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

[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."

[biteybaby]

"Where giant go clothes shopping?"

[summerdude]

"I don't know, but they should go to Blitzen's Best. My friend Blitzen -- you know, the dwarf -- he can make clothes that can get bigger or smaller with a simple little password, so he could make them clothes that always fit."

[biteybaby]

"I need hims clothes!" Her clothes are always getting too small!

[summerdude]

"Maybe if we try really hard, we can find some in a closet somewhere?"

[biteybaby]

"Only find regular clothes already." If the mansion has been holding out on her that's very very rude of it!

[summerdude]

"Maybe there's another room in the basement that's a Blitzen's Best outlet that we just haven't found yet."

[biteybaby]

"We look later!" Right now they have a very important task to complete though, which is Creating Beautiful Music.

[summerdude]

"Later," Magnus agrees. He's shaped the bag to Sunny's size. "Okay," he says. "Now we need to attach your recorders."

[biteybaby]

"With tape?"

[summerdude]

"With so much tape. Wanna help?" Magnus offers her another strip.

[biteybaby]

She takes the tape but then just looks at it. “Where put?”

[summerdude]

Magnus hums, thoughtful, then wraps some of the bag's opening around the mouth of one of the recorders and secures it with a tight ring of tape. "Here," he says. "My tape is holding the bag in the right spot; we can use your tape to make sure the air doesn't get through any holes but the ones in the recorder."

[biteybaby]

That sounds like a very big job, but fortunately Sunny considers herself to be a very capable young lady. She sticks the tape on in what she's pretty sure is the right spot for it. "There."

[summerdude]

"Love it, it looks really cool," says Magnus, hiding a smile at the wrinkled plastic under the tape. "Want another piece?"

[biteybaby]

"Uh huh!" She takes the tape and places it right next to the first piece.

[summerdude]

"Okay Sunny," Magnus decides, "I'm going to let you go buckwild." He hands her the entire roll of tape.

[biteybaby]

She grins and takes the tape. She keeps cutting it into little strips using her teeth as scissors, and placing the little strips into little stripes on the bagpipes. Eventually it is sufficiently decorated in her mind, a phrase which here means, "mostly kind of covered in some tape".

[summerdude]

"It looks beautiful," Magnus says, lifting it up and inspecting it. "Can I add... four more pieces of tape?"

[biteybaby]

"Uh huh! Collab!"