January 30th 2023

Chapter 30
We Gather to Play

The kids were so sad to hear that Mr. Carson would not be there to tell them stories that day. It was one of their favorite things about being in green group. A couple of them were briefly concerned that the old man might have been sick, but they were soon reassured. Mr. Carson would be back when they all returned after Christmas.

That was the story they would tell all the groups, and for the older groups, who didn't visit the archive to be told or read a story, their activities were seen to by their monitors. But with both the green and blue groups, the day's archive stop was led by none other than Santa Claus. The children were delighted by this surprise on its own, and by the revelation that he would be the one telling them a story, but also by the way the man seemed to know them all so well. He was magical, wasn't he?

As was to be expected, Lucas spent much of story time with green group watching one particular cluster of the children sat on the floor. He watched Kacey, Remy, and Lucy, sitting with their new little friends, Sammie, Barry, and Felicity. They hadn't all started out as part of the afterschool program, but then connections had been made, and here they were. It was truly more than he and Maya could have hoped for them, just a few short months ago.

They would have spent all afternoon there at the archive if it had been up to this group, as they were so delighted with their Santa. In the end, all they could get away with was for everyone to talk with him by ones and twos and threes for a minute or so. They were not talking about presents for the most part, though a couple of them did try their hands at it. For the most part, as guided by the cheerful old man's questions, they talked about the things that made them happy lately. He wouldn't lack for stories told to him for a change… allegedly.

He got a whole deluge of words out of the tag team that was Remy and Barry, as well as some very sneaky attempts at the tugging of his beard from the grinning boy. The two of them would tell Santa about their make pretend game, as initiated at their preschool. It was a big old secret from some people, but not from Santa, no. He had roughly the same expression as both Maya and Lucas would have whenever Remy told them, a great smile caught up in the frenzied whirlwind that was the slightly chaotic imagination in their girl's head. It was very fitting on the whole, and they could recognize some elements she was bound to have picked up from the stories Marianne told her and her sisters. She was not nearly so agile at it, but she definitely had her own style.

She also had stories aside from Barry, as he did not have karate lessons like she did. There had been a brief campaign for it as the two children had become friends, but then it would have come in the way of his own activities, not to mention his parents thought that putting him in there would be a bad idea. For Remy, it was one of her favorite things all week long. She was doing well enough for her age group, maybe not the best of the bunch, but near enough. To see her go, she would not have cared either way. She just loved it so much.

From Kacey and her 'quadruplet,' Sammie, the stories were less of a made up kind, but they did paint a clear picture of how the two of them had become more and more of friends since the other girl had moved to Texas. She had been so confused to have all these things she'd known throughout her young life be taken away, to have to start over in a new city, in a new room, new house… Kacey may not have known what that was like, but she could do something to help, without even knowing that she was doing it. All she would do would be to share the things she liked and then ask about what Sammie liked. Whether they were things that either girls had done before or not, they would go and try to do some of them, together or apart. And when they'd be together again, they would talk in a great, excited squeak, of all that they'd done, in the best four-year-old way.

Kacey was most anxious to tell Santa about her skating lessons and the things she had been learning to do. She didn't get to do as much as the bigger kids, she told him, but she loved watching them, too, so that was good. They were so up close that it felt like she could have been doing it all with them. Lucas could have told Santa about 'twirly cub mode,' as he and Maya called it when she'd come back from those lessons, but then it was entirely possible that the jolly man already knew, already had seen several videos of the little blonde in action.

To no surprise, Lucy was most hesitant to speak to the man. She'd hang back, close to her father, even as her friend Felicity surged ahead, no issue in talking about loads of things. If anything, she'd be baffled and she'd try to get Lucy to join her, but it was to no avail. Lucy would just shake her head and try to hold to her father even more. Lucas would say this was no surprise, with Lucy's overall demeanor, but then Santa… In years past, when she'd had encounters with him, in whatever way he'd appeared, it had generally gone one of three ways. Santa on television or print? Vague curiosity. Santa in person out in the world? Hard pass. Santa when he showed up at the house at their Christmas parties? A giddy thrill. In this instant, standing in the archive with her, Lucas looked down to his little daughter with the thought that she just might have known, on some instinctual level, that one Santa was her dear dad, and no other would compare or gain her trust, not even one who looked vaguely like her good pal Carson.

Santa disparities aside, Lucas knew that once they were out of here, Lucy and Felicity would be stuck at the hip. They loved playing together all the time, more so at the ranch, but most of all on pool days, which Felicity had told Santa all about, while Lucy had stood holding her father's hand and occasionally nodding in her agreement. They were very good memories for her. She would get so excited when it would be time to put on her swimsuit, so much so that she'd be known to ask and wear it even on regular days. She'd sometimes wear it under her regular clothes, earning her the nickname of Super Bun-Bun.

The actual classes would be pretty fantastic, too. She had Felicity, who she adored above all others. Right after her though would have to be the two instructors, Miss Hannah and Mx Harrow. The pair of childhood best friends were as dynamic a duo as the little swimmers could hope for. Oh, if he asked, Lucy would giggle and assure that her favorite instructor was Uncle Keith, who had first taught her, but Hannah and Harrow were something else. They made Lucy love to be in the pool even more, and she already loved it so much. She couldn't know how happy it made her parents to see her happy like this, happy and thriving apart from her triplets. And the same went for Kacey and Remy, too.

Finally, it was time to say goodbye to Santa and leave the archive, off on another activity. Today was a special day, which meant that some things stayed the same, while others…

"Hi, guys!" Marianne matched her little sisters' energy very well as she spotted them coming. They all saw each other at roughly the same moment and immediately went dashing toward one another, three little greens and one red.

There was this awareness between all of them that, between the triplets in green, Tori in blue, and Marianne in red, they had Friars in three of the four groups. They couldn't wait for the day where they might have some of them in each group, like their very own Born Curious network. Lucas, meanwhile, was just fine with them being where they were, little as they were.

"We're gonna win!" Remy hollered with all her four-year-old might, and as used as they were to her outbursts, her sisters still jumped before they could voice their agreement. Yes, they would win.

It might have made some sense to pair the greens with the blues and the reds with the yellows, but all that would have gotten them would have been 'little kids versus big kids.' So, instead, they were doing greens and reds versus blues and yellows, which worked very well for the four sisters. Tori was disappointed not to be with them, but then she wasn't without friends in her group, and it was all just for a game. She would give her best, same as the rest.

"Dad, guess what!" Marianne walked at Lucas' side as he and Dylan and Bobby led the green group over toward the red. She had that bright gleam about her, the one he'd see whenever she'd be eagerly waiting to share something with him, big group business he wouldn't have known about, now that he'd returned to the greens.

"What?" Lucas asked the one and only correct question.

"We were doing Christmas carols before, all of us," Marianne gestured back to her group and her monitors. "It was like we were a choir; it was so much fun. And we were thinking, after the game, we could go and do some more songs for the horses. Can we do that?"

"Sure, you can," Lucas smirked, more so as his daughter quietly cheered at this. "I bet they'll love it. Maybe you guys can show the greens one or two songs, too."

"We can do that, yeah!"

Lucas missed being with her on these afternoons. He would never trade the time he was enjoying now with Kacey, Remy, and Lucy, never, but it didn't change the fact that, in order to make it so, he'd had to step off the track that Marianne was still riding on, along with her friends. Every now and then, as he and his group would move through the ranch, he would see them, a cluster of children in red bandannas, and all he'd need to know would be that they were having a good time, which they were… And still… He'd see those kids he'd followed, most of them, since they were four or five, now at eight and nine, and he'd wonder where the time had gone.

Marianne, for her part, seemed to be years ahead of him. She had barely entered red group, but she was looking ahead to when she would have graduated yellow group and aged out of the program. He could see her watching him, watching Dylan, and Bobby… They were monitors, and she very much wanted to be one of those as soon as she got too big for the program, so she was going to watch, learn, emulate… Lucas noted it especially in times, like these, when green and red connected.

"Look at her go," Dylan smirked. "Pretty soon, she's going to take our jobs." Lucas was thinking the same as he watched her. It was those big sister reflexes in her, they knew, and they were translating very well here as she stood tall in the midst of the many four and five-year-old campers.

The best close to the day they could have asked for took place at the stables, the red and green groups perfectly attired to serenade the horses with Christmas tunes…

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners