Happy Thanksgiving! Well, not for Octavian.
Good was relative. To say that Octavian was having a good morning would've been a stretch of the word. It was fine though. No one asked him how his day was going, and thus the augur didn't have to blatantly lie to their faces and say that it was good.
To be fair, it wasn't as if he'd set himself up for a good day. The universe was always screwing with him but today he'd screwed with himself. Because wasn't it a wonderful idea for him to make himself a turkey for Thanksgiving?
He didn't even know what inspired him to celebrate Thanksgiving. Maybe it was Pinterest. Pinterest families made him loopy. He was 23 years old and he still couldn't get it in his head that nobody wanted him. He hadn't had Thanksgiving with his family since he was 3. Steve and Victoria had apparently lost his invite for 20 years in a row. He wasn't fully bitter towards his parents who he'd tried to please, or towards his peers he'd tried to befriend. Mostly he was bitter towards the Holiday. The concept of a Holiday based around family wasn't about to be appealing to someone who had none.
But the families of Pinterest and their turkeys made him want one. A turkey, not a family, gods he'd given up on a family. He'd managed to talk himself out of adopting a child, doing a vegan cleanse, and making his own soap, all things Pinterest made tantalizing. And he'd talked himself out of joining about 70 MLMs. The turkey, like the puppy, was not something he could talk himself out of. He and Raichu were doing righteously. He and this terrible turkey were not so tight.
He should have known that the beastly bird would not work out. There was a good reason his healthy diet was primarily composed of things he could microwave. In years past, if he'd felt a twinge of falsified festivity he would pick up a turkey tv dinner and a two liter of mountain dew. Usually he just got take out or made ramen. This fateful year he'd gotten greedy and ambitious. This year he just had to have a turkey.
And this year his little apartment kitchen was filling up with smoke. That, like the turkey, was a first. The fire alarm began going off, and Raichu was angrily barking at the smoke, looking adorable and utterly confused. When everything was under control and the smoke had cleared the augur forlornly admitted that he didn't have a Pinterest family, or even a Pinterest family's turkey.
So he ordered take out, got a two liter of mountain dew and ate out on the fire escape, with Raichu snuggled up beside him. He should have known that he wouldn't get the perfect turkey, or a dining table spread for a King, or even the illusion of a family. Fire escape Chinese food painted a very different view of the Holiday than what he was used to seeing depicted. But fire escape Chinese food was what he was most familiar with. And so he resigned himself to it.