Searching for Thanksgiving (Dragonlings of Valdier)

Chapter 5

5

L ater that night:

Bálint kept looking from Spring to Roam. Spring was chatting with her sister, Alice, and Adaline. He sighed and decided watching the aura of Alice’s colors was better than worrying about what kind of trouble he and Roam might be in if Spring found out it was the two of them who had been in her garden.

“See, I told you everything would be okay,” Roam mumbled around a mouthful of sweet bread.

“She doesn’t look mad,” Bálint acknowledged with a skeptical expression.

“She hasn’t said one nasty thing to me yet,” Roam boasted.

“Okay… she doesn’t sound mad either, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t,” Bálint muttered.

Roam wrinkled his nose at him. “She’s not. She’s the one who gave me this sweetbread.” He paused and held up the remains of the sticky bread he was eating before continuing. “You can quit worrying. I fixed everything in the garden before we went fishing. She probably didn’t even notice anything different.”

Bálint leaned forward and sniffed the bread.

You think Spring poison bread? his dragon asked.

Bálint snorted. No, she wouldn’t poison Roam, but something’s not right. She is too… cheerful and she is being super nice to Roam. Haven’t you noticed the way Phoenix, Jabir, and Alice have been watching Roam and grinning all night?

I no watch. I waiting for story time. Amber and Jade tells new story tonight!

Bálint groaned. He had forgotten all about story time for the younger dragonlings. The older dragonlings were going to act out the story. He was supposed to be the tracker, while Roam, Zoran, and Jabir were forest animals.

“Okay, everyone. Story time!” Jade called out.

“YAY!”

The chorus of excited cries and the stampede of little feet toward the living room made the adults chuckle. Well, most of them. Alice’s dad wasn’t happy that the story time was just for the kids. Bálint flushed when he overheard Alice’s mom, Emma, tell her dad that Alice would be perfectly fine.

“She and the other kids have been planning this special treat for months. You are not going to spend it glaring at poor Bálint and making him feel uncomfortable!” she gently scolded.

“I wasn’t going to glare. I was going to listen to their story. Don’t you want to hear it?” Ha’ven replied.

“We will… tomorrow night. We’re all going to have some adult time downstairs while the older kids entertain the younger ones. Don’t you want to have some fun?”

Bálint jerked when Roam snorted out a laugh. “You should see my dad’s face when my mom asks him that! His eyes get all big and glowy, and he gets this really strange grin on his face which causes my mom to squeal like one of Jabir’s animals. That’s my cue to go turn on the hologram games Amber and Jade sent me.”

“Bálint… you and Roam need to get ready. Roam, don’t forget, you are playing—” Jade was saying.

“I know… I know. I’m playing the disappearing cat with the funny face and the talking trees,” Roam groaned. “I still think I should be something scary… like the ugly worm or the crazy person who chases everyone.”

“I think you’d make a great ugly worm,” Spring commented with a saccharine smile.

“Yeah, I would,” Roam agreed with a grin.

“Maybe you’ll get to see what it feels like to be one,” she added before walking away with a toss of her shiny white-blonde hair.

Bálint shook his head at his clueless friend. Roam was grinning like a cat who just discovered a pond filled with sweet cream. He was sure Roam hadn’t seen the glimmer of anger?—

No, not anger… revenge… determination… glee?

His dragon snorted with delight. Cat-shifter in BIG trouble! This going to be fun to watch.

“Bálint! We need you now!” Alice called.

“Coming!”

Morah scooted over on the couch so that Pearl, Sacha, and Hope could sit down. Leo crawled under the low table in front of it and sprawled out on his stomach on the thick carpet along with James. She reached for the popcorn Spring was handing out.

“So what’s the story about?” Pearl asked.

“It is about an Earth holiday,” Spring replied.

“Does it have blood and gore?” Leo asked, twisting to look up from under the table. “And skeletons? Oh… oh… and walking dead people!”

Morah resisted the urge to kick the table and instead ate the crunchy white pieces of fluff. The buttery taste made her and her dragon groan with delight. She loved story time because it always came with popped corn.

“This story isn’t about Halloween,” Amber stated with a wave of her hands.

“Aw. I wanted to hear how you saved us from the Queen of the Demented Symbiots again,” James moaned.

“Yeah, that is a really cool story. How you poopy-trapped the Haunted House and how our dads came to save us,” Pearl chimed in.

“It’s called booby-traps, not poopy-traps,” Sacha corrected.

“Who cares what it’s called. It is still a cool adventures. We never gets to go on cool adventures like that!” Leo complained.

“Yes, we dids. You went and got yourself lost when we was on the desert moon with the little Sands people,” Morah mumbled around a mouthful of popcorn.

“I didn’t gets lost. I found the sands worms,” Leo retorted.

“Do you want a story or not?” Jade demanded.

“We do. We do,” the younger group responded.

“Then you need to be quiet and listen. Alice, Adaline, the stage, please,” Amber said.

The living room changed until it resembled a vast forest. Morah reached out and ran her hand along the couch cushion that now looked and felt like grass. Her dragon perked up.

No, you can’ts roll in it, she said.

You no fun, her dragon huffed.

You wanted to listens to the story, so listens to the story, Morah retorted.

Her dragon huffed again but fell silent.

“Once upon a time in a remote forest, there lived a quiet, but powerful creature known as… Thanksgiving,” Amber began in a theatrical voice.

“How powerful? Could it eat people’s flesh? Why was it quiet?” Leo blurted out.

“Quiets, Leo! You has to listen to the story if you wants to know what happens,” Morah admonished.

Leo rolled over onto his back and stuck his tongue out at Morah. She threw a piece of popcorn at him. He caught the kernel in his mouth and swallowed it. She made a face at him and he grinned at her, sticking his tongue out again.

“Because the creature was so powerful, there was a bad monster trying to capture it, and so it had to run and hide,” Jade continued in a hushed, dramatic tone.

“What was the monster going to do to it? It wasn’t going to hurt Thanksgiving, was it?” Hope asked, sitting forward with an anxious expression.

“Monsters are supposed to hurt things,” Leo said.

“No, they’s not. Jade and Amber’s demented symbiots don’t hurt things. They are funs to play with,” James argued.

“What kind of name is Thanksgiving? That doesn’t sound like a scary, powerful creature,” Pearl snorted.

Amber and Jade huffed and looked at each other.

“Were we this hard to tell stories to?” Jade muttered.

“Worse,” Jabir replied.

“Looks! It’s a talking Grombot!” James squealed, sitting up.

“That’s just Jabir. It would be cooler if he was a zombie Grombot that had its eyes all swollen and drool hanging… ow! What’s you do that for?” Leo complained, turning to glare at Morah after she smacked him with a throw pillow.

“I don’t wants a Halloween story. I wants a Thanksgiving story. Now everybody be quiet and listens!” Morah ordered in a stern voice.

“You’re bossy,” Leo complained before quickly falling silent when Morah shot him a glare of warning and lifted another pillow.

“Where was I?” Amber asked.

“Thanksgiving was running away from the bad monster who wanted to capture and keep Thanksgiving all to itself,” Phoenix whispered.

“Oh, yeah. Thanks. Okay, Thanksgiving was running and running and running until she reached a part of the woods that she had never been to before,” Amber continued.

“What part…?” Pearl started to ask before clamping her lips together at Morah’s threatening glare.

“Lost and alone, Thanksgiving collapsed, exhausted and near death,” Amber exclaimed in a sorrowful voice.

“Oh, no!” Hope sniffed. “We gots to help Thanksgiving.”

Jade stepped forward and bent down. Her gaze swept over them. Morah could feel the excitement building as the older girl paused for effect.

“Soon, the animals gathered around Thanksgiving,” Jade whispered.

Behind her, Bálint, Roam, Jabir, and Zohar emerged from behind the chairs that looked like huge trees. Morah sat forward, her eyes locked on where Phoenix had fallen to the floor. The cloak covered her and she appeared to be sleeping. The boys encircled Thanksgiving.

“What’s they doing? Are they going to eats her?” Leo asked in a hopeful tone.

Amber scowled at Leo while the boys snickered. Morah threw the other throw pillow at Leo. She huffed with satisfaction when the soft pillow bonked the back of his head. He turned with a hiss and shifted to his black panther form. In seconds, story time had devolved into a pillow fight between dragons and cat-shifters. It wouldn’t have been so bad as the girls outnumbered the boys, except that Sacha and Pearl took exception to their cousin being outnumbered by the dragons.

Morah heard the chortle of laughter from the older boys while the older girls just sighed. She yelped when Leo bit down on her tail. With gleaming eyes full of retribution, she did what any self-respecting future Priestess would do… she lit Leo’s tail up like a candle!