Pretty Good Deductions

Hyacinth had gotten it into his head he needed an instrument, he'd played with a few different ideas, a drum wouldn't have been too hard to make if he couldn't find one but he was kind of hoping for something that would provide more of a challenge. He was feeling antsy and his paws were twitchy, the best way to handle that was to make something. And if they were going to be going into packs to steal their stuff he kind of fancied the idea of playing the backing track for his band's adventures. Also women loved a musician.

He'd stumbled upon the solution to his issue a few days ago actually, somehow he'd found himself idly playing with an old dried reed, the inside had been hollowed out by some insect or other that had long since abandoned it. He's just been absently fiddling with it, spinning it around with his paws, rolling it with his nose, whatever idle thing entered his mind, and at one point he's learned if you blew air through the reed it made a not totally unpleasant tone. And that was all he'd needed for the catalyst, the last piece he'd needed to get his creative gears a-turning... And then he'd spent a few more days gathering up more reeds that had been similarly hollowed out, even if not fully until he had about 8 or so reeds.

And that was what led him to today, a few shredded pieces of hide, one long enough to comfortably go around his shoulders which he planned to attach his eventual instrument so that it could hang at his chest, both for easy access and for ease of being able to pick it up and play, a simple nudge of his wrist would lift it to his muzzle and he would be able to play it, or at least that was the plan. The other pieces of hide were meant for securing the reeds once they were attached together. A pumiced stone, its uneven pocked surface would be used to grind down the ends of the reeds once he'd broken them down to their unique sizes, and most precious of all was a small bindle looking package, a stick tipped in still warm tar, it's end wrapped in precious palm leaves. The material he'd have to be the most comfortable with, maybe that was why he'd chosen to craft near the river, to try and give himself some comfort in the idea he'd be able to clean the tar off his paws if he was dumb enough to accidentally mar himself with it.

And that was the plan at least. But just breaking the reeds off at the right lengths was proving a bit more difficult than he'd ever figured it would be. He should have asked to borrow a knife or sword from one of the other pirates, one of them had to have one right? They were pirates! But then he didn't have one so what did he know? It took some tries but eventually, Hyacinth finally worked out a setup that would allow him to grip a reed with enough stability for him to bend it enough to break it. He started by doing so with some of the reeds he'd found that hadn't been fully hollowed out, making sure to break them in such a way that he'd get one fully hollow half and one that hadn't been hollowed out all the way. The latter of which he would toss back into the river and the former he'd put aside for smoothing out later. This he'd do until he had 8 reeds of varying lengths.

Then he set about smoothing out both ends of each read, both evening them out but also making them dulled so that each reed would not be dulled on the ends so he probably couldn't accidentally cut himself on the ends he'd be shoving into his face to play it. Then came arguably the most important and finicky part... gluing it all together. First, he laid everything out, putting the reeds in the middle of a long strip of hide, measuring that he could wrap the reeds laid out flat on the ground with the hide, then he creased it so that he knew where the folds would lay. He unfolded the hides and rolled the reeds off to the side, then carefully, oh so carefully he gathered up his tar stick and dabbed its black end near the folds of the hide and with a few extra leaves pressed the ends of the cord like hide so that once all the reeds were attached and the ends were completed he could wear his pan flute around his neck.

Then he carefully lined up the reeds so their "tops" were all even and with a lot of care he set about attaching the reeds to each of their neighbours. It was slow work, and he had to be careful each time he used his tar as glue he had to be extra careful. Finally, finally everything else had been attached and he could finally move on to binding it all together with the long strip of hide. He attached some tar on one end of the hide, attached them to one end of the pan flute, then folded them both until the strip had been wrapped around the flute and secured the other end with more tar on the inside of the hide. Once he'd finally finished the man sat back, noticed his paws were a little bit messy with tar and Hyacinth went to clean himself off in the river while he let everything else set.

It had been a lot of hard work but some part of him couldn't help but feel satisfied, he'd made something, completely from found materials and he couldn't wait for the rest of the pirates to see it. Maybe it wasn't the most technically proficient instrument but he'd made it himself and he was proud. He also kinda hoped he could rub it in his brother's faces, at least a little bit.

WC: 1022

"Speech!"

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