March 2nd 2020

Chapter 62
Their Contract on Games

"Don't! I'm gonna fall!" Gracie squeaked as she was lifted to sit on her big sister's shoulders. Sure, a moment ago she'd been wanting to have her turn, but the moment her feet had left the ground she'd gone into 'I regret everything!' mode.

"Now, Miss Grace Marie, Mouse Mouse, do you think I would ever let that happen?" Maya asked, redirecting the lift until she had the six-year-old perched in a more familiar hold. "Me? Drop you?" she asked, setting her forehead to her little sister's. "Ever?" she whispered, wrestling a small smile from the girl, who shook her head. "Now that we've got that figured out, you know you don't have to do it if you don't want to, okay?"

"Don't want to," Gracie whispered back.

"Okay then," Maya moved to set her down, but Gracie shook her head. "Alright, staying up here, not a problem, I like hugs, especially from my Mouse Mouse."

This turn did not surprise her one bit. Much as her sisters were growing, faster every day it seemed, they were still little, all things considered. And Gracie, more so than her twin, was one for being held, and they had never tried to make her into anything else than who she was. The whole thing here had come as, upon taking a trip outside, at the basketball hoop, Nellie had tried to throw the ball and declared herself too short.

Maya had remedied the situation by pulling her up and sitting her on her shoulders. From here, not only was she taller than the both of them separated, but she also had the benefit of her big sister's skills in making her approach for the net. It was slightly hindered by the added weight of a child on her shoulders and the attention given so not to drop said child, but Nellie didn't seem to see any problem in it. She had made her throw, the ball had gone swish! And the 'crowd' went wild as 'Nellaya' made a celebratory circuit of the 'court.'

After a few more throws, Nellie had finally agreed to be let down, much to the relief of her ride, and at once she'd turned to her twin and suggested she might want to give it a try. It used to be that Gracie was much more decisive. When she was smaller, and someone would attempt to make her do something for the first time, more often than not her response would be a simple 'nah!' Now, as she'd gotten older, this had changed, and it might not have looked like a good thing, but in a lot of ways it was. She was starting to think more for herself, and in doing so she was giving more consideration to exploring the unknown. Whether she actually followed through, as she didn't that day, was another matter. But already that she thought about it…

"Want to try it anyway?" Cara looked to Gracie, offering her the ball she'd been waiting to give her once she was set on top of Maya's shoulders.

"Knowing her, she just might get it," Maya smiled, turning to her little sister like 'what do you say?' Gracie shrugged, but she took the ball from Cara nonetheless. She received many pointers from this one or that one, which really got to feel like too much for her.

"Stop it!" Nellie called out. "Let her do it!"

It didn't go all the way and through the net, but it grazed the board, and to Gracie that was pretty satisfying.

"I love it here…" Eliza declared, breathing out as she looked around from where she stood.

"Yeah, it's pretty great, isn't it?" Maya agreed.

"I wish we could be here all the time. Arizona's pretty great, and it's closer than New York was, but it's still far." She wanted to be able to just come and be with her big sister just because she wanted to, without having to make it a whole trip. Maya understood that, felt the same way… too often to count.

"We see each other more often than we used to," Maya pointed out. "And if you hadn't gone to Arizona then your mom and Emma's dad would never have met, and then you two wouldn't have met, or us," she turned wide eyes to Emma Lane, who laughed.

"Can we do the wedding game now?" she asked.

"The wedding game?" Maya asked, imagining an old TV game show.

"We did the dress shopping before, now we can practice, like you said."

"Oh! Right! Okay…" she looked around for a beat, conjuring up… "Let's say the tree over there is the altar, yeah?" Her sisters nodded. "Okay, now go and find some rocks and some branches?"

The girls were more than up to the task, most of them dashing off to do what they'd been asked. The only ones remaining were Cecilia and Haley, as Sam's girlfriend sat nearby with the sleeping toddler in her lap. Before long, there was a bounty of materials, which Maya began to place on the ground in order to create two long lines, making an aisle that led up to the tree/altar.

"Great, okay, now… Cecilia…" she turned. "You wanna be…"

"Officiant?" she guessed before looking to the girl she held. "Is that supposed to be Lucas?"

"No, that'd be weird," Maya shook her head, as though this whole thing wasn't already odd.

"What about the ball?" Cara offered.

"Slap a cowboy hat on that and you've got it," Maya laughed, as the officiant and the 'groom' took their places. "And so now…" she turned to the others. "Here we have chairs, with my family, and his family, and our friends, guests…" Even just playing pretend, in her mind it was all looking much more real, and she only wished they all could see what she saw. She could hear music… "Bridesmaids…" she pointed ahead of herself as they stood past the end of the aisle. Quickly, the three of them who were here now stepped up, like soldiers at attention. "I don't know for sure if you'll be walking with someone or on your own on the day, so for now let's just say you're by yourself, yeah?"

"Flowers, we need flowers," Eliza told her.

"Yes, you do," Maya pointed at her and looked around. "I could really do with a garden," she mumbled to herself before getting back on track. She grabbed the leftover branches they had collected and fashioned them into a trio of very sad looking bouquets. "Just pretend, yeah?" she told Cara, Eliza, and Emma as they took them, laughing. "You're going to walk up with the others, ahead of me. Not too fast, not too slow, just like this…" she demonstrated, finding it very hard not to exaggerate and just be serious, which showed in how she still got her sisters laughing.

"What about us?" Nellie asked, indicating herself and Gracie.

"Oh, you two," Maya jogged back to them. "My flowery flower girls," she breathed. They gave her a look and she knew… "The flowers, yes, I know, let's just not use those, okay?" she indicated the leftover rocks. "If it was fall we could just have used the leaves…"

"We can make believe," Gracie declared.

"Okay, good, good," Maya breathed, thankful not to have to conjure up some petals for them to throw. "Do you remember how you did it last time?"

"Yeah, like this!" Nellie looked to Gracie and the two started to walk and throw their invisible flowers. "And I'll have my yellow dress?" Nellie stopped and turned to Maya.

"Yeah, you will!" Maya called back with a laugh, making the six-year-old grin before carrying on with her stride. "Come on back now, we don't have much time before you guys have to go to bed." This did not agree with any of them who were concerned with this announcement, namely the twins, Eliza, and Emma.

"But the sleepover…" Eliza protested.

"Yeah, it's got sleep right in the name," Maya pointed out. The little sisters didn't find it nearly as funny as she did. "Oh, come on, you haven't even seen where you're sleeping yet."

The intrigue had settled just as she'd hoped it would, and so after they'd done their brief mock-wedding walk, everyone had back into the house. The ones who would be headed to bed had gone to their bags to dig out their PJs and get changed. Cara had volunteered herself to get Haley changed, promising she was a pro, thanks to Wyatt, at getting a sleeping little kid into their pyjamas. This left Maya to wait out in the upstairs hall with Cecilia. After their adventures outside, all she could think now was that she had still way more contenders for her bridesmaids than she knew what to do with.

"Ready!" Nellie appeared, in her favorite PJs, her elephant PJs. She had a pair of hair ties in her hand, suggesting there were braids to be made with her long brown hair.

"We have to wait for everyone else, too," Maya reminded her, inviting patience before her little sister got it in her head to go and make everyone else hurry. Soon, the sisters were together once more, questions in their eyes. What were they doing out here? Emma was the one to figure it out first. They were going into the attic.

It was a great place to be, no matter the time or the situation, but for tonight, for Sleepster 2026… It was going to be better than ever. The trap door had opened, the stairs were brought down, and as they climbed in, the girls came upon the many sleeping bags, pillows, and other cushions laid over the floor, and under the glowing illumination of several strings of light set about the walls and the ceiling, making the place look like it had been inhabited by so many fireflies. Between this and the skylight, they could have been outside, camping.

"They're never going to fall asleep now," Cara whispered, just as amazed as the little ones.

"Yeah, but it's a sleepover. If you just go down and fall asleep right away… are you even doing it right?" Maya smirked.

"Which one do you want?" they heard Nellie ask Gracie, who looked around, considering this very question. Eventually, she pointed to one, and so Nellie went and picked the closest one to it. Eliza and Emma soon picked ones near the twins' spots.

"I can do your hair?" Eliza asked Nellie, who happily held out her elastics.

"If you want, I can take Haley back downstairs for now," Maya told the four girls sitting on the ground. Emma had volunteered to do Gracie's hair. She favored just the one braid instead of two.

"We can keep her with us," Eliza volunteered gladly. "We'll look after her, she's already sleeping anyway." As Cara would reveal to Maya and Cecilia after leaving the attic, there had been some debate among the siblings back in Tucson whether Abigail and James were going to have any new kids together. If that was the case, then Eliza led the front in wanting to be prepared, She'd been too young when Wyatt was born to really remember what it was like to have a baby around, to look after, so really any practice was good preparation, just in case.

"Wait until she finds out about you-know-what," Maya told Cara with a smile.

"Am I allowed to know… what you know?" Cecilia asked, pausing to rearrange the words. She was told about the engagement, and the upcoming revelation of said engagement. "Oh! So I guess it means they'll be cool with it, yeah?"

"Think so, yeah," Cara nodded.

"I can't even think about my father… He hasn't met anyone since my mom, I think. Not that he would have had time, I guess, but even then…"

"It'll be weird at first if he does," Cara told her. "But if the person's right for him, then it'll get better." Maya smiled, watching the two of them talking, her sister and her brother's girlfriend, making friends… No doubt they would have both preferred to bond over something other than the loss of a parent at an early age, but from another point of view, it might have made the bond that much more valued to each of them.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners