Ah, that wonderful feeling when your thread has a "this thread is more than X days old." warning.
***
"So, want to play something? Hide and seek or…?" you ask. It's a leading question. Your siblings
love hide and seek. Honestly you kind of do too, there's something primally satisfying about it. Sadly, they're much, much better at the 'hiding' part than you are.
Astrid and Markus cheerfully voice their support for said proposal, and the other three seem to be enthusiastic enough. Astrid's friend, being her age, is curiously determined and serious considering she is about to play hide and seek. Much like your friends and you, having been together with Astrid for years has led her to develop the kind of bizarre competitive streak that you need to keep up with polar bears in physical contests.
Markus' friends by contrast are getting to be a little hesitant. Probably they're starting to find it hard to enjoy given the disparity in ability. Also the fact they're ten now, and have things like video games instead of hide and seek or whatever. Oh well, they'll live.
"Alright, I'm terrible at hiding, so I might as well be the first seeker. I'll count to twenty, so get going!" You call out and close your eyes. The sounds of a dozen small feet rushing away flow into your ears, making them twitch ever so slightly as you count out loud.
"En!" You shout out the first count. Most of them have reduced their speed now that they're some distance away, trying to prevent you from hearing where they've left for.
"To!" The wind rustles in the trees above. It's a nice breeze. Between that and the shade, you're almost not feeling hot.
"Tre!" You let your thoughts drift a bit, trying to pay less attention to the kids. No reason to go all out.
Continuing to call out your count, you briefly contemplate how things are changing. Your siblings are playing more with their friends lately, you feel. Their interests are diverging too, except for polar bear stuff. There's a lot you share and will keep on sharing, but there's a part of you starting to realize the three of you are pretty different, and that as your siblings grow older, they'll probably have less time to play like this with you. And to think, just some years ago, they wanted your time more than you had time to give.
"Nitten!" You call out, almost at twenty. They should've found their spots by now. Time to get the show on the road.
"Tyve!" You finish and take the hands from your eyes. The park is deathly silent. You calmly rotate around, just in case there happened to be anyone who screwed up, and to see if you can spot any likely hiding places. Twenty seconds isn't a lot of time to move, but at the same time it isn't little. The weather has been pretty dry recently, so your siblings at least will think nothing of rolling in the dirt a little, or crawling into some bushes. Markus' friends probably won't go that far.
Keeping your ears peeled for any movement, you start stalking forwards as silently as you can.
...you
suck at the stalking forwards part. A polar bear in the proverbial chinashop. Every movement seems to cause some new crunch or squeak. Forests are shit. Shit you say. The absolute worst.
Fortunately your senses are excellent, even if you do your best to stick to sight and hearing.
As you move, you spot signs of someone else recently passing through. Likely one of the kids. Ahead there's a slight slope and a lot of trees. You stop to both listen and consider. Then you slowly move sideways, rotating around that area as quietly as you can.
Sure enough, there's a boy squeezing up against a tree when your angle changes enough. First one down.
You get a bit closer, and then call out.
"Seen you. First one down."
You don't shout. No reason to make things more obvious than they have to be. The kid meets your eyes and nods. Hm, he looks a bit frustrated. You should probably play something else later.
Until then…
"Hey, wanna ride on my shoulders while I look for the rest?" You say, and immediately start getting a more positive response. It takes a moment, and then you haul him up to sit there.
"You can hold on to anything except the ears and the face, okay?" You tell him. Human children really are light. You think he's maybe, what, thirty kilograms? Forty? Thereabouts. In any case, basically nothing at all.
You do your best to make your walking smooth now though. Smooth and fast.
The second kid turns out to be Astrid. A certain reluctance to roll in the dirt while wearing one of her prettier sets of clothes means she fails to completely conceal herself in the bushes she found. The third is the other of Markus' friends, pressing himself tightly against a slight incline.
The fourth is Astrid's friend. She had climbed a tree and clung to the trunk while standing on a branch. Unfortunately for her, once you started shifting your angle she couldn't change it and she wasn't high enough for you to overlook her. You're impressed she managed to get up there though.
Thus at the end, there's only your brother, who proves annoyingly elusive, until you find a bush with broken branches from an angle not easily visible from where you started. When you finally manage to pull him out, he's covered in dirt from head to toe.
Someone is being dunked in the shower in a few hours.
After that first round, things alternate between someone else being it, and you being it because they almost always find you first.
Bloody forests.
You shift to doing some other things after a while, ending up playing football on a nice and relatively flat grassy area. It ends up being you and Astrid's friend against the other four, which turns out to be a fairly even match.
You stop when you've mostly run the humans into the ground, and while they sit down for a spell, you wrestle with your siblings to the amusement of your audience.
All in all, you kill two hours, and the first parent shows up to pick up a kid. Shortly thereafter the second one goes home. At that point you decide you might as well bring the last three over to your home. Two of them are supposed to end up there after all.
You pack up what little stuff there's left, and you end up carrying Astrid and Markus' friend, telling Markus that if he wants to be carried, he shouldn't roll around in the dirt. He pouts something fierce, but you're immune to his wiles. You wrote the adorable polar bear playbook, and your siblings still have a long while to go!
He's still disgustingly adorable though, so you ruffle his hair until he cries out and runs away in mock anger to get you to stop.
Getting home, the first thing you do is chuck Markus into the shower, and get his friend something to drink while you slap on a nice ice pack to help cool down.
The freezer is a magical invention. Your home keeps an unusually large one, so you can freeze down batch loads of ice packs in the summer. The sun is a brutal enemy sometimes.
Your friends tell you that summer in the mediterranean can be great, but you're firmly convinced that it's a human thing and intend to stay well away.
Markus' friend's dad shows up a little while after that, and you make some coffee for him while you wait for Markus to get out so he can say goodbye. There's a bit of polite chatting as he talks about his son and asks you about university and tries not to stare when you replace the ice pack, and then Markus is out of the shower and goodbyes are said and at long last, you're alone with your family again.
You promptly get dragging into wrestling with Astrid on the livingroom floor. Markus jumps in shortly afterwards.
It's soothing. Not relaxing, but soothing.
You roll over and let them climb on top of you when you hear the door opening again.
"I'm back." your mother calls out.
"Hey~" you reply, "we're in the livingroom."
Astrid and Markus chorus agreement from on top of you, nuzzling you as they do so. Your mom comes walking in after ditching her shoes, loaded down with groceries.
Your mom is a tall woman. Tall, with long white hair she often keeps tied up in a bun or ponytail to keep it out of the way. She's beautiful, you think, with an almost stately air now that she's in her low forties. On the other hand, she is also more polar bear than you - metaphorically speaking - with a litany of ancient scars, a bad habit of forgetting to keep the teeth concealed making most people do a double-take, and a lingering aggression and intensity that to this day keeps you convinced that there is no way in hell you could ever beat your mom if she gets serious.
You've been out there, in the wild. But you've never been out there alone, for years and years.
She doesn't talk about it much. You don't know if there's a reason she doesn't, and you've never been quite brave enough to ask, but you can tell it put its mark on her. There's something fundamentally different about how the two of you think, something you learned in school and something she learned amidst the ice and snow.
She tells you it's better, here, in Denmark, and you believe her. She always looks kind of tired and far away when she says it. That's probably why you find it so convincing.
"Thanks for picking them up. Had a good time, yesterday?" she asks while nudging Astrid and Markus, prodding them to get off of you and help her put the groceries away.
"Yeah, it was nice. Different, but nice. I think I'll like it." you respond, slowly lifting off the ground and in the process having your siblings sort of glide off amidst half-hearted and ineffectual complaints.
"Glad to hear it." your mom says, "when did you get home?"
"Uh, around three-ish. Had to bring Signe home first." you reply and feel a brief flicker of fear. You totally upheld the spirit. Totally.
"Hm, well, can't be helped." your mom says and you feel a vague sense of relief flooding into you. You figured you were fine, but you
really don't like being scolded by your mom. She's scary.
"Got any plans?" she asks while handing you one of the bags of groceries.
"Going to meet up with someone I met at the party tomorrow, and then out with my friends a few days later." you reply as the four of you wander into the kitchen and start putting things away.
"Already dating someone new?" your mother asks. You can't help but feel she's somehow teasing you. Fortunately, this time you get to answer differently!
"Nope. But I hope to ask her out." you reply, feeling probably prouder of this than you honestly should.
Your mom actually pauses where she stands, and both your siblings stare at you.
"You…
waited?" your mom finally asks, her tone unreadable. You kind of fidget for a bit.
"Uh. Yeah?" you say. "I can wait."
It sounds unconvincing even to you.
"Seriously, I did!" you grumble. Your mom's face quirks into a smile, and she nuzzles your cheek.
"I'm glad you did, for once." she says. "So who is it?"
"Cute rabbit girl, name's Maja." you respond while returning to your work putting away groceries.
"Ah, a girl this time." your mom says, nodding to herself.
"Do you have a picture?" Astrid asks a little excitedly. Markus also seems pretty interested. You suppose it's not surprising, they don't see that many non-humans usually.
"Well, I didn't take any, but I have her on facebook, so sure." you say as you finish emptying a bag of groceries. Maja doesn't have all that many pictures there, but there's a few of her, and she looks quite cute.
You grab your phone and open facebook. You've got a pile of chats you really kind of want to answer, but you resist temptation and instead flip over to Maja's pictures so you can show her off to your family.
Astrid coos at how cute she is, and touches her own tiny white-furred ears while she takes in the length of Maja's rabbit ears. Markus seems only vaguely interested, while your mom seems amused.
Then you're all run out of the kitchen by your mom, who needs to start making dinner. Your dad will be home in a little while, and unlike the rest of you, he doesn't work very well while hungry, so your mom tries to get dinner ready shortly before he comes back, when she has the chance.
You…
Pick one:
[ ] … are a decent cook, and often help out when you're home for it, but right now you're on sibling duty.
[ ] … sometimes make easy dinners when both your parents are busy, and will probably do OK when you move out someday. Thankfully raw meat is a wonderful and easy option for you.
[ ] … can make sandwiches and that's about the extent of it.
[ ] … weren't great during Home Economy class back before high school, and you sure have not improved.
[ ] … should not be involved in food preparation unless it involves clubbing seals and eating them raw.
***
So "write a little bit every day" is working as intended, however it turns out that if I have updates that are
longer than around a thousand words, things take a while. Who would've thought, eh?
But hey. I think this is pretty solid proof that the quest isn't going to die. Just... sort of shamble onwards. I hope you guys are fine with that, because there's no way I'm going to bother putting more effort into updating faster for
quite a while.
That said if you enjoy the quest, please do vote. It really helps with feeling like "yeah, doing this isn't totally pointless". It's how I know that you enjoy it. That or likes.
