The parade was in full swing when the trumpeting started up.
The streets were filled with revelers. Children sat atop their parent's shoulders to get better views of the floats. Green confetti tumbled through the air, tossed off by people on the balconies and roofs above. Food vendors navigated the crowd, peddling foods like 'clover-mint ice cream' and 'shamrock shishkabobs'.
Everywhere, men and women danced and drank and generally made merry.
Nobody heard the first trumpet blare. The music from the parade and the cheering of the crowd were too loud. A few people caught sound of the second trumpet, but they wrote it off as one of the band members being off-key -which was perfectly reasonable as most of the band members had never played an instrument before and had only taken on the role for the day.
The third trumpet managed to get people's attention right before being suddenly silenced. Three blocks away from the celebration proper, an ally cat was roused from sleep as a blur of brass fell from the sky and landed abruptly in the dumpster beside it. There was a metallic 'clang!' and some distant cursing, but nobody else was around to hear it.
Although the parade didn't stop, it did slow down a bit. People still reveled, though they did it in a slightly quieter fashion. Every so often, they looked upwards, wondering which direction the sound had came from. A few mothers half-heartedly told their children to at least plug their ears. As was a tradition going back for several generations, the kids grinned at each other and only pretended to.
High above the streets, clad in green and gold robes and swerving drunkenly in the air, three angels began to sing. Their voices rose up together in a slightly off-key slurry.
"Our lady has the finest hair,
A hue of brackish brown,
And despite what you may have heard of her,
She knows how to get around!"
There was only one music teacher in town, and he wasn't the partying sort. He sat in his reading room, poring over some old poetry and sipping his tea. Upon hearing the verse, he had to get up and slam the window shut. He sat back down, muttering disgustedly about amateurs.
"I was sent to her one day in June,
Naught but a humble servant.
And she was lovely, that bit's true,
But trust me, she ain't no virgin!"
Kids giggled. A little girl, no older than seven, let go of her balloon strings. It floated up over the crowd and towards the singers. Two of them immediately began fighting over it, laughing as they did.
In his fervor, the third angel threw up his arm and lost hold of his mug. It fell to the ground below, splashing several people with green beer before crashing into a fruit stand.
His friends snickered as he looked dolefully down at his now-empty hand.
The parade marched on.