Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 46th cycle. Now cycle 47!

This is a shift day. There was another upload this morning: Troika, chapter 9.

"That First Ray of Sunshine"
Future Rachel & Quinn, Puck, Finn - 17yo Nora (Beth), 6yo Hailey & Hannah...
Sunshine Girl series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

She lived permanently in Lima now, had for most of the time she had been in school, even if she spent all the time she could in New York. It would only be over a year's time or so before that could change… Graduation from McKinley High could not come fast enough. It wasn't that she was miserable. All things considered it was a good time for her… But she had bigger dreams than what those walls knew what to do with… It kind of ran in the family.

They'd sent her on errands that morning, before the New York half of her family descended upon Lima. She'd left to find Hailey planted so close to the window that she may well have taken root by that point. She'd offered for her to come along, but there was no way, not with Hannah on her way. So she'd driven off on her own, with the list and the money her mother had prepared for her. It was nothing if not meticulous.

Then she'd come home to find no cars, no mothers, sisters, fathers, or brothers. She had instead found a note: they were at her grandfathers Berry's. She frowned, confused by the change in venue. Unsure what else to do, she had taken everything back to her car and driven off again. Getting to the house, there were the cars. It still did something to her to be here, at this house, remembering when she was little and how they had lived there when they weren't in New York, before they had their own house.

She carried some of the bags with her up to the door before letting herself in. "Can I get a hand with these, please?" she called out, and the immediate response was a gaggle of squeals, which brought a smile to her lips. She was wise to put the bags down, knowing in a moment her arms would be occupied with incoming siblings.

"Nora! She's here!" Hannah was the first to get to her, and she caught her at a run, squeezing her tight.

"Hey, Banana," she laughed. "What happened, why are you guys all here?" she asked.

"Mom and Aunt Quinn are telling us a story," Hannah informed her big sister as she was put back on her feet, the twins having now claimed their own hugs from their sister.

"Oh, wow, hold on…" Nora kept on laughing. "You guys, hi!" she looked down to her brothers, all curly brown hair and their mother's smile. "Let's see those Puckerman guns!" she demanded, and at once both of Micah and Simon's arms flexed up. She would then have to reach out and test the strength of the four-year-olds' muscles. "Impressive," she nodded in 'awe,' and the boys grinned before running off with a bag each. Both of her fathers had come forward then. One she had seen just that morning, so he went off to see about the bags still in the car. The other she beamed at and did her own dash to hug. "Hi, Dad."

"How many days before the school year ends again?" he asked, and she gave a sigh that said 'I know.' As she would every year, she would be heading up to New York for the summer, and she knew her father anticipated this about as much as she did.

"Can they come, too?" she asked him as the two of them and Hannah went toward the living room. "The baby will just have been born by then, won't she?" she asked of her new sister just a couple months from being born. Puck was more than aware the one thing she didn't like in this whole arrangement of theirs was being away from her siblings, when they were very little or newborn especially.

"Well your mother doesn't have a show on for now, but that could change. If it doesn't, we could always spend the summer here in Lima."

"Yeah, but… New York…" Nora frowned.

"One or the other," Puck told her. Getting to the living room she had gone to Rachel, who'd been left to wait for Nora to come to her rather than the other way around, as her youngest slept against her. Over the years they would have thought that the 'mom' and 'dad' overlaps would have been confusing, but according to Rachel, Nora never said them the same. She'd joke that the 'mom and dad' Nora would give about Quinn and Finn didn't sound the same as the one she gave her and Puck, that theirs had 'some New York in it.' When the blonde came in, she quietly smiled at her.

"Oh, hi…" Nora whispered, sitting by her and side hugging her before looking at the sleeping one-year-old Noah. "Can I?"

"Try not to wake him, he didn't sleep on the flight," Rachel whispered back before handing him over. Nora had always been excellent with her siblings. Noah was her fifth, and her soon-to-be-born sister by Quinn would be the sixth. She had been an only child for so long they weren't sure how she would have adjusted. But then the girls had come, and she had become bonded to them in a flash. Her mothers would say it was a 'Sunshine Girls thing.'

"Mom, can we continue the story now?" Hailey asked Quinn, while the twins had gotten to chasing Hannah around. Hiram had caught her up, while Leroy had snatched up his grandsons.

"Have to let your brother sleep," Hiram had told Hannah.

"That's all he does!" she protested.

"Yeah, what's this about a story?" Nora asked, remembering what Hannah had told her.

"Mom and Aunt Rachel were telling us about…" Hailey started, then paused, looking at the boys. "About…" She didn't know how to tell Nora without saying the words she wasn't supposed to but in the end it had told her everything she needed to know.

"Right…" She looked to Rachel and Quinn. "Can I borrow them for a little while?" Rachel took back Noah, and Nora got up. "Come with me," she told her sisters, who sprang up immediately.

"Where are you going?" Micah asked.

"Oh, well, it's kind of girl things, but if you want to…" The boys shook their heads. "Well, too bad," Nora smiled, taking the girls up to what had once upon a time been her bedroom. Now it was still a guest bedroom, and so they sat on the bed, legs crossed, Hannah and Hailey on one end and Nora on the other. "So," she leaned forward in conspiracy, and her sisters did the same. It wasn't that she wasn't like this with most people, but her sisters kept her well and locked in with a smile… she wasn't a pushover or anything either. She had a temper in her that could have been equal parts Fabray and Puckerman. She loved getting to stay on the softer side with Hannah and Hailey though. "You've been talking Sunshine Girls?"

"Yes," both girls nodded.

"Did they show you the book?"

"And the box, too," Hannah informed her.

"Wow, big day," Nora nodded to herself. "Are you two ready to carry on the legacy?" she asked dramatically. Hailey and Hannah looked at her, lost, and she chuckled. "I think you two are perfect for the Sunshine Girls."

"What do we have to do?" Hannah asked.

"Well, you make people happy," Nora told her, then seeing that didn't clarify it as much as they would like, "You know when you see someone sitting there, and they've got one of these faces," she put on a pout, and the girls laughed. "A good shoulder slouch," she demonstrated, "And a sigh." Each demonstration was coupled with a giggle. "It's not always that obvious."

"Like what?" Hailey asked.

"Do you know what 'preoccupied' means?" Nora asked, and they shook their heads. "Sometimes you'll see someone and they're thinking about things so hard, they just sort of don't pay attention to anything else, or anyone else."

"Like a person?" Hannah asked.

"Like Grace?" Hailey followed, and Nora's eyes turned to her little sister. "She makes you preoccupied," she pronounced. Nora laughed awkwardly.

"What makes you say that?" she asked, and Hailey shrugged.

"When she calls and then after, when Mom or Dad asks something, you go like this," she mimed someone standing there, lost in thought before blinking. "What?" she imitated, and Nora frowned… She was all too aware of this, though she wouldn't have thought six-year-old Hailey had picked up on it. She looked at her though, at both of them, and they both had that look of mischief in their eyes, that sort of 'ha ha, someone's got a crush' look.

"Okay, smarty pants, I think you get the point," she smiled, nudging at both their heads, making them laugh. "So, you know, you help… if the person wants it. You ask first; sometimes people need to suck it up and do things on their own," she nodded along, and it took her a moment to remember what she was talking about. "So what have they told you about?"

"They just told us about your birthday," Hannah explained. "Well, the day you were born," she recalled. Nora smiled.

"Yeah, I've heard that one."

"My mom was there, and my dad, and Hailey's dad, and Hailey's mom, too," Hannah counted off.

"Good thing she was," Nora half-snorted, then thought for a moment, about the perfect story to follow that up. "Okay, I know."

"You know what?" Hailey asked.

"What story I'll tell you."

"Is it about Sunshine Girls?" Hannah asked.

"Yes, I guess you can say that," Nora nodded slowly. "It was a very important day, too." That made her sisters smile, and even if they hadn't exactly been in need of any cheering up of their own, Nora felt, looking at them, that she'd gone and brought sunshine of her own.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!