"What's all this?" Jack asked, perched on the windowsill with his staff in hand.
"Jack!" Jamie bounded over, face lit up with excitement, "Sophie and I were building a blanket fort!"
"A fort!" Sophie agreed, tossing a blanket in the air.
"A blanket fort, huh?" Jack asked, hopping off the windowsill and crouching to be eye level with Sophie, "I've made a bunch of snow forts, but never a blanket fort. Think you can teach me how, Soph?"
"Yes!" Sophie cheered, grabbing him and Jamie by the hands.
A moment later there was a knock on the door, and within ten minutes all Jamie's friends came pouring in excitedly.
"Jack!" Pippa cried ecstatically, "We saw you fly over, we were just coming to tell Jamie."
"Looks like he already knows, though," Caleb tossed his coat in the corner.
"Yup," Jamie agreed, dumping his armload of blankets on the couch, "We're building a blanket fort, you guys wanna help?"
"Awesome, let's make it huge!" Claude tossed his shoes after his brother's coat, "Where can we find more blankets?"
In the end it turned out to be more of a blanket palace than a blanket fort, owing to the need to hold six preeteens, an elementary schooler, and the immortal spirit of winter. Construction was delayed when an all-out pillow war broke out and their building materials were repurposed as weapons, Sophie at one point knocked over a stool they were using as a support and had to be rescued from the wreckage, and Cupcake couldn't hardly move without ending up with a blanket on her head until they made it taller and widened the entrance.
"You know, I think this might just be the best blanket fort ever built," Jack said with satisfaction, crouched under a violently orange afghan, "Good work team."
"So now what do we do?" Monty asked.
"We could tell stories," Pippa suggested, "You know some good ones, don't you Jack?"
"Do I ever," he grinned, "Okay, gather around. Now, once upon a time…"