May 21st 2023

Chapter 141
We Collect Flowers & Lights

Marianne had wanted to help with the cleaning up following the Equestrian Ball even before it had started. This was hardly a surprise to anyone. The girl loved decorating just as much as she did putting everything back as it was, storing away everything back where it had come from, taking things down... Maybe it was relaxing for her. Either way, she was always the first to volunteer, so who would they be to turn her away?

"Do you have it?" Britt O'Connell asked.

"A little to the right, I can't reach... Got it!" Marianne smiled, holding the string of lights she'd just unstuck at its first fastening. "Keep going, next one."

"Okay, hold on tight..."

Lucas stood nearby, observing the scene in equal measures for amusement and a need to ensure his daughter's safety as she sat astride the former exchange camper's shoulders. He didn't know what he expected to do should she fall, but if he could safeguard her then his own well-being didn't matter so much to him. Not that he didn't trust Britt, because he did, but it was his child up there... and she could just as easily decide to flip back down to her feet.

Marianne made it down safely, and she went about winding up all the lights that she and Britt had gotten down. She knew just how to get them ready for storage and she loved to do it whenever she got the chance. At Christmas, the last couple of years, they'd gotten her sat there for over an hour, working away at the load they'd taken down from outside, and on the tree... There were pictures, and of course Maya had drawn it, then painted it... In her painting, the lights were aglow with color, shining on the girl's face. She looked a lot like that, sitting there with her lights while Britt moved on to her next task, coordinating the decoration storage in Donna's place. It was enough that Lucas was half startled to hear her address him.

"Dad, you know the fall festival..." Marianne asked, and he looked over to find her staring back at him.

"Do I know about it?" he asked back, smiling at the way she rolled her eyes.

"I know that you know about it, I meant..." she sighed, decided to start over. "You guys said, a while ago, about how we were going to do something like that, here, only for the spring. Are we going to do it? It's spring soon, you know?"

"Soon, it is," he agreed. That wasn't going to be enough of an answer.

"But you need time to prepare something like that, right? You need to get people, with booths, with food trucks, performers, and then there's publicity, and tickets, and prizes..." Marianne counted off as though the ideas each popped up in her head out of the blue and just as quickly rushed to be spoken. Lucas smiled.

"Prizes," he repeated. She firmly nodded.

"For the scavenger hunt."

"Right, I see, yeah," he tipped his head. "Now, who's going to plan that..."

"I think you know," Marianne replied, sounding so like her mother that it made him laugh.

"Starting to know a lot of things... Not nearly as many as you, apparently," he gave her a look, and she just grinned, going back to her lights. "I wonder if we might have the privilege of a sneak peek of the Silvan's next great musical production," Lucas slowly suggested, which immediately got his daughter's attention back on him, wide eyes on high.

"Oh, could we?" she asked, face full of ideas. He could bet that she was now rotating through the list of numbers, deciding which one they should do. It might not have been her decision in the end, but she would absolutely argue her case.

"Well, I'll have to get in touch with the theater, and then we'll see." Oh, she wasn't going to be able to sit still so long as they didn't know for sure, was she?

Once they had seen to the lights, Marianne and her father attached themselves to the group seeing to the flowers from the ball. It was very important to all of them to see that nothing went to waste, nothing be thrown out in haste, and Lucas could see his daughter was happy to know that. Were it up to her, she would take every single one of them back home. Surely, her aunts or her mother would think of something to do with them, so not to let them fade away when they still had some beauty to offer the world... or the family at least.

"You just want flowers everywhere, huh?" Lucas smiled at her as she fussed with a few she had already for sure claimed to keep.

"Not everywhere, Dad," she shook her head at him. "That'd be too much, and it wouldn't be right."

"Good, so long as we're on the same page there," he gave her a look. She responded by taking one of the flowers and sticking it in his hair, and either the result or his face or both must have been hilarious for how they made her giggle. "Is it good? Do I need more? What about you? You need one, too," he pointed to the flowers so she might hand him one, which she did before standing in place, to let him set it in her hair. He might have said how he was starting to get used to the red hair, but that would only make her even more anxious for her summer hair...

"Oh, I know! We can bring some to Nana and the others out there," she pointed to where the sets stood. "Maybe they can put the flowers while they're filming. And that way, we'll get to see them again," she nodded, convinced in herself. There was no arguing against that, was there? Whether or not the flowers would be put on set wouldn't matter. Once Katy got her hands on them, she'd make sure they ended up where they needed to be.

So, they loaded up the flowers that Marianne had selected onto a cart, which she pushed while her father followed her. Walking to the sets would take them past the stables where the horses had been stolen, where he and Sylvie had been attacked, and Lucas did his best not to dwell on it. He didn't want to get stuck until his fears settled in and would not be moved. He had spent years feeling unease over a fence, for an event he had not been born to witness, so what would it be when he had very much been part of the event? He was coming back to the ranch now, was doing as much work as his body would allow, so he had to face this problem head on, not shrink away from it. Everyone told him to take his time, and he did, but maybe there was such a thing as taking too much time, too.

Things had changed since that November night. The security surrounding the ranch, up until then, had always seemed adequately minimal. They had everything under control, and any incidents they might have encountered were wholly under control. After what had happened, even as Lucas had been out of commission, the rest of the team had been left to consider what had happened and what needed to be done so that it hopefully never happened again. None of them wanted things to go overboard, until Sullivan Stables lost its spirit, but they couldn't just sit back and do nothing either.

Lucas had heard about a lot of it while he'd been in the hospital, and he hadn't agreed with all the measures as they would be mentioned to him. Some he had vehemently set aside, while others had demanded some reflection before he was able to agree and let them carry on. By the time he'd started to come back and spend time at the ranch, he'd been glad to see that, while the changes were noticeable, they weren't so bad that the ranch didn't feel like itself anymore.

One of the most important things to him was that his family would continue to feel like this was part of their home, and they did. Marianne was very familiar with the team attached to the series, the sets and the animals that were attached to them. They were familiar with her, too, and they greeted her warmly every time. When she offered them a flower each, they all thanked her, pinning their gifts anywhere on their person that they could. Beyond them, it didn't take long for Marianne to spot the person she'd been looking for and briefly abandon her cart. They were not filming at the moment, which meant...

"Nana!" she called out.

Katy looked up, as did several others within earshot, and they beamed at the sight of the girl running toward them, while Katy had the biggest smile, opening her arms at the ready to welcome her granddaughter. When it would be the two of them and their excitement levels would match, oh, it would be hard not to fall in line with their energy. Lucas watched them as they walked back toward him, as Marianne told her grandmother all about the flowers they had brought. His mother-in-law had a look to her - readily transferred to her daughters and now in turn to her granddaughters - that already told him he had been correct to think the matter of the flowers would be quickly resolved.

Katy was also told of the talk Lucas and Marianne had previously had regarding the idea of the spring festival, which she immediately liked. She loved the part where they might get some of the cast of the Silvan's Annie production, including her grandbaby girl, to perform. Lucas was sure that he could have left the whole matter in her hands, and she could have it settled in no time.

She had unofficially been Marianne's acting coach for all of her life, this because her granddaughter had looked up to her for as long as she'd been able to look at a screen and see her and understand that this was her Nana. Too many times to count – to the point where they barely took note of it after a while – the little one would see her grandmother do something and imitate her. The more she'd do it, she would just nail it. When she'd gotten her role for the previous musical, she had consulted with her grandmother on how to make herself cry for a scene. She hadn't told her parents, the better for her to test her skill on them and see if they would fall for it. They had, and when they'd realized that they'd been fooled, they had truly not known what to think of it. She had made them feel her anguish, which might not have seemed difficult, seeing as they were her parents, but... Oh, she was getting very good, and there was no one as proud as her Nana Katy.

Marianne couldn't wait to get home and tell her mother and the others about the spring festival and her performance. In her mind, the whole thing was a done deal, and maybe it wasn't, officially, but leave it up to her father and it soon would be, no doubt. Maya had the same reaction her mother had done, which made Lucas laugh and in turn got her curious. When he told her what he'd been thinking, she just smirked. She couldn't exactly argue with his claim. People were wasting no time in telling her that she was turning into her mother in some aspects, and once upon a time she might have taken offense from this, but now she could only take it as an honor. Her mother was only ever an inspiration to her, and she'd count herself lucky to resemble her in any way.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners