I Turn, Um... Uh... Sixteen? For The Tenth? Time???? [open post]

[summerdude]

It's Magnus's birthday and he is a man with a surplus of plans. And many, many plastic recorders.

He's still a little overstimulated from the birthday party Galahad got Claudius to throw for the two of them — he loves all his friends, but that was a lot of people in one space, most of whom were also feeling many, many things about their visitors — and so it's been a quiet few days. Sunny is still a little subdued, so they've been having muted hangouts in the mornings; Galahad, also overstimulated from their birthday party, has fortunately been on Magnus's wavelength about just sailing around aimlessly on the Big Banana with many snacks and very little conversation during their daily hangs for the past few days. He drags himself to sword practice with Lancelot once or twice, has his weekly dinner at Hanguang-jun's, spends a great solo afternoon cleaning out Little John's cave in case anyone else wants to use it at some point, and lets Alex tease him into wrestling and, um, other stuff after dinner basically every night.

But on this, the twenty-sixth anniversary of Magnus's actual birth, most of his energy has returned to him. He's made birthday dinner plans with just his immediate family (and also Alex and Hanguang-jun) at their house for the evening. He's had his liveliest morning of the week. And with his newly regained energy he's found critical supplies for his afternoon: a roll of duct tape, several trash bags, eight recorders, a handful of hollow pens, and a dream. He's sitting cross-legged in the middle of the Mansion's lawn, a look of grave concentration on his face, as he makes little holes in a bag, duct tapes two recorders and one pen here and there, and then seals it all up.

And then he takes a deep breath, fits his mouth to the hollow pen, and blows the bag up. When he places it under his arm and squeezes, he's gratified to find that his makeshift bagpipes work perfectly. And he still has supplies for a couple more!



I know everyone is still busy with visitor's day so feel free to take your time on this one... but I would love to ultimately have a ton of Chaos Thread Opportunities.

Comments

[summerdude]

"Maybe you can help me play it? What part sounds the most fun to you?"

[biteybaby]

"Make sound change!"

[summerdude]

"Okay. Grab onto this recorder here--" and Magnus guides Sunny's little hands to the holes on the recorder. "You can cover one or a couple of the holes and it'll change the sound. Tell me when you're ready."

[biteybaby]

The recorder is kind of big for her little hand, so she adds her other hand too. Neither of her hands have ever been cut off, so she's able to do this easily. She picks a couple of the holes to cover to start with, then notices there's a secret hole hiding on the back of the recorder. "Why this one hiding?"

[summerdude]

"On a hand my size, it's for your thumb. See?" Magnus makes a C-shape with his hand to demonstrate why this might be appropriate.

[biteybaby]

"Oh!" She promptly covers that hole with her thumb instead. "Okay I ready!"

[summerdude]

"Okay. Here we go!" Magnus makes sure the bag is fully inflated, and then starts to carefully squeeze the air out again.

[biteybaby]

Sunny quickly covers up and uncovers and covers up and uncovers and covers up and uncovers and covers up and uncovers and covers up and uncovers the little holes.

[summerdude]

"You're such a good musician," Magnus tells her, as a horrible, ear-splittingly shrill yowl emerges from the recorders.

[biteybaby]

Sunny dissolves into a fit of giggles, a phrase which here means, "stops covering up and uncovering the holes on the recorder because she is laughing too hard, and flops over on the ground, giggling more than she has in many several days."

[summerdude]

Relief suffuses Magnus. "How about we make you one, too? We can give everyone a concert after dinner."

[biteybaby]

"Uh huh! But concert not mandatory, only if want to." She doesn't want to be like Vice Principal Nero, after all.

[summerdude]

"Not even birthday-mandatory?" Magnus teases.

[biteybaby]

She thinks about this. "Since you birthday, it okay."

[summerdude]

"Birthday law rules," Magnus says. "I wanna make Hanguang-jun frown hard enough that his ribbon gets a little wrinkle. Even just for a second."

[biteybaby]

"Gonna be hard, Lan-shushu haves forehead ribbon, not mouth ribbon." If he wore a ribbon on his mouth it would be a lot easier to make him wrinkle it up by frowning.

[summerdude]

"Yeah, but I've definitely seen him furrow his brow at least a little bit, like, five or six times," Magnus says. "I bet we could make him do it again."

[biteybaby]

"Hims quiet usually so if we big big loud then him maybe say--" Here she stops talking, and instead ever-so-slightly scrunches up her eyebrows.

[summerdude]

Magnus cackles. "Sunny, I love how much you get me," he says. "That's exactly what I'm going for."

[biteybaby]

"So how make?" she asks, looking over the bagpipe ingredients.

[summerdude]

"Okay... first you gotta pick out the recorder that you wanna use to change the sound, like how you just did for me." There are, conveniently, some very colorful itty bitty baby-sized recorders in the mix

[biteybaby]

Sunny notices the conveniently located very colorful itty bitty baby-sized recorders, and even though she herself is not baby-sized but instead toddler-sized-eggplant-sized, she selects a purple one from that pile. "This."

[summerdude]

"Perfect. Wanna try to play it a little bit, to make sure you like how it sounds?"

[biteybaby]

"Loud probaly," she guesses.

[summerdude]

"Probably!" Magnus reaches for the tape. "Give it a whirl."