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]

"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."

[biteybaby]

She covers up some of the holes and proceeds to blow on the end you're supposed to blow on, causing an incredibly loud and shrill noise to burst forth from the recorder.

[summerdude]

"Wow!" Magnus isn't covering his ears, because he loves his sister who is so talented at everything she tries. "Great lung capacity, Sunny!"

[biteybaby]

"Oh thanks!"

[summerdude]

"You like the sound? You want that to be your main, um, playing recorder?"

[biteybaby]

She nods. "Uh huh. This one."

[summerdude]

"Good." Magnus resists the urge to ruffle her hair. "Okay, so the next one you pick is gonna be the one that comes out of the top, where we tape up all the holes, so it makes a steady, low noise while you play that one."

[biteybaby]

There's another recorder that seems to be wood-colored, despite not being made out of wood. She thinks that's fancy, so she picks it up and hands it to Magnu.

[summerdude]

"Great choice," Magnus enthuses. "Okay. Wanna help me put tape on all the holes on this one?"