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]

"Bagpipes? Yeah. Okay. Ready for more tape?" Magnus hands her a piece.

[biteybaby]

"Uh huh," she takes the tape and puts it on the recorder. "This take forever." They haven't even started putting the trash bag on yet!

[summerdude]

"That's because I can make fart jokes for days," Magnus tells her, handing her another strip of tape. He takes out another trash bag and starts taping it into place.

[biteybaby]

"No more joking," she says. "Gotta make bagpipe trashbag."

[summerdude]

"Yes, sir, captain Sunny, sir," Magnus says with a crisp salute. "Have you covered up all the holes on the recorder?"

[biteybaby]

"I not Sir," she says, thinking of her former boss. Sunny inspects the recorder. "No," she points to the hole at the top. "This one need tape."

[summerdude]

Magnus has been well-trained by Alex to Respect The Gender^TM. He says, "Yes ma'am, sergeant ma'am." He rips off another piece of tape for her to use as decoration, but: "The very top hole is for the air to come out."

[biteybaby]

"Oh," she says. It needs to stay open then. Sunny sticks the last piece of tape on a different part of the recorder then.

[summerdude]

"It looks amazing," he tells her, and sits back, scrutinizing her. "Show me how big of a circle you can make with your arms, okay? We're gonna see how big to make the bag."

[biteybaby]

She raises her arms up above her head in a circle shape!

[summerdude]

"So big!" Magnus crows. "I can make a huge bag!"

[biteybaby]

"Uh huh I big girl now!"

[summerdude]

"Pretty soon you're gonna be bigger than me," says Magnus, and then realizes that this is quite probably true, and then decides to try not to think about it for at least ten years.

[biteybaby]

Sunny, who will likely be blissfully unaware for many more years exactly how terrible it is going to be to outgrow her big brother, just grins and says, “Uh huh! I get sooooo so big!”

[summerdude]

Fine, Magnus will entertain it. "You think you're gonna end up as tall as Dad? Papa-dad."

[biteybaby]

"Both stacked." Sunny places one fist on top of another, to indicate one of her daddies standing on the shoulders of the other daddy.

[summerdude]

"Oh, so you're gonna be a full on giant. I see."

[biteybaby]

"Uh huh! I stomp all around!"

[summerdude]

"What'll you do with your giant illusion magic?"

[biteybaby]

"Giant have magic?"

[summerdude]

"Yeah. At least the mountain giants all have at least a little. They can make themselves look extra big and stuff."

[biteybaby]

"How big?"

[summerdude]

"Bigger than a -- do you remember what skyscrapers look like? Or mountains?"

[biteybaby]

She nods. "Jerome and Esmé live skyscraper. Penthouse." She tries to imagine being as tall as Jerome's penthouse apartment was. It would have made going to and from the bottom of the ersatz elevator shaft a lot easier, that's for sure.

[summerdude]

"Yeah. A really, really big skyscraper."