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]

"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!"

[summerdude]

"Sweet," says Magnus. He uses one piece of tape to patch up a little hole, a second to better-attach the second recorder to the bag, a third to ensure the straw won't budge, and the last to reinforce the seam. Then he hands her the whole shebang. "Wanna try it out?"

[biteybaby]

"Uh huh." But she already forgot what she's supposed to do. "What do?"

[summerdude]

"You blow the bag up full using this," he says, tapping the hollow pen. "Then you squeeze the bag under one arm while playing on this," now tapping the recorder that she didn't cover in tape.

[biteybaby]

"Kay." She starts blowing on the pen and... it is very, very hard to blow up. Oh no.

[summerdude]

"Breathe with me," Magnus says. He takes a deep deep breath, and blows it out slow and steady to demonstrate. "Like that, okay? You huff... and you puff... and you blow your bag up." Obviously he'll help her if she asks him, though!

[biteybaby]

She tries to copy what Magnu is doing, and it definitely works better. The bag veeeeery slowly starts to get bigger.

[summerdude]

"Great job, bug," he enthuses.

[biteybaby]

Eventually the instrument begins to make a high pitched noise. "Aahh! Did it!" She quickly starts moving her fingers all around the recorder without the tape, but just as soon as it started making noise it stops again. "Ah! Start over." And she goes back to inflating it.

[summerdude]

"Maybe it'll be helpful to blow it up before you squeeze it, and then you can keep blowing it up here and there as you squeeze it, to make the noise last longer?"

[biteybaby]

"Kay I try." She tries, and that does work better! She looks up at Magnu, doing her best attempt at a grin while she's still blowing on it.

[summerdude]

She is so stinking cute. Magnus wishes he had a camera on him right now, so he could capture the look on her face and maybe print out a million copies to turn into wallpaper. They could put it in the shed he and Alex have been building with Dad, and also on the kitchen wall in Dad's house. Maybe on some of the walls in the Mansion, too?

He gives her a double thumbs up, and starts inflating his own trashbagpipes so they can play together.

[biteybaby]

If the point of playing trashbagpipes is to be the loudest and shrillest thing you can possibly ever imagine hearing, then Sunny is doing a wonderful job, and deserves to be first chair.

[summerdude]

And Magnus intends to give it to her! He plays with her for a little while, then cocks his head. "Wanna try and play Happy Birthday with me?"

[biteybaby]

"Uh huh!" Sunny does not know how to play Happy Birthday on this or any other instrument, but she isn't going to let that stop her from trying.