A/N: [July 8th 2024]

September 28th 2023

Chapter 271
We Ask For Sprinkles

Maya was the first one up on the morning of the triplets' seventh birthday, and she was quick to get out of bed, the better to walk quietly across the hall to see how her birthday butts were doing.

There was one girl to each bed, that was for sure, but at once she could see that the treasures under the shells had been swapped around. Most people would not have noticed at once, even with one of the three being notably different, but maybe it came from looking at those girls sleep as often as she had.

"Hey, bun," Maya quietly greeted her littlest triplet as she sat on the edge of the mattress and the barely awake girl scooted up to be embraced by her. "Tell me something," Maya kissed the top of her head. "Why are you in Kacey's bed?"

"Remy took mine, so she said I could have hers," Lucy mumbled.

"She did, huh?" Maya played along, and Lucy nodded. "That was nice of her."

"But then... But then they moved again, because Remy didn't want Kacey to take her bed, so they swapped, too."

"I see. And you stayed here?"

"Uh huh."

"And Remy is in Remy's bed and Kacey is in yours?"

"Uh huh."

"Are you sure about that?" There was no 'uh huh' this time, but there was definitely a barely contained laugh. "And they're still like that?" Lucy had the courtesy of lifting her head and looking at her sisters, who were for sure not as asleep as they portrayed themselves to be. She was about the worst at lying, and she was stuck now, enough that the girls finally gave themselves away in their poorly achieved trick, scurrying out of bed to join their mother and sister.

The tale helped the family kick off the day with a lively breakfast, as everyone would laugh over the retelling, and exchange what might have been more believable tricks, and while neither Maya nor Lucas would want to disappoint their daughters, they both knew that none of those ideas would have ended any differently on their ends. They could always tell their twins apart, always identify their uniqueness in their identical faces.

With breakfast behind them, it was time to dive into the plans that the birthday girls had collectively requested. That began with the three of them, their father, their big sister and their Irish guest heading out to Sullivan Stables to ride their horses. The rest of the family was there, too, of course, but the six of them went riding. The triplets were still learning a lot when it came to the finer skills of horseback riding, but they were probably doing better than the average six-year-old… seven-year-old now. It was a joke, or maybe a reasonable theory, among the family that, as good as they were individually, they would be genuinely better when the three of them would go together.

On that day, they posited the idea that one day they would have horses at the stables for all the members of their family, and those horses should get to live together, because they would be like family, too. It was a pretty solid idea, bound to call many a tale into creation for the Friar children in years to come, at bedtime or at play time.

When the ride was done, everyone else stuck around at the ranch, but Lucas and the birthday girls headed out for their now family wide tradition of birthday ice cream with Dad. In every other occasion, it would just be Lucas and one child stepping into that shop, and they would be set. With Lucas and three kids together, the mood was instantly different, more chaotic, and loud. Lucas could see this, but then so could the girls, and while they very much wanted to all be there at once, it was also decided that they would all benefit much better if they alternated. Each of the triplets would get their one-on-one time with their father and the other two would go and sit at another table – still well within sight of the 'hot seat' at all time – and do their own thing in the meantime. The sisters all enjoyed this idea very much, in equal parts for getting this moment with their father and for this 'meeting' with one another when it was someone else's turn.

"Alright, how do you girls want to do this?" Lucas turned to his daughters. They stared up at him, then down at each other. No words, just looks, and then they nodded and looked back at him. Kacey held up one finger, Remy held up two, and Lucy held up three. Birth order, easy.

It would be tricky, spreading out their ice cream long enough for it to last through three of these pairings, so they had all chosen three smaller treats, all of them ordered and to be delivered at each swap. While Remy and Lucy took their first ones to their table and sat across from one another with big, silly grins, Lucas and Kacey went and sat with their own.

Strange as it could sound, even though he knew that he would feel this tug at his heart with each of them, noting how they were all growing up so much and so fast, with Kacey he somehow felt it as though she was so much further ahead than her fellow triplets. Yes, she was the first of them to have been pulled into the world, by so little of a margin, and she had an identical twin who was in every way her equal, down to the tiniest sliver of an inch. But she'd always felt taller than Remy to him and Maya both, and that was the easiest way to tell her apart. She had this innate quality to her, and she could never hide it, not from them.

It wasn't as though Remy felt particularly small, except maybe for the way she always felt to them as though braced to run, to jump, to kick her way into the world and discover anything it could offer her. It showed as a spark in her eyes, as though her mother's spirit shone out from them despite their being so much like her father's, it quirked in her smile the very same way. When she and Kacey swapped places that day, stopping briefly for something between a hug and a high five before the latter could drop in across their fraternal sister, Remy slid into the seat across Lucas so fast that she nearly tipped right over. Thankfully, his reflexes were both quick and used to these near misses with the middle born of this trio, and he set her chair on four legs with her in it. She didn't miss a beat, picking up the ice cream cup that had been placed before her and jumping back into their earlier talk of 'the family stable.' Lucas just kept on grinning as he listened to her. Her stories may not have been near as polished and cohesive as her sister's, or her mother's, but they were always supremely entertaining.

When the twins were reunited at last, it looked as though she went ahead and continued on that same track. Kacey was about as best placed as they came to keep up with her, so they'd be good to go as Lucy came and sat across from her father. Whereas the firstborn of the Friar triplets felt taller yet than her true height, the lastborn of the set had always been the smallest in every way. Even now, as her younger sisters were both shorter than her, there was no doubt that when all of them would reach their tallest heights, she would still stand as the shortest among the seven of them girls. Maybe she wouldn't enjoy that fact – she certainly didn't enjoy it now – but there among her family she would not be allowed to feel 'small,' not for a moment. By her heart alone, young as she was, she stood as tall as one could, and maybe taller still. As she sat with him that, all she wanted out of her father was for them both to talk about absolutely anything they could talk about, so long as they got to have this time together. Lucas happily complied.

"You're back!" Aubrey was the first at the door when they returned, and she had her arms out at the ready for Lucas as soon as he appeared. He did not wait to scoop up the four-year-old and perch her in one arm, the better to inspect what looked like a small but still notable scratch right on her chin.

"What happened here?" he asked, concerned but not overwhelmed. After a decade as a father, he could at least give some show of not losing his mind at every little hurt without reason.

"Fell down a little," Aubrey reported, not concerned in the slightest, though to hear about it from Maya later, she absolutely was concerned a whole lot when the fall occurred. "We got something for you!" she looked down to her older sisters now, and Lucas put her down so she could hurry to them and pull them along. Lucy was right there at the front, expectedly concerned for her buddy of a little sister in a far more open way.

She would stay seated with Aubrey, too, as she and Mackenzie, Marianne, Ella, and Maya set about sharing their 'gift,' as had been plotted back at the ranch while the rest of them had gone for ice cream. They had pictures, pictures for stories, as their family would. They had fished out special ones for each of the triplets, doing their best to find ones where even Aubrey would be able to recall the event that accompanied those stories, though others couldn't help but feel essential, even though they originated before either she or Mackenzie had been born, so it turned into two stories being selected for each of the girls, with one more being a tale of the three together, bringing them to the magic number of their seventh birthday's seven stories.

In time, the day came to an end, and the Friar children were all off to bed, all sleeping… hopefully. There was however the fact – fortunate at times and less so in others – that the triplets' room was right across the hall from their parents' and, so long as he hadn't been moved out of it, of their baby brother's, so when he'd wake up hollering in the middle of the night, it would often wake them up, too and keep them from sleeping.

That was the case that night, though they weren't so much annoyed as they felt compelled to come along to look in on their fairy boy. They all sat with him, on their parents' bedroom floor, taking turns at holding him, and they had never felt so grown as girls as they did here, helping their brother calm down, and doze off… To look at them, they might have stopped and told themselves that they needed to show that they were growing up. They were kicking off their eighth year now, they were moving along in the world, doing things they had not so long ago seen their big sister do, and it was exciting to them. To their parents, it was exciting, too, all emotions aside. The milestones would never stop feeling as though they were coming up much too fast, but then there was no stopping them moving forward, evolving, and they would not want to do so if they could. No, they couldn't wait to see what their children would become, what they would do and who they would be. They were already so proud of them as they were now, and their new chapters would all be as thrilling as the ones that came before them.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners