A/N: [January 1st 2025] Happy New Year! As you'll be aware if you've been keeping up with my stories still (thank you very much if you have), I have fallen very, very behind on my daily postings. Over the past year, my job has become much more challenging in many ways, especially where this ongoing project has been concerned. As much as I tried, it was impossible for me to keep going for a long time, enough so that I eventually decided to allow time to pass and the chapters to line back up with their intended days, one year late. That's where we are now, beginning the 2024 story as 2025 begins. Somewhere in my silly, hopeful mind, I wish to someday get things back on track, but I'm also realistic enough to acknowledge that this will take a long time, if it will ever be accomplished. Either way, I have the next few months of chapters ready to go, so for now, off we go!

A HEART FOR THE ARTS
The Lucaya Project 2024

January 1st 2024

Chapter 1
The Opening of the Day

Every morning when they would walk down the stairs, the Friar children would pause to greet their late grandmother's picture on the wall. They would rush on by in a hurry, or they would stall for a brief one-sided conversation, but they would always say hello. This had created some narrative among them that, while they were waking up and making their way toward heading down from above, Melinda Friar would be waiting for them, smiling and bright as she had ever been in life.

On this morning, as she would wait for them, she might hear the frenzy already underway. This was the first day back to school! Everyone was excited, jumping and running around and talking over one another. She would hear her firstborn granddaughter's clear voice talking about how much she looked forward to heading into the sixth grade, or the triplets' three voices so united with one another that they might have been one girl… She would make out her funny macaroni, and she would feel a smile and a laugh on her face whether she caught her words or not, and her youngest granddaughter chirping with glee as she knew she'd be joining her sisters at the elementary school, heading into kindergarten. She'd even catch her grandson's little voice, joining in his sisters' volume despite the fact that he wasn't starting school yet.

"Alright, come on, EZ, time to get dressed," Lucas came and scooped up the twenty-one-month-old boy, feeling him cling on at once, as he would when he was recently awake and happy to find his mother or father. It could barely seem possible that he would be two years old in less than three months. He could still recall the fit of that newborn babe he'd found out on their doorstep…

"Hey, bud!" Maya's face brightened so wonderfully as Ezra was brought into the master bedroom.

"Mama!" he reached for her and she took him up at once, pressed sweet kisses at his cheek as she brushed her fingers through his hair. It was all over the place now, getting on the longer side but suiting him so well that they didn't feel compelled to cut it. He seemed to like it as it was, too.

And now he was going to be a big brother… Not many people knew this yet, only three of them in fact. Maya knew, and Lucas had been told, this in great part thanks to Marianne's involvement. She had been the first to find out after her mother, and it only seemed fair.

It had only been a little over a week now, and the secret would persist for the time being, but the moment she would be allowed to share the story, oh… She would tell it as often as she would have the chance to do so.

"I was just outside, throwing the ball and trying out some new jumps. I did this spin once, I was sure it wouldn't go in, and I held my breath… Anyway, I tossed the ball, and it went too high. It got stuck up there, on the roof. Almost hit the window! I ran inside, so I could grab it from out the window. I could reach it, for sure. Mom didn't hear me coming, but I guess she was thinking about other things, like how there was a pregnancy test in her hand! I've seen those before, I knew that was what it was. Then she saw me there, and she looked at me, and I looked at her, and we looked at each other… She couldn't pretend. So she asked if I wanted to wait with her, and I did. She told me what we were going to see, so I would know. I think she was just nervous and it helped her calm down. Then when the timer went off, we both looked, and it was positive! It was so fun!"

The story may not have included the sudden realization that there might be a chance of a baby, or the sneaky trip to the store to buy the test, the way it sat untouched until that next morning when she'd been alone - sort of - and she'd finally taken it… But to both Maya and Lucas, their pumpkin's version was forever going to be the definitive tale of the moment the future arrival - the following March - of another Friar was uncovered.

Had they all known about this future sibling, the girls would only have been even more excited than they already were as they all emerged from the minivan, all six of them headed into the same school, even if only for this one year, after which Marianne would be headed up to middle school. Today, at her youngest sister's request, she was walking Aubrey Friar to kindergarten, hand in hand. The five-year-old was at her jolliest already, looking at everything she saw with new eyes. She wasn't just tagging along this time. She was going to her sisters' school. She was a big girl! Well, bigger than she'd been when she'd still been in preschool… a few months ago. Not a hint of separation anxiety here. If anything, she wanted them all to leave her be before long, the better for Kindergarten to begin. In her head, it would have to have the big letter at the top.

Next on up, six-year-old Mackenzie developed a sudden and overwhelming case of the concern brows as she was brought to join her fellow first graders. This was a whole different school experience than what she'd had up to now, she knew. Now she was here, and she had a look like she was worried she would be bad at it.

"You got this, Macaw, yeah?" Maya leaned to whisper near her ear as she put her arms around her. "Day one. You just go on, one at a time, and if you need us, we're right there the whole time."

"I know," Mackenzie turned her eyes up to look at her, and it made Maya smile to see how this small bit of contact could relax her daughter's fears. Soon, she'd be joined by best friend Alia Song, and all would be better.

Their next bunch was not anxious in the slightest. They were headed into the third grade, they'd all done this before and they looked forward to being back in school, especially if they ended up in Miss Ingrid's class. Marianne had been in her class, and she'd said so many great things about her.

"Any last words?" Lucas asked the eight-year-old triplets. Some things remained familiar in them as they grew. Kacey and Remy were still identically matched to a face that was as close to their father's as it could get, while Lucy was their mother's spitting image, down to her being shorter than the twins. And for all that, seeing them together, there was no denying that they were a unit, a trio all the days of their lives, past and present.

"We're going to be with her, right?" Remy asked.

"All of us?" Lucy specified. Kacey didn't speak, but she took the smaller triplet's hand, and that said plenty. Year to year, this was always going to be the first and most important thing to them going in. They knew that there were inescapable odds that they would be split up eventually, but they marked this as 'something to worry about later.'

"Yes," Maya and Lucas nodded as one. Ezra imitated them.

"Which part?" Remy pointed at them like a summons to confess.

"Both," their parents answered together. They would amuse themselves showing the triplets that they could mirror each other as good as them. Today, it sent them off to class with great smiles.

"They have to be together next year, too," Marianne advocated as they moved on. It was only her now, though her little brother seemed to think he was going to class with her as she carried him along. "In Uncle Zay's class."

"He'll riot if they're not," Maya snickered, and Lucas nodded confidently at this, which made Marianne glad. "Just don't go putting that in their heads before next year, please?"

"I wouldn't do that," she turned a look that might have been perceived as innocent by anyone who didn't know who she came from.

"No, never," Lucas teased the eleven-year-old, and she let the 'mask' slide away into a smirk. "You know, it's not lost on me that you're going to be the same age we were when we met before we know it. That's going to be something."

"I can't wait until next year," Marianne bounced on her feet at the thought, too, and her parents laughed. "I'll go to your old school, and I'll have a new brother or sister, too!" She whispered the last part, and the reminder made them oddly emotional. They hugged their firstborn, finally confronted with the awareness of how close they were to seeing the first of their girls move out of elementary grades. It wasn't so long ago that she'd been introduced to Miss Alma's preschool class.

"And we can't wait to hear about today, okay?" Maya told her, trying not to let herself get weepy.

"Tell you all about it," Marianne vowed before setting Ezra down.

"No, Annie, no!" he protested, a great tremor of impending tears in him now, too.

"It's okay, EZ, you get to go with Dad, remember?" she knelt down to his eye level and put her arms around him. He did the same, short as his reach was compared to hers.

"Horsies," he sniffled.

"All the horsies. You tell me all of it, too, swear?"

They would proudly tell anyone who complimented Ezra's growing vocabulary - when he wasn't on the verge of tears - that the credit went in near entirety to his big sister Annie. The way she'd been there with him, talking to him, telling and reading stories, since he'd been a newborn, he had been stuck to her and learning all the while, bringing him to where he was now. It would make for amusing trips anywhere, but to the ranch most of all, as he would explore, and display his growing knowledge whenever he got the chance. Maya would constantly tease Lucas about the proud look on his face when he'd hear their boy. The fact that she was no different for her part was never brought up, though Lucas would throw her a knowing look that would get him an innocent face very alike to the one Marianne had sported earlier.

Lucas held Ezra as they walked back to the minivan, perhaps in an effort not to let the boy feel anxious at leaving his mother behind once they went their separate ways.

"Well…" Maya hummed. They sat in their seats now. She looked at him, he looked at her. Ezra looked at the images the girls had stuck above their heads, to entertain him on younger car rides.

"Well," Lucas echoed his wife. Her smile told him all he needed to know about what was on her mind. It pulled a tender laugh from him and he looked around before reaching over, setting his hands at her belly. There really wasn't a whole lot to see as of yet, but they had done this enough by now that the start of a rounding was deeply familiar. "Are you going to have stories for us, too?"

"Oh, tons," Maya confidently assured him. "And you better have some, too, Writer Man."

"It'll be a real collaboration, you and me," he declared, and immediately he could see what he'd walked into. She just grinned, placing her hand over his, over their most recent collaboration.

"The Friar Songbook," she declared it, and he agreed by leaning in to kiss her. "Better get going. Can't be late to school either."

"I'll write you a note." She snorted. She needed to hear how that would go before they split off for the day.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners