April 26th 2022

Chapter 116
Our Transformation Into Pumpkins

"Nana!" Kacey pointed at the television and looked back to her parents on the couch even as Lucy got up from the ground and walked up to the screen, there to join Remy, who was already staring up and pressing her hands together in giddiness.

"Yeah, it's almost time," Lucas bent forward until he was able to press a kiss at her cheek and make her giggle before she teetered off to join her sisters.

"You know, I think at this point they think they'll see someone they know, right when they least expect it, so they're just staying there, making sure they don't miss them," Maya smiled before getting up off the couch to bring them back. "Alright, come on, little butts, you can't stay too close too long, you'll hurt your eyes. You'll see Nana fine from back here, and Stevie, and Tilly, and all the fine folk of Barrowland Ranch… even that as-… astronomically unpleasant guy sniffing around the place. Come on, back here with your fluffy friends," she looked to the dogs. They were on the floor, yes, though hovering so near to the couch as to suggest at least one or two of them would be making their way up to be with her and Lucas. "You're not helping," she whispered at them.

"Annie?" Remy looked around, searching.

"She'll be right down, she said she had to get something from her room," Lucas promised, and Remy bolted over to him, arms up. Lucas chuckled and gladly pulled her up into his lap. In no time, Kacey moved to join her twin and was lifted as well. Lucy was the only one to stay where she stood with her mother, as her fascination had presently moved from the television to the roundness she could see, the growing bump.

For as long as the secret had been out, several people – Lucas, Marianne, Eliza and Emma, the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles – would look at the triplets and point at Maya's belly and remind them of the fact that there was a baby in there, their new baby sibling. It happened enough that they were finally looking like they understood. Whether they actually understood what they were being told or they were just under the impression that their mother's belly was called a baby, who could say? But more and more, the last few days, if ever given the chance, the triplets would reach their little hands out and touch it, and they would name it.

"Baby," Lucy told her mother. Maya smiled down at her, brushed at her hair.

"Baby," she repeated with a nod, and Lucy carried on her quiet communion with her little sibling. She would no longer be her last born soon… How could that even be?

Marianne finally returned, carrying her sketchbook under her arm as she climbed down the stairs. She had telltale marker streaks on her hands, suggesting that whatever she wanted to show them had first needed to be drawn up in order to be showable. Even before she could show them, her parents at least had a reasonable idea of what it would be about. With October advancing, they'd mentioned how they would have to get on with their Halloween costumes soon if they wanted to be ready in time. They'd said it just the day before, which meant that the idea had been brewing in their daughter's head all this time. It was there in the furrow of her brow all the time. Each year that she grew, the legacy of Hallowannie grew with her. Would it have been her favorite time of the year, with the family she had, if she hadn't been born on Halloween night? Who could say? As it was, she was born on the last day of October, at the heart of a costume party, and more and more the little pumpkin was in her element when it came to Spooky Season. The springy headband was back in play, whenever it could be planted on her head, just as it was now.

"Okay," she planted herself in front of her parents like she was getting ready to make a very important presentation to a corporate board, and both Maya and Lucas had to resist the urge to grin. Maya sat next to Lucas on the couch, pulling Lucy into her lap as she did.

"Yes, Miss Pumpkin Friar?" Lucas asked, momentarily breaking Marianne's focus to make her giggle before she could hold up her sketchbook. "Right, sorry, go ahead." She opened the book, showing she'd had a finger stuck inside to keep her page as she presented them with the image she'd just created. The colors certainly matched the streaks on her hands.

On the page, she had drawn several figures which they knew to be herself, her little sisters, and Tori. Her drawing style was such by now that they knew how she liked to draw the people in her life. Here, everyone's face was stuck on top of what looked like fruit bodies, arms and legs sticking out, little hats topping their heads to match their fruit of choice. Marianne was a green apple, Kacey a lemon, Remy a strawberry, Lucy a bunch of grapes, and Tori a peach.

"That looks great!" Maya smiled, echoing Lucas' expression.

"Can we do it?" Marianne proudly and excitedly asked.

"I think it's more than likely, yeah. Two things though," Maya told her. "We have to make sure Tori will want hers." Marianne nodded. Of course, they would ask. She and Ella couldn't make it for show night, not with them being in Houston and Ella having class in the morning, but they would be watching, along with the families out there, and they would call after the episode. "And number two… What about us?" Maya smiled, pointing to herself and Lucas. "And Ella…"

"I don't know," Marianne admitted with a shrug as she closed her book. "You're big people," she reasoned. Her parents didn't know whether to laugh or play wounded at the statement.

"Us?" Lucas played into this, turning to his wife with a puzzled look.

"Hey, don't look at me, I'm a lot shorter than you," Maya pointed out before sticking her tongue out at him. It got a laugh out of the twins in his lap, which only served to break her own expression into a laugh before turning back to Marianne.

"Do you need ideas?" Lucas asked the little sheriff and she nodded.

"Oh!" Maya raised her hand up high like she was in class before signalling Marianne to come closer so she could whisper at her ear. When she did, Lucy leaned in, too, like she had no idea exactly what was going on, but it seemed like the thing to do.

"I need to…" Marianne pulled back with a look of bouncing inspiration in her.

"The show's about to start, but you've got time to get your markers, go, go," Maya encouraged her, and she took off after entrusting her mother with her diary.

"I have a feeling I know where this is going," Lucas stated, speaking to her, clearly, but doing so by addressing the two little blondes in his lap. Kacey responded by reaching back to grab his face while Remy stretched out her hands toward Jax and Artie, as they were angling to climb up and join them on the couch. Maya didn't confirm or deny his claim, merely focused her attention on Lucy as she'd gone back to feeling for the baby.

When Marianne returned, she took her sketchbook and her box of markers to the coffee table and set to work at once, hunched over the page so no one – especially her father – could see. Alright, the dogs could look, and Crowley certainly did as he came and planted himself next to her, and then the triplets, as they ended up back on the floor just before the episode started. Marianne didn't draw while the show was on, oh, no. She would be good and focused while it was on, only picking her markers back up during the commercials. She didn't always know when they started, as she would sometimes be fooled into thinking some of them were part of the show. Especially the previous year, she'd spent several weeks assuming that the family from this one car commercial kept trying to get to the ranch but never made it.

"Nana!" the triplets called out almost all at once when Katy first appeared, causing a new migration up to the screen. Sooner or later, the girls would spend the better part of the episode on their feet. Their focus would be more likely to disconnect, but it would be reconnected right quick the moment they heard a familiar voice and, seeing as they were getting pretty familiar with a lot of the cast by now, it made it so that they spent most of their time turning this way and that, like they were dancing. It would be distracting at times, but never so much that it bothered the others. Mostly, it was just too funny to suggest they stop.

"That's a commercial, pumpkin," Lucas let Marianne know, and she gasped and got back to her drawing. She looked back to Maya after a moment like she had a question, so Maya got up off the couch – once she'd dislodged the dogs from around her – and went over to have a look. Oh, it was coming together alright. She crouched and Marianne whispered her question at her ear. Maya nodded and quickly pulled out her phone, searching up an image before setting the device for her daughter to use as reference and getting back to her seat. As the dogs resettled, Lucas signed 'suspicious,' and Maya just grinned. "Show's starting again, pumpkin," he called when it did, and the markers went back down.

It took nearly the entire episode's run of commercials before she sat back with a decisive motion that suggested she had completed her new drawing. She wouldn't show them until it was over. The episode was a big one for Stevie's character, who had been growing closer and closer to a boy at her school, the flirtation finally culminating in a first kiss. Both Maya and Lucas recalled when it had been filmed, how Stevie had been sort of concerned about doing the scene. Sure, as an actress, it was going to be part of what she did, but it was her first on screen kiss, and she kept thinking about Henry… He was fully supportive of her, always, and he showed not a shred of misplaced jealousy toward her co-star. As he'd say, it wasn't as though he didn't see it coming, the way their characters were going.

"Do we get to see it now?" Lucas asked Marianne, after the episode, once the triplets were asleep and she was climbing into bed herself, ready to be read her bedtime story. She'd brought the sketchbook with her, so they had a good idea that the answer was yes.

Just as he'd imagined, knowing his wife and her ideas, Lucas found himself cast in the role of a farmer, and if he ever had looked more like he'd earned his Huckleberry nickname, he couldn't recall it. Meanwhile, Maya's figure cast her as this farmer's wife, evidently, looking like she was off to pick their little fruit girls to make a giant pie. Ella, for her part, looked like some kind of harvest fairy, a call back to the 'flower child' costume she'd worn, when she'd first lived with them. Marianne had not forgotten the flower crowns… As she was the only one of the two of them who'd known this when they'd had their call with their eldest daughter, Maya had shared Marianne's idea with her and Ella was on board, as was Tori the little peach. They would both be here, naturally. Lea and their college friends would be off to a party back in Houston, but Ella wasn't about to miss her little sister's birthday…

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners