|
|
Chapter 2: Cecily and Robby
"Hello mama," I heard two voices. "Are the others gonna come?"
"Cecily, Robby, is that you?"
"Yes," They chimed. They were my youngest. They called out to their brothers and sisters and slowly they all came to us. I made a simple room in my mind and put 12 chairs in it and we all sat down.
"Ok, Cecily, and Robby get to go first since they were here first," I told them. "So dears, tell us what happened."
"Well," Cecily began. "Our family lives in the farthest town so we left right away. Mr. and Mrs., are very nice; they said we could call them Uncle Christopher and Aunt Emily."
"And their kids are nice too," Robby spoke up. "Benjamin, Rachel, and Timothy. We played a traveling game on the way back to their house. It was fun. And I have my own room. Cecily has to share a room with Rachel except she slept with me tonight because we missed you guys so much."
I could tell he was trying to be very brave and not cry, "That's ok Robby. I'm sure Christopher and Emily will understand perfectly," I told him.
"And there's something else," Cecily said. "The kids are two whole years apart. None of them were born the same, like us."
At that all the kids started talking, exclaiming at how far apart each of the kids in their family was.
"Children," came Silvers voice as he entered the room. "How's a person supposed to get any sleep when half the county's talking in your head." He said very grumpily but he looked so happy to see them. They all jumped up to give them a hug. "So, the whole crowd's here. I hope I won't have a headache in the morning. So what did I miss."
Cecily told him as he sat down. "The people let us call them Uncle Christopher and Aunt Emily. The kids are nice, Robby has his own room and I have to share one with the girl, but I stayed with Robby tonight because we missed everyone. And the kids are two years apart and none of them are even twins."
"Wow. That's a lot to get used to and I am amazed that you said it all in one breath." That made all the children laugh.
"Ok," I said when they had calmed down. "It's Tessa and Rose's turn. How was your day?"
"It was absolutely wonderful, momma," She loved using big words. "Our people also asked us to call them Uncle and Aunt. But ours are Uncle Nick and Aunt Anne and they only have two boys, Samuel and Andrew, they are only ten months apart but they're tow years older than us. They're ok, for being boys and all. They each had their own room before, but their sharing one now so we can have the other one. They even put up flowery wallpaper so it would look more girlie. They live in the next town over so we got to eat dinner in town before we left. It was fun."
"Yes, it was fun," Tessa echoed. She was the quietest of all my children. Most of the time she let Rose talk for her as she had done here.
"Ok. Our turn," said Grey and Perry. even though they were from different sets they were very close. Perry, the younger one, spoke for them, but not because Grey was as quiet as Tessa. "Our family left a little after Cecily and Robby's. Aunt and Uncle seems the most comfortable way to be addressed because our people asked us to do the same. Ours are Uncle Henry and Aunt Nancy. They have a girl one year older than us, a girl two years younger, and a baby boy. Their names are Melissa, Heather, and Joe. Joe is too young to play and the girls are... well, they're girlie, but we did manage to talk to them about their city."
"We'll get along ok," Grey added. "They do know some games that aren't girlish. Oh and we share a room. It used to be Mel's but it's ok." I smiled as I remembered why we put them with that family.
"Brandon, Leena, your turn," I said.
"Our people," said Brandon, "Uncle Donald and Aunt Elizabeth, also left after eating dinner in the city. Their children are Jane (she's our age), Ralph (he's a year younger), and Shawn (he's four years older). Shawn didn't talk with us much, I think because he's shy. But Jane and Ralph are fun."
"We were playing with a little ball and Ralph threw it too hard. It was going to go out of the wagon, but Shawn caught it. He handed it to me and said, "Here you go." But he would not play with us so I think he is shy," Leena paused. "I share a room with Jane and Brandon with Ralph, but tonight we asked if all four of us could be in one room. They didn't mind at all. Mother you did a wonderful job picking families for us."
" Thank you dear. I did my best. Heza, Sky, your turn."
"Our people," said Heza. "Uncle Frank and Aunt Lily, have two kids: Bruce and Ashley. Bruce is six months older than us and Ashley is eight months younger. They live here in the city so we played with some of their friends after dinner. We had fun."
"We did," agreed Sky. "I'm going to share a room with Bruce and Heza will share Ashley's room, but tonight we asked to sleep in their guest room. We told them we would rather face this first night together."
"Talking like this is so fun. Can we do this every night?" Cecily asked.
"I hope so Cecily. You won't seem so far away if I can talk to you all every night," I told her.
The familles were not perfect, of course, so each child had his or her little difficulties to overcome; each night they would tell me what happened and how they dealt with it. Robby was a very clean, very neat, very organized person. The boys of the family he was staying with were not particularly neat in their own right; they were normal messy boys. Cecliy was very fond of watching the weather. The sister of the afor mentioned boys was more interested in dolls and tea parties. Now I know you may think that the weather and the dolls have nothing in common and at first the girls thought so as well. I shall let them tell you how they solved their problems.
"We don't really have anything in common," I told my mother. "Her favorite game is "Tea with Betty Sue" and mine is "What dose that cloud look like?" Playing with dolls is fun sometimes, but not as fun as watching the weather. Let me show you what happened today," And we were suddenly at my second home. I watched as my before self climbed onto the roof and lay back on it. A little while later the little girl Rachel popped her head over the side of the roof. She was standing on the porch railing.
"Cecliy please come play dolls with me," she asked. "You can't stay out here for long any way 'cause it's about to rain."
"I want to watch the storm grow."
"Storms don't grow. They just come and rain and then they leave to go somewhere else. They don't grow, they're just there."
"No, they grow. I've seen them before."
"Then why do you want to see them again?"
"Because, no two storms are the same. each one is different."
"Really? There's no part of this one that is the same with the last one you saw?"
"Not one part. Come up here and see. It's so way cool." I helped Rachel climb the rest of the way up and she lay next to me. "Now watch that cloud," I said as I pointed to a small little puff. It slowly, slowly, slowly grew till it was twice the size.
"Wow, that's amazing. And it's such a pretty cloud. It looks just like my bunny Violet."
"Really? Cuz I thought it looked like my sister when she dances."
"No, It's my bunny all right. See her ears and her little arms and her little puffy tail?"
"I do see it. Wow, your good at this. Want to play some more?"
"Sure. I guess we could play tea when it starts to rain."
"Ok. Lets watch that one next." We watched clouds and guessed at their shapes for a whole hour before it started to rain. Then we went inside and started playing with our dolls. We were pretending we were on a party boat having tea when this huge storm came and we had to steer the boat to land. We had fun.
"My turn," I said to my sister.
"Ok Robby, I'm done," she answered.
"The boys I live with are so messy, mom. Their parents ask them to clean up their room, but they don't, or if they do it just gets messy again. I don't know how they can find anything. but they do know some really cool games. We played Vampire Tag and Bounty hunter and Replicator C. And they've even seen people from the out side (outside meaning outside of the mountain valley). Dad, how come no outsiders ever come to our city?"
"They do come once in a while but you probably haven't seen any because you've been in the palace for most of your life."
"Oh. Ok. They also have this way cool tree house. It's a humungous hollow tree and there's three floors and porches on every floor and on the outside you can climb all the way to the top. Each kid has their own floor but they said they don't mind sharing. The girls stay on the top floor and we play on the other two. The boys floors are cluttered some but they're not messy like their rooms which is good. I guess they're not so bad. But Cecily and I still miss the others some times. These kids don't know us like our siblings do so ti's sometimes hard to explain things to them. I guess that's one thing we're gonna have to learn to do if we're going to lead these people one day."