A/N: One day behind...

July 31st 2023

Chapter 212
We Wish For Magic

All through his time with all of them – because of course he was still alternating between all the groups where his daughters and granddaughter were present – Lucas had been made aware of some very important fact, and this overwhelmingly the same across the board. They were very excited for that evening, for the fairies. Some of them did know the truth of it and were excited for that, while the rest continued to trust to the tale of the magical little creatures slipping into their home, the better to wrap it up in all the decorations and the lights that their young hearts desired.

The ride home for the six Friar sisters was as merry as the day called for, and when they got home, the little sisters especially seemed to approach the house with caution and curiosity, like they expected to spot one or two of their fairies just cooling their heels while they waited until everyone had gone to bed in order to get to work. Lucas did nothing to discourage them of that, and neither did Marianne, as she went over and looked with them.

"Daddy," Lucy walked in front of him, stopping him before he could go over and join 'the search.' Lucas looked down at her, stalled with Maya's eyes staring back at him through their littlest triplet.

"Yeah, bun?" he asked. She looked over at the twins, standing nearby and looking on like they were waiting for her to do something. Lucy looked nervous, just the kind that they'd come to know as her 'I think I did something bad' face. Generally speaking, it was never actually a bad thing, but she would think so anyway.

"I told them," she nodded over to Kacey and Remy. "About the fairies, who they really are," she went on, keeping her voice down. "But not really, I mean… They figured it out a little," she explained, looking at them again, and this time they stepped forward. They looked halfway between bummed out and mad, at knowing that there were not actually fairies, and maybe at knowing that they had been tricked all this time. Lucas let out a sigh, reached out to pull the three of them into his arms. They'd kind of figured that this would either be the last year where they believed or the first when they knew, like Lucy already did. They'd hoped for another year, who could blame them?

They didn't have much time to dwell on the questions, not as their helpers and fellow secret fairies started to trickle in. MJ and Haley came along first, joining their three sisters in their efforts. Ella and Taylor came, along with baby Sunny – moral support for the night, as they'd call her – as did Sam and Dora, after dropping off Francesca and Tim across the road with Abigail and James for the evening. It was the easiest way to guard them from 'the truth,' dropping them off for a casual night at Grandma and Grandpa's. They were quickly surrounded in nieces who – to Sam's 'relief' – crowded one as much as the other and not just Dora, the better to feel and see if the new baby was grown enough now that they could feel anything at all. It was still too early for anything like a kick, but they could for sure feel that her belly was rounding up, and that was already something. With all of them there, the night could begin, first with the disguise of family dinner.

As they got closer to the start of 'fairy time,' Lucas found himself thinking about the year before, in more ways than one. For sure, he would think about how little he had been able to do for the decorating last time, but more than anything he would think of the reason why. He would think about how it had been just over a year now since the attack at the ranch.

He had been well aware of the anniversary when it passed but, honestly, he had done everything he could not to draw attention to it. Others had known that the day had come, too, and the overall reaction was always that they didn't know exactly to be about it with him. They didn't want to make things any more awkward than they had to be, which inevitably made it the most awkward it could ever be. They all meant well, but he didn't want to start talking about it again. He just wanted the day to come and go and for life to continue on. So, it had.

But now here was this reminder out of nowhere, and it caught him up in a way he had not expected that it would. He picked up one of the boxes, saw the decorations through the clear lid, and he remembered exactly how he'd felt that night, felt it so much that it left a twinge in his back, a ghost pain he had to stop and assure himself was not real. He was not there anymore. It was behind him, behind all of them. Whatever odds he might have needed to surpass back then, he had done it, and he knew it as well as anyone else. Maybe for that, he hated the feeling he got when he remembered…

"Dad, say hi," Marianne's voice startled him, pulling him from his thoughts. He looked over and saw that his firstborn held a tablet facing out for him to see. On the screen, there was a boy, who in reality was miles and miles away.

"Hi, Mr. Friar," Haru waved, looking as though he was lying belly down on the floor somewhere in his home, propped up on his elbows and looking at his own screen.

"Hey, bud, what…" Lucas waved back at him, confused.

"I told him about all this when he was in Austin last summer," Marianne went ahead and explained. "And we had ideas about what we could do that would be new this time, see?" she whipped out a couple of sheets of paper, which she handed over to him. Looking at them, all covered in her sometimes neat, sometimes messy handwriting – it all depended on how she felt or how fast she was going – he smiled. Now this was the kind of memory he didn't mind coming at him. It made him think, of all things, about the notes he used to take, back in high school, while planning his first dates with Maya.

"Wow, that's a lot of stuff," he declared, and both his daughter in front of him and her friend on the screen smiled and nodded with pride. "Okay, well, some these we don't have all the materials…"

"Yeah, we do," Marianne told him, and he looked at her. "I asked Ella, and she and Taylor got them for me. They're getting them out of their car now, look," she pointed out the window, and one quick look confirmed the tale.

"Huh… So that's how it is," he slowly nodded, looking down at Marianne again. "You're coming for my job as the big planner," he mock accused.

"Yup," Marianne simply replied, with the biggest grin on her face. "Give me the crown," she pointed to her head, and he happily removed the invisible thing from his head and set it over hers.

"You hold on to that," he pointed, and she nodded, reaching to straighten it up.

Lucas went and helped his daughter and his son-in-law to get the 'supplies' into the house. They were both of them so genuinely thrilled to be here tonight, and he could guess why without their saying a word. This would be their Sunny's first Christmas, and they wanted to make it as magical as could be, even if she would know or recall very little of it at four months old. The best they could hope for was a lot of wonderment as she experienced it, even if she would retain no part of it. The feeling was absolutely mutual when it came to Sunny's grandparents and her band of young aunts. Maya had already voiced a 'concern' that she would go overboard with Christmas gifts for her second granddaughter. Lucas could for sure attest to this; he had taken to saying they had a stockpile, down in the basement, of Sunny presents.

Everyone had their tasks and, as Lucas helped implement Marianne and Haru's plan downstairs along with the triplets and Ella, Maya was upstairs, working away in the green room, where Mackenzie and Aubrey slept innocently unaware. She'd chosen to do this one, she could admit to herself, out of this feeling of… pre-emptive nostalgia. How many more years would they have before these two also knew about the real fairies and the night stopped being what it had always been? Yes, sure, they had Finneas to count on for a bit, too, but there was no telling how long he'd be living in the house, especially once Wyatt graduated college. Her baby girls might well always be her babies, the little sisters, and as okay as that would be…

When Mackenzie started to fuss in her sleep, Maya quickly went and crouched by her bed, putting to work her 'tried and true' techniques for settling her down. Each of her girls had her own thing that worked best, and Maya knew them all. It wasn't immediate, and Mackenzie reacted to the touch. Her eyes opened a sliver and fixed on Maya, who froze, aware of the lights already twinkling behind her.

"Are you a fairy?" her funny macaroni's little voice asked, and Maya bit back a laugh. Yes, that would do.

"That's just what I am," she intoned, as 'fairy-like' as she could make herself. "So, you need to go back to sleep, my little one. Will you do that?"

"Uh huh, I promise," she mumbled, and Maya suspected that her tactics were most deserving of the praise there than her ruse. Soon, she was sound asleep again, and Maya was able to get back to work.

When all the work was good and done, the fairies gathered in the living room, the better to take in their handiwork. Some of their fairies, the youngest and most recent additions, from the moral support to those more 'hands on,' were already asleep there on the couch, but the others were awake and feeling the effects of their own work.

"Can I say, this is my favorite part, every year," Sam stated, smiling, as he sat with his arm around his wife's shoulders. She was getting on the sleepy side, too, resting against him.

"I can see why," MJ declared, looking around just as Haley did. He had called himself 'purveyor of stars' that night, adding a sprinkling of his favorite thing wherever he could. "Getting a lot of ideas for back home."

"Can't wait to see how Finn reacts when he sees it all." Unlike Sunny, at nearly a year and a half, Finneas Hart-Lane would for sure get much more out of the whole thing, more than he'd done on his first Christmas. It was still debatable whether he had the means to remember any of it for too long, but it didn't matter. It was a new milestone for him, and his father was always most thrilled for those.

Maya and Lucas were the last to head up to bed that night, as they would be. They couldn't wait for their daughters' reactions. Whether or not they already knew that all this would be here, they were sure that every last one of them would go around with sparkling eyes. It was about to be a magical day for all of them, and knowing or not knowing, they would all get to feel it together. There really could not be any better way for them to ring in the start of the holiday season.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners