The Boards, Saturday

[furnaceface]

Jono woke up this morning to find that the nagging feeling of want had wandered away, much to his relief. In its place, perhaps the slightest bit of annoyance that anything resembling productivity this week had gone and flown directly out the window.

And that was why he was making himself busy at the Boards, keeping the front door open mostly just to air the building out some now that spring had finally hit. There was still a bit of lingering waffle smell, and today seemed like as good a day as any to pretend that he liked fresh air. Right?

As for productivity... well, he still hadn't chosen a play for the fall, and still wasn't quite certain what to do with the building over the summer while he was off fighting a war in Glacia. Rent the place out? Shut it down? It was still his home, after all. And... wow, it felt odd to think of it that way.

Huh. Home.

[Open door, Open Boards!]

Comments

[borrowedchance.livejournal.com]

Kathe had shown up with all the other kids in the morning. Finding her parents had taken a backseat to playing in the park though and it was near noon before she thought that going to the Boards would be a good idea.

Her parents might like to see her.

Besides, she was getting hungry, which led to there being a little girl wandering right in that open door.

Why not? It was her home too.

[furnaceface]

Oddly enough, this wasn't even the first time a small child he didn't recognize had wandered through the front door to the Boards, though Jono did spare her a sideways look and a blink or two.

"Er... Hello, luv?"

The day after prom. How did he always manage to forget about these things the day after prom?

[borrowedchance.livejournal.com]

"Dad!" Kathe beamed up at him and offered him a handful of early spring flowers. "I found them."

So he'd know what to do with them clearly!

[furnaceface]

Whelp, that more or less answered the question of who this one was. Jono stepped over to the little girl and crouched down to offer her a little smile, holding out his hand for the flowers.

He'd never been handed flowers by a small child before, but he was fairly certain he could figure out what to do from here.

"They're quite lovely," he decided, gingerly taking the small bouquet of yellow and white flowers in his fingers. "Shall we put them in some water, luv?"

[borrowedchance.livejournal.com]

"Yes," Kathe said solemnly, before smiling again. "In a glass by a window!"

They'd look pretty in a window.

"Then may I have lunch, please?"

[furnaceface]

"But of course," Jono replied, hesitating a moment before scooping her up easily with his other arm. "And what would you like for lunch?"

Good lord, she was pleasant. And he was too busy trying to figure out how to get a name out of her to even start to think about asking who her mother was.

[borrowedchance.livejournal.com]

Up and up she went! The only response Kathe had to that was to giggle and lean on his shoulder. It wasn't quite a hug, if only because she was too little to properly reach all the way around him.

"Cheese sandwich?" she suggested. "No crusts, please. And chocolate milk."

Which was a fairly balanced meal, given that she was making her own choices.

[wingedwitchling.livejournal.com]

After terrorizing waking their mommy and daddy up with a delicious breakfast in bed, Nommy had suggested they go and find Uncle Jono so they could say hello and Mommy and Daddy could get dressed in peace.

So there was a Kayla, a little worse for wear after her kitchen adventures, flinging her way into the Boards. "Unca Jono! Unca Jono, where are you?!"

At least there would be no confusion about who she belonged to.

[furnaceface]

Yeah, the wings cleared that one up pretty much right away. Jono was already blinking a little from the whole 'apparently today I am a father' thing by the time Kayla came flying in. And now he was an uncle, too?

Still, small children, and how he was easily wrapped around their little fingers...

"Over here, luv," he called, putting down yet another script that he'd been poking through.

[wingedwitchling.livejournal.com]

"Are you doing stagey things?" she asked, pelting towards his voice. "Can I help? I could help! I helped make breakfast today like a big girl! I'm very helpful!"

When she reached him, she didn't pause before leaping up into his arms and giving him a big hug. "Unca Jono, Unca Jono! Are you glad to see me?"

[furnaceface]

Oof.

And then Jono had an armful of tiny winged girl, and he was blinking as he returned that hug.

"Of course I am," he decided, because that was the only possible answer in a situation like this. "Very glad to see you, luv."

Every child was 'luv' until he got a name out of them, damn it.

"And I was doing, er, stagey things. Just going through scripts to see if I could find a play to put on in th'fall. No luck just yet."

[wingedwitchling.livejournal.com]

"It's gonna have musics, right?" Kayla asked. "Mommy said I'm big enough to come and see you now! She'll take me and we'll have ice cream and Nommy has to stay with Daddy, cause he's still too little!"

[furnaceface]

"Oh, yeah?" Definitely Karla's girl, then, if her brother had a nickname like that. "Well, this one is going to have music, yes. Once I figure out which one it's going to be, that is."

He glanced over his shoulder toward the stack of scripts.

"And where I'm going to find th'time, I suppose."

[wingedwitchling.livejournal.com]

"You have plenny of time," Kayla said, sounding aggravated about that. She was still climbing over him like a jungle gym, however. "Cause you're always, always, always gone from home an' I miss you an' there's no one to sing our song with me."

[stealabeat.livejournal.com]

Cadence was having a blast in this new place, checking everything out around the island, talking to people, getting coffee (because no one was there to stop her).

Oh, awesome. A stage! No one around!

She sat down and started tuning her guitar, checking the acoustics of the theater.

[furnaceface]

And they were excellent acoustics, thank you very much. Jonothon wouldn't have it any other way. It was the sound of the guitar being tuned that drew Jono out, of course, a curious little smile on his face.

"A superstar in th'making, hm?"

[stealabeat.livejournal.com]

Cadence looked up, startled, and blinked at Jonothon, then shrugged off his appearance. She'd seen a lot weirder around the Fae over the years. She grinned and pulled her legs up to sit tailor-style. "Hell yeah. I've already written some songs. You play?"

[furnaceface]

"Of course I play, luv." Jono offered her a grin right back. "Wrote a few songs that made it to th'radio before, but only in my home reality."

And he didn't generally brag about the bubblegum crap that Sugar Kane performed without giving him so much as a credit on the CD sleeve, but it seemed like something to mention, when talking to a little kid with a guitar.

"Let's hear what you've got, hm?"

[stealabeat.livejournal.com]

Cadence lit up (so much that she might look familiar), and got to her feet. A professional musician! Not a music teacher, not a kid like her! No way was she going to pass this chance up. "This is my first one. It's called Grow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRAK3_IYaxs)."

She launched into it, and while the lyrics weren't Shakespeare, they were really good for a first try, if she said so. The music was better, and she didn't make any mistakes (yes!) this time. It wasn't bubble-gum pop; kind of folksy, that she'd been playing with, and liked how it turned out. She finished up with a flourish, and a bow, then grinned again. "What do you think, mister? Big time?" Then she laughed. "I'm Cadence."

[furnaceface]

Oh, there was a lot of Kenzi in that smile, wasn't there? Jono chuckled as he realized as much, and then nodded.

"I'm Jono," he replied, still smiling. "And that song was excellent, Cadence. You certainly do know your way around a guitar. A little prodigy, I'd say."

[collinommy.livejournal.com]

Collin listened to the girl play a bit and then clapped slowly from the wings of the stage. "You're good," he said, giving her a crooked smile he'd inherited from his dad. Look, he flirted like he breathed: constantly. Someone had to keep up the Worthington reputation.

Even if she was, like, twelve and he was taking it no further.

"I mean, really good. I've been playing guitar for almost a decade and that's still damn impressive."

[stealabeat.livejournal.com]

"Yeah?" Cadence grinned, and tried to look older than eleven. She didn't blush, because she was pretty much genetically incapable of it, but she did straighten a bit, eyebrows up, smiling at the cute older guy. "What kind of stuff do you play?" Then she paused, and said, "I gotta ask. It's the wings. Are you Fae?"

[collinommy.livejournal.com]

"Nope," Collin answered easily, though he was thinking more of the Fae from Bordertown and the like than the kind that Cadence was talking about. "My dad's a mutant and he also has wings. My kid sister and I inherited them from him. From the distaff line we got Craft." He touched the Opal Jewel at his throat. "Mom's a witch-Queen and Dad's a mutant. I have interesting genetics."

And, you know, to show Cadence what he meant by all that (and not to show off, really!) he was just going to float another stool over to her on the stage and call his Strat in.

"I play all sorts of stuff," he told her. "A lot of grunge, because my Uncle Jono was the one who taught me to play, but I write my own music, too."

And then launched into a song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2hpUkpUaXc).

[stealabeat.livejournal.com]

Her eyes widened as the chair floated up, and she shook her head with a smile. "Lucky. All I got from dad was a good singing voice, when it came to superpowers."

Cadence listened through the first verse, then improvised some small harmonies, not loud, because she wanted to hear this. Keeping time with one foot on the stage.

"...and you got a great singing voice too," she said when he was done. "Awesome." Somebody might have a tiiiny crush. But a realistic one. Because he was practically a grown-up. But she could still grin at him.

[collinommy.livejournal.com]

That crush probably wasn't helped by the grin he shot her after that, was it. Because, you know, she'd complimented his music.

"Your improvs were awesome, too," he told her, not bullshitting in the slightest. "You've got a good ear for music. How long you been playing for?"