Page 9 of Searching for Thanksgiving

Morah scooted over on the couch so that Pearl, Sacha, and Hope could sit down. Leo crawled under the low table in front of it and sprawled out on his stomach on the thick carpet along with James. She reached for the popcorn Spring was handing out.

“So what’s the story about?” Pearl asked.

“It is about an Earth holiday,” Spring replied.

“Does it have blood and gore?” Leo asked, twisting to look up from under the table. “And skeletons? Oh… oh… and walking dead people!”

Morah resisted the urge to kick the table and instead ate the crunchy white pieces of fluff. The buttery taste made her and her dragon groan with delight. She loved story time because it always came with popped corn.

“This story isn’t about Halloween,” Amber stated with a wave of her hands.

“Aw. I wanted to hear how you saved us from the Queen of the Demented Symbiots again,” James moaned.

“Yeah, that is a really cool story. How you poopy-trapped the Haunted House and how our dads came to save us,” Pearl chimed in.

“It’s called booby-traps, not poopy-traps,” Sacha corrected.

“Who cares what it’s called. It is still a cool adventures. We never gets to go on cool adventures like that!” Leo complained.

“Yes, we dids. You went and got yourself lost when we was on the desert moon with the little Sands people,” Morah mumbled around a mouthful of popcorn.

“I didn’t gets lost. I found the sands worms,” Leo retorted.

“Do you want a story or not?” Jade demanded.

“We do. We do,” the younger group responded.

“Then you need to be quiet and listen. Alice, Adaline, the stage, please,” Amber said.

The living room changed until it resembled a vast forest. Morah reached out and ran her hand along the couch cushion that now looked and felt like grass. Her dragon perked up.

No, you can’ts roll in it, she said.

You no fun, her dragon huffed.

You wanted to listens to the story, so listens to the story, Morah retorted.

Her dragon huffed again but fell silent.

“Once upon a time in a remote forest, there lived a quiet, but powerful creature known as… Thanksgiving,” Amber began in a theatrical voice.

“How powerful? Could it eat people’s flesh? Why was it quiet?” Leo blurted out.

“Quiets, Leo! You has to listen to the story if you wants to know what happens,” Morah admonished.

Leo rolled over onto his back and stuck his tongue out at Morah. She threw a piece of popcorn at him. He caught the kernel in his mouth and swallowed it. She made a face at him and he grinned at her, sticking his tongue out again.

“Because the creature was so powerful, there was a bad monster trying to capture it, and so it had to run and hide,” Jade continued in a hushed, dramatic tone.

“What was the monster going to do to it? It wasn’t going to hurt Thanksgiving, was it?” Hope asked, sitting forward with an anxious expression.

“Monsters are supposed to hurt things,” Leo said.

“No, they’s not. Jade and Amber’s demented symbiots don’t hurt things. They are funs to play with,” James argued.

“What kind of name is Thanksgiving? That doesn’t sound like a scary, powerful creature,” Pearl snorted.

Amber and Jade huffed and looked at each other.

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