Page 10 of Searching for Thanksgiving

“Were we this hard to tell stories to?” Jade muttered.

“Worse,” Jabir replied.

“Looks! It’s a talking Grombot!” James squealed, sitting up.

“That’s just Jabir. It would be cooler if he was a zombie Grombot that had its eyes all swollen and drool hanging… ow! What’s you do that for?” Leo complained, turning to glare at Morah after she smacked him with a throw pillow.

“I don’t wants a Halloween story. I wants a Thanksgiving story. Now everybody be quiet and listens!” Morah ordered in a stern voice.

“You’re bossy,” Leo complained before quickly falling silent when Morah shot him a glare of warning and lifted another pillow.

“Where was I?” Amber asked.

“Thanksgiving was running away from the bad monster who wanted to capture and keep Thanksgiving all to itself,” Phoenix whispered.

“Oh, yeah. Thanks. Okay, Thanksgiving was running and running and running until she reached a part of the woods that she had never been to before,” Amber continued.

“What part…?” Pearl started to ask before clamping her lips together at Morah’s threatening glare.

“Lost and alone, Thanksgiving collapsed, exhausted and near death,” Amber exclaimed in a sorrowful voice.

“Oh, no!” Hope sniffed. “We gots to help Thanksgiving.”

Jade stepped forward and bent down. Her gaze swept over them. Morah could feel the excitement building as the older girl paused for effect.

“Soon, the animals gathered around Thanksgiving,” Jade whispered.

Behind her, Bálint, Roam, Jabir, and Zohar emerged from behind the chairs that looked like huge trees. Morah sat forward, her eyes locked on where Phoenix had fallen to the floor. The cloak covered her and she appeared to be sleeping. The boys encircled Thanksgiving.

“What’s they doing? Are they going to eats her?” Leo asked in a hopeful tone.

Amber scowled at Leo while the boys snickered. Morah threw the other throw pillow at Leo. She huffed with satisfaction when the soft pillow bonked the back of his head. He turned with a hiss and shifted to his black panther form. In seconds, story time had devolved into a pillow fight between dragons and cat-shifters. It wouldn’t have been so bad as the girls outnumbered the boys, except that Sacha and Pearl took exception to their cousin being outnumbered by the dragons.

Morah heard the chortle of laughter from the older boys while the older girls just sighed. She yelped when Leo bit down on her tail. With gleaming eyes full of retribution, she did what any self-respecting future Priestess would do… she lit Leo’s tail up like a candle!

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