t do that at home.’”

Don’t do what he was about to do? What was he about to do? There were a lot of things Mono had already done that adults didn’t really like the ideas of kids doing… So he was definitely curious.

Watching Nida take a dive off the ledge and end with a very impressive somersault, though? The kid was definitely a little awed by that, if his eyes were anything to go by. He definitely had jumped from high places he probably shouldn’t have before… But he definitely would have fallen gracelessly and likely injured himself from that kinda night, and he definitely didn’t know how to land the way Nida had.

“Wow!!” escaped the kid first as he moved over to where Nida had landed. “I don’t think I would be able to do that if I tried. I think I’d just go splat.” He commented with that awed, small tone. “So I won’t… But how’d you do that?”

"You would go splat. You'd get hurt. So don't do what I did," Nida insisted. The third time should hopefully make it stick.

"The secret to surviving long falls without getting hurt is that you want the movement to continue as much as you can past the reaching the ground. If you can keep the force moving, you can dissipate it over a longer period, which means you get hurt less."

“Yes, sir.” He responded with a nod. Hopefully, it would stick. But kids were foolish sometimes, and also Mono had already fallen off the side of a building here… It was useful to keep this lesson in mind!

“So just keep moving instead… Okay. I’ll keep that in my head if it happens… It happened a lot in my world, sometimes I had to jump really big gaps.” But he also had help before Six was kidnapped. She always caught him and pulled him up. Because she jumped first, she was better than him at jumping long distances.

"Well then, I'll have to help you learn how to roll after a jump," Nida noted. But for now... "We're going to start with the climb thought. But I'm going to wrap the rope around you so that if you call, I can catch you with it."

Mono would definitely appreciate that lesson, because jumping sometimes was necessary… Not here, of course, but where he was from? It came up a lot. Still, he listened to the instructions carefully. “Okay? I guess that’s good for practising.” And maybe he could learn something from that, maybe start carrying things around for climbing if it came up.

Jumping was necessary sometimes. But today would not be that day.

"It's safety, until I can evaluate how you're doing. It's better not to free climb if you're unskilled."

With that Nida moved forward to show Mono the ropes and explain the way that he was going to build him something like a harness.

Mono nodded, “Uh-huh, that makes sense… I know I’m not as good as you are, so I guess you gotta figure out where I’m at first…” But the kid was also extremely keen to show Nida what he could do, hoping to impress the man perhaps and hoping that he was at least somewhat better than expected.

But to do that, he knew he had to let Nida show him how this whole rope harness thing worked. So he paid strict attention to what the man said and did during the explanation.

"Exactly," Nida answers with a grin. Kid's fucking smart. Nida was liking him more and more.

Once the harness was ready and braced around Nida's waist and he hauled on it to show Mono how it would feel to put his weight on the rope alone, he nodded to Mono.

"I'll feed you a lot of slack. So you don't have to worry."

Mono let Nida test it, and nodded a little as he got an idea of how that would feel like. Once he felt a little more sure, he glanced up at Nida eagerly. "So... Now do I get to try climbing?" Mono really was excited to try climbing the way Nida had set things up, and he'd been very patient with all this explaining and safety stuff.

"Now you get to try," Nida agreed with a smile. "Remember, careful. And if your hands feel slippery, you should reach into your chalk bag and dust the tips of your fingers in it."

With that he prepared to brace. Go kid, go.

Mono turned excitedly to the wall at that the confirmation, he didn’t need to be told more than once! “Okay! I’ll be careful!” Said with all the sincerity of a child who was just eager to get started on something.

He moved for the wall and paused, glancing at the chalk bag and making sure it was easy to get his hand into if he needed it… Then, once satisfied, he was away. Mono was very good at pulling himself up, stronger than he looked considering how small he was, and he had a knack for picking his next grip hold as he went. More focused on going up than he was with things below him, if only because looking down in his world was a bad idea. You slowed down? Bad things happened.

The harness was still a little distracting, though, and remembering that he had a chalk bag was not something he was particularly good at. He’d never had one before, so it took an almost lost grip and a near tumble from the wall for him to realize that it might be good to remember.

Yes, remembering was good. Nida almost gasped at the near fall. If he hadn't had the slack taken up at the moment, he might have panicked. As it was he carefully kept the line just tight enough for a catch.

"It's okay, you're doing great, Mono. Just keep thinking up."

Mono was doing just that, learning from the slip up and chalking his fingers as he kept working his way towards the top. He did call over his shoulders, again without looking down, “I can do that! I am almost all the way up!” He smiled to himself, feeling quite pleased with himself.

This was fun, honestly. Climbing was always fun when there wasn’t something dangerous around making you climb. Six hadn’t always understood that. She preferred to let him do the climbing if it wasn’t easy stuff, but she did boost him up if he needed a little extra height to get the first handhold.

Well that's amusing. Nida smiled as he watched the boy work.

"When you get up there, I'm taking a picture with my Tell Phone."

Mono had quite forgotten they could do that with the Tell Phones, but then again he didn’t use his much because of the complications he found he caused it. That aside, he was just excited to be doing something like this.

Maybe with one or two more clumsy moments and remembering his instructions, he made it all the way to the top with a victorious little wave and one of his little soundless laughs. “I did it!” He turned his head finally to look down to see Nida, wondering if he’d done well and if the man might be proud of his attempt.

He had. It wasn't as high up as Nida intended them to get to, but it was a great first start. Nida smiled and waved up at the kid. Then he got his tell phone out to take a picture of the kid.

"I'm so proud of you, Mono!"

And there it was, something he hadn’t been sure he’d hear, but definitely what he’d wanted to… He’d made someone proud! His teacher was proud of him! That meant he’d done good! And that just made the fun of the challenge better. “Thanks!!” He shouted back down, leaning against the building and looking around. It wasn’t as high up as the top of the grey building where he liked to sit, but it still gave him a good view of the surrounding area. “It was really fun, and the chalk made it a lot easier!”

He would have to see if he could find something like this in his world, or make something work kinda like it, if he went back. It might make things a little easier…

"I know it did. I learned a lot of early work like that."

Nida smiled and just couldn't help himself in that smile. While at Garden he did teach some classes, none of them were ever this. So he truly was shining with this.

"Alright, now you take a moment to breathe, and we talk about getting down."

Ah, yes... Getting down. He looked at the ground below thoughtfully. He hadn’t thought about that.

And he’d said he wouldn’t do what Nida had done... So he took a moment to just enjoy the air and the surrounding view, like Nida said, before he finally offered the man a curious tilt of his head from above. “If I’m not supposed to do the neat thing you did, how do I get down?” He called, because he knew he couldn’t manage that. He’d fallen enough times to know that.

"We're going to keep the line tight as you go down, to catch you. And you're going to experiment with trying to lower yourself."

And it wasn't the most fun to do, but it was something one often did.

"What goes up must come down after all."

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