A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

July 8th 2023

Chapter 189
We Surround in Leaves & Festival

"What do you have there, Lucky?" Maya asked. She'd been up on a ladder when she'd spotted her littlest one marching in her direction with a basket gripped in both her hands and a happy smile that consumed her whole face, all of this coming together to tell her one thing: Mommy, come see what I got! So, she climbed down in time to land before Aubrey and her basket. She gripped it still and didn't hand it over, which informed Maya that the contents were precious. So, she looked inside, keeping her hands to herself. "Got some leaves, huh?" she asked, and Aubrey nodded.

"They're pretty," she declared. Maya bit back a laugh and went ahead and knelt before the three-year-old, so she could reach in and hold up these pretty leaves of hers for show.

"Some good ones you got there, yeah," she agreed as Aubrey nodded along and set the leaves delicately back in her basket. "You want us to press them?" Maya asked and, at the puzzled look on her face, she explained to Aubrey, and now she beamed and confirmed this was what she'd been after, because her big sister had told her that she'd be able to make it so she got to keep her leaves. "We'll do it when we get home, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," Aubrey nodded. Oh, was she happy about this… even more than her getting to help along with her parents for the approach of the Fall Festival. Her tasks were very important as far as she was concerned, and she could do so much more now, she knew, because she was a 'bigger girl' than she'd been last time.

It would never stop being one of her favorite times of the year, and the same would go for Lucas, with how it had been the first big event they had attended together as new friends, and that was the energy she'd take with her into school with her students. According to Nellie, Gracie, MJ, and now Haley, she more than earned her spot among the planning committee with how she made so many of the kids at the high school stop and think 'you know what, I want to go to the Fall Festival.' Some of the students had been walked back from an attitude of 'oh, I'm too old for this,' and they ended up embracing the spirit of the festival all over again. If she did that for them, Maya was glad. Any chance she got of seeing them happy…

The school year was still new, relatively speaking, but with a couple more weeks under their belts, everyone was starting to settle in. They hadn't made it to the beginning of a lot of things yet, but it was starting to get easier to figure where a lot of them would land, either in carrying on with an activity they had done one to three years already, or something new they would choose to try, or if they were freshmen, exploring their options for the very first time. Naturally, this year saw many more of those options, didn't it, thanks to Sandra Davenport and her expansions. Was there some petty part of her that made Maya wish that no one express a single shred of interest toward any of these new teams? Maybe. But she knew it wouldn't be like that, and meanwhile the rest of them, those tied to the arts most of all, were already feeling the tightening of what they were all able to do for their students. They were not giving up though, never.

When they finally reached the day of the festival's opening, Maya fully expected she would have to go through the whole song and dance of 'civility' with the woman, but she was not going to let that thought linger, wouldn't let it distract her from what would be a wonderful day with her husband and their daughters, their granddaughters… Waking up that morning they had already known to expect a whole lot of rushing along from the girls, so they could head out as soon as possible. Everyone got dressed on their own, and they mostly did great, just one inside out, wrong side around shirt, which Marianne had seen to, and then some mismatched socks that were not actually mismatched on purpose but, once noticed, were left alone because, as far as their wearers were concerned, it made them even better. Their parents couldn't see anything wrong with that argument, so on they went.

And once they arrived at the festival, the (very, very long) wait (according to the girls) was so very worth it. They had been involved in some of the preparations, yes, but seeing it now, like this… It was so much better. There was music now, and the sounds of all the people going around, and there was the smell of all the foods, sweet here, salty there… a bit of both and plenty more… None of them knew where to look first, run first, what to try first, and that kind of dilemma was just the perfect kind for them to have. They had a whole day ahead of them to untangle it all, so off they all went to get started.

Even without going out of her way to make any of her students want to go, she couldn't deny that she had hoped to some extent it would be something that interested their sophomore XC. Both Maya and Lucas had gone into this year with the drive to make it a great one for Brett, whether it was at school or at the ranch, and they did feel that they had succeeded at it on the whole. They never forgot that he hadn't chosen to be here, and they had seen it in him when he'd first arrived, but these last few weeks already he had started to open up and show who he was beyond 'the kid that got dumped into an exchange program.' At school, in art, he showed that he might not have been as into drawing or painting, but he had a curiosity for creation that made Maya fully willing to explore options, bring in different mediums earlier in the year or for the first time altogether. This was good. They could always benefit with making their art class more intensely artful, couldn't they? Especially now…

"Signora Friar!" a joyful voice called out, and Maya didn't know what made her smile more, between the way Lucas reacted to this, and the way the girls reacted, and what she saw when she turned in the direction of the call. There was Gianna, and she was jogging in their direction, with Noor right behind her looking like she'd just seen her guest take off and had figured she might as well follow her so she wouldn't get lost. "Look! Look, see?" Gianna asked, tugging at the edges of her t-shirt so that her art teacher would see that she was wearing one of their combo TXNY/Hexes shirts. It had not been entirely surprising, knowing that TXNY had long had a great following in Italy, and seeing how the junior band was following in their tracks that way, to learn that she knew of them. She hadn't heard much of their music before, but she'd for sure caught up since then.

"I see it, yes," Maya chuckled while Gianna spotted the girls and waved at them, getting great waves in return before she could tip her head and smile to Lucas, too.

"You are performing today, yes?" she turned back to her teacher, checked to find that Noor had caught up, and turned again.

"Yeah, we are, in… a little under two hours," Maya reported after checking the time. It almost went without saying, with how she was involved in the planning, that both of the bands would be called on to perform. The Hexes were still fairly new, but TXNY had history with the city and with its music scene, to the point where it would have felt wrong not to have them there.

"I tell my cousin that you are my teacher, and he can not believe that I came here, and he did not. But I remind him that he is older, and it would not have worked. He already knows all about you and your band," Gianna nodded.

"Well, we'll have to see if we can do something about that before you head back home next summer," Maya laughed, and Gianna found this to be a very solid plan. "Hey, where's Freddie?" Maya asked the two girls. It wasn't as though they were all stuck at the hip, but with something like the festival, she was sure that he'd be with them.

"He's on his way… I think," Noor informed her teacher, though the look on her face was one of uncertainty. Her best friend might have been problems sharing their time together with Gianna, for one reason or another, and if that was the case, then Noor could only do so much so not to appear disappointed.

They saw other band shirts in the crowd, wherever they went, and it never got any better than when they saw those shirts on the people who were attending to watch someone they loved on that stage. Dylan and Zay were always to be counted on for being 'shirt husbands,' supporting Riley and Nadine when they performed with TXNY, and it would be just their style. On the Hexes' side, there was no doubt that Maia Bennett won the award for looking the coolest while wearing a band shirt, the better to cheer on her enbyfriend. She wasn't alone in sporting 'the merch' though. She'd also have Jack Weston, there to support his girlfriend, Jenny Marshall, and to Maya it was impossible to decide who was the sweetest about this, Jack himself, in the audience, or Jenny on the stage, every time she'd see him and his shirt, looking so proud of her and of being her boyfriend.

"Mom, Mom," Marianne came up to the edge of the stage while the bands were preparing for the start of their performance.

"What is it?" Maya approached her, thinking maybe for a moment that something was wrong with one of her sisters, or her father…

"Is it okay if we go say hi? Maybe not all of them will want us to," Marianne stated, turning to indicate something further back. Maya looked up and followed her finger, trying not to sound exasperated by the mislead. She figured out what she was on about before long. The Mamas…

Though they probably wanted none of it, the three of them were very noticeable, anytime they went around together. They could just have been three pregnant friends, but they all looked as young as they were, and people would look at them, talk about them as though they couldn't notice it. Madelyn was the smallest but also the furthest along, and it showed, though Max and her twin belly were not far behind. Marie looked like she'd had a growth spurt in the short time since the school year had started, enough that seeing her with the others would have people acting as though any one of them could pop if someone stared at them too long.

"Sure, yeah, but you remember…" Maya told her daughter, who was already moving back to her sisters.

"We'll be good, promise!" Marianne called back, and Maya sighed. She watched her girls moved toward the trio, Lucas following after them. It wasn't as though she didn't trust them to behave themselves, but she knew that this time remained fraught for the young mothers, even the one among them she knew for sure was aiming to actually be a mother once she gave birth. She was glad to see that the encounter went well, and all parties went away smiling.

When the performance finally began, it was everything both the audience and the bands could have wanted. Everyone was in the spirit of music, and energy was being fed back and forth among them. For the members of TXNY, especially those who had been there from day one and for most of their years, it was deeply satisfying to know that, despite the fact that the exhaustion hit them very differently as working mothers nearing forty once the show would be over, when they were on stage, they could still have been in high school. The thrill remained, and because of that, so did they.

Another thing to make them feel excited up there – for Maya in this case – was finding her people where they stood, and even after their having been in Texas for two years now, there was still a part of her that would spot them and feel a jolt. She had not forgotten what it was like, to be too far away to see Abigail, and James, and her Hart-Lane siblings. Sure, by now, even if they hadn't moved in the Oswalds' old house, there would only have been one of those left for her to miss, with the rest of them having moved to Austin to live with her through college… But was she ever glad that she got to have her Maisie right there, to get to watch her grow up and to someday have the privilege of having at least one Hart-Lane among her roster of students.

"That was so good!" her baby sister declared as she came running up to her after the show. Maya caught her in a good hug as soon as she could, pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

"Thought so, huh?" she smirked down at her.

"Yeah," Maisie nodded before reaching down to take her hand and walking off, pulling her along to follow.

"Where are we going?" Maya laughed. She really could have done with something to drink, sitting down for a few minutes, but Maisie won out, so she followed and was led her overall youngest sibling to her overall eldest. "Hey, Sammy, is this your doing?" she called to her brother.

"Joint effort," Sam replied, with an amused look on his face that made his wife roll her eyes and laugh.

Maya didn't know what it was about the scene as a whole, but she didn't have to work very hard to figure out exactly why her brother and Dora had summoned her, even as the latter's cousin was being brought to join them by six young blondes. She only had to think it that they knew she'd figured it out, and they confirmed it. The season was turning, the leaves were falling, and Francesca and Timothy Calahart would have a new baby brother or sister, maybe in time for the Spring Festival.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners