Welcome to today's chapter. Let's skip forward a little, shall we? It's now June 1997.
CHAPTER 14 – Family Performance
(P to Diana) I woke up gracefully. As I awoke, I felt a kiss. I instantly knew it was from my husband, so I kissed him back. "I love you," we said happily to each other, holding each other in an embrace and kissing again. When our eyes met, it was magic yet again.
I looked over at our little children. How they had grown. Marlene was almost two! And little Emily was now a year and three months old. They were no longer the little babies that I had given birth to but were now their own individual selves, with personalities of their very own.
Marlene, it seemed, was destined to be the more outgoing one with her bubbly personality. Emily was friendly as well, but was more reserved than her older sister. No doubt their personalities would continue to change though, as they grew older.
"Thank you for giving me a family to love," I said happily to Sebastien. "Thank you for sticking by my side through all the messes we went through," he said to me. "Friends. Love. Children. Everything we ever wanted," I said, resulting in another kiss between us.
As we were magically lost in each other's eyes, the children began to stir. Sebastien and I broke our glances and walked over to the children to hug them as they awoke. "We love you children," Sebastien and I said happily to Marlene and Emily, hugging them.
Even though they were probably groggy from just waking up, they still heard us and felt our hugs. "We love you too Mom and Dad," they said to us, hugging us back. Sebastien and I gave each other a momentary glance of pure joy at the perfect family we had created. So much had changed in just a few years.
We finished up our family hug, but the children wanted to sit in our laps. We were surprised, but glad they wanted to be with us right now. As they grew older, they would probably want a break from us. Sebastien and I had felt the same of our parents sometimes, as many children did.
We probably stayed with our children for close to an hour until hunger got to us all. We all broke our family time and headed out of the cave. There we met all of our friends and chatted while we waited for our breakfast. It was served right on time, like usual. We all eagerly had our breakfast before practicing before the guests arrived.
"So girls, what do you want to do today?" Sebastien asked them. "Can we use the beach ball today?" Emily asked us. "Yeah, I really like using it," Marlene said. Sebastien and I chuckled. "Sure, we can use the beach ball today," I said to our daughters. "Yay!" they cheered, clearly excited.
The children eagerly ran to get the beach ball to be used in today's entertainment for the guests. "So what trick do you think we all should do?" Sebastien asked me. "Well I was thinking we could all bat the ball around with our tails for a moment after doing some other jumps and tumbles. Then the children could ride it down from the top of the homes and we could toss them up somewhat high before they want in the water. As they land, they kick it back to us and then we bat it before giving it back to them," I said.
Sebastien laughed. "That sounds like an excellent plan Diana. I think the kids will love it," he said. We then saw both Marlene and Emily running eagerly to us while carrying the ball on their backs. "Good job girls," I said to them. "Thanks Mom. What are we doing with the ball today?" Emily asked me. Sebastien and I then told the kids our plan and big smiles grew on their faces, indicating they really liked the plan we had come up with.
The aquarium wasn't going to open for about half an hour so we worked in coordination to develop our plan. The girls were having a lot of fun and their energy was rubbing off onto Sebastien and I. We practiced hard and after nearly failing a few times, we successfully pulled off a trial run. We rested for only a few minutes before the aquarium opened. Everyone in the aquarium was smiling ear to ear as people slowly shuffled in to see us. We were all doing different things to encourage the guests to clap at us soon.
After a few hours, it became time for our performance of the day. As usual, the keepers came out and introduced themselves to the crowd. They told some general facts about our species and their words reminded Sebastien and I of our past in the wild. It had all been fun until that fateful day when we lost our parents.
We shook that depressing thought off and looked at our children. They always brought great happiness to Sebastien and I. Finally, after the introductions, it was time for our performance. Like I had planned earlier, we started with mostly swimming around and flipping around into the pool. But then we launched into our real plan.
Emily picked up the ball and then all of us started to paw the ball around to each other. We heard impressed gasps from the guests, giving us inflated egos. We then switched to our tails as everyone gasped at all of us Otters in the aquarium at all of our different tricks. After playing with our different tails and paws the children jumped to the top of the newly-built ramp and we tossed the ball to them.
They eagerly rode the ball down the ramp on top of the ball, expertly balancing on it. They successfully rode it all the way down and then leaped into the air holding it. They quickly kicked the ball back to Sebastien and I right before they hit the water. Sebastien and I improvised and decided to go to the top of the slide ourselves, also riding the ball down the ramp.
As we were high up in the air, we kicked the ball at the glass wall, dove in the water and surfaced right next to our daughters. We managed to just grab the ball and narrowly avoided popping it with our claws. We looked around and everyone else had just finished their own fun and were also in other sections of the pool.
The guests went nuts over all of our performances. Everyone was clapping for a long while and were all smiling, very impressed that we had done so. "I think we did good Mom and Dad," Marlene said happily. "Me too," Emily agreed. "You two did great. The crowd loves us," I said to them. They smiled again, getting even wider grins.
We then proceeded to dry land so that we could rest after all that exercise. As we reached land, the keepers came out and gave us our lunch, making us really grateful for them. They then talked about how it's interesting that we're so smart, despite us being vulnerable to extinction, which wasn't actually the truth anyway. But after questions from the audience, everyone went to check out other animals.
We were glad for that, as we really were tuckered out. That had been our most intensive performance to date. "So Mom and Dad, did you come up with following us into the water on the spot?" Marlene asked us. "We came up with that on the fly," Sebastien answered them. "Well we need to remember that to do again. It was really fun," Emily said happily.
"It wouldn't be as fun if we didn't have you two," I said to the girls as Sebastien and I ruffled the fur on the tops of their heads, making them laugh. "Mom, that's embarrassing," Marlene said as I ruffled her fur. "Ditto dad," Emily said. "Oh we know. But it seems you're enjoying it, by the smiles on your faces," Sebastien said to them.
We continued this for a little bit, but then stopped, also to the children's delight. After that, the children got together and did their own little activities for the rest of the day while us parents just chatted about everything that was going on. It was a good day, all in all.
After getting dinner, we all just continued to relax. We were a very tight-knit community and obviously trusted each other with everything. Eventually, we all became very tired and headed to our caves. Since they were so little, both Marlene and Emily fell asleep quickly. Sebastien and I shared a final kiss before going to sleep ourselves.
That's the end of this chapter! It's somewhat short, but I hope you enjoyed seeing the family in action. I don't have any notes today, but I do hope you will leave a review. See you in the next chapter!