Welcome to Gaia! ::

Prosper had volunteered to help prepare for the community Thanksgiving dinner. While the entire meal was set to be a potluck, he was from Earth and he had a Y chromosome, so there were some things he felt like he had to do himself. For example, turkey was the responsibility of whoever had actually gone through the trouble of planning the dinner. The teachers had drawn straws, and that responsibility was Prosper's.

After a breakneck round of grocery shopping at an hour when the rest of the world probably wasn't even awake yet, he and Ophelia arrived at Liberty Center. The trunk of their car was packed with frozen turkeys, stuffing mix, vegetables, and all sorts of other holiday essentials he didn't want to leave up to chance. He and the girl took everything inside the cafeteria kitchens.

"Are we gonna cook all of this ourselves?" asked Ophelia.

Prosper shook his head and set the turkeys out to defrost. "There should be some help coming soon," he said.

Prosper took the casserole from the boy, who he was a little afraid might drop it, and rifled through the groceries on the counter.

"Good morning, Carlisle!" said Ophelia cheerily. She was also waiting for a job to do. Prosper came back from the groceries with a bag of green beans in one hand and a bag of carrots in the other, and a peeler and a knife balanced precariously between a few fingers.

"One of you can cut these," said Prosper, holding up the beans, "And one of you can peel carrots. Carlisle, which would you prefer?"

Ophelia shook her head. "That's fine!" she said, taking the carrots and the peeler from her father. Prosper handed Carlisle the string beans and the knife.

"Just cut off the ends," he instructed. "And be careful with that. It's not a toy."

Ophelia giggled and lead Carlisle off to the table where there was butcher paper set out to work on top of. "Daddy says today is really important where he's from," she explained. "So everything has to be perfect."

The distant cry of Lucien, come back here could be heard just as a small boy burst through the kitchen doors. Skidding to a very abrupt halt, Lucien looked to the crowd of people curiously, his arms stretched out in front of his body. He rocked back on the heels of his feet, moving a thumb to sit against his mouth with one hand and waved genially with the other.

A moment or two later, a very disgruntled and very exhausted woman came up behind the small boy, her face pulled into biting scowl. She placed what looked like a very weather worn, but not altogether unappetizing pumpkin pie on the counter before crossing her arms over her chest. Lucien looked up at Grace expectantly, and when she gave him a curt nod, he waddled over to grasp the counter with chubby fingers and peeked over.

"Hello!" He grinned cheerfully.

Prosper nodded to the pie, the fruit salad, and then to the women. He didn't recognize the children from his classes, but they were always welcome. "Good morning," he said. "Why don't you get the boys' hands washed and then I'll give them something to do?"

"Well," said Ophelia conspiratorially to Carlisle, "He's from a place called America on Earth, and they invented Thanksgiving." She nodded matter-of-factly, brown curls bouncing as she did, and looked back to her work peeling carrots. She was a bit perfectionist about how she did it, and lined of the peeler perfectly each time so she wouldn't go over any areas twice.

"Would you rather be a pilgrim or an indian?" she asked after a while.

This time of year didn't suit Kaimi at all. But she held in her hands a nice, warm casserole dish full of sweet potatoes and candied nuts topped with browned marshmallows and the heat and delicious smell helped her mood. Naomi, too, was from America on Earth and when she'd heard there was a community thanksgiving she'd insisted that Kaimi participate.

"Hello" Kaimi said cheerfully as she came into the kitchen, spotting several faces that she knew and several that she'd never seen before. "Where should I put this?"

Thanksgiving had not been one of the traditions where his mother had come from -- Lindy was, after all, a Dutch Londoner, but at any community gathering of festive fun and good cheer and charity she was inevitably sure to want to attend. Casca Naborn had two dishes in his hands; one was a perfectly appropriate dish of roast garlic potatoes. The other was one of his mother's tofu vegetarian casseroles.

His hair had been braided away tightly from his face, so as not to let any curly bits out: you have to learn some community cheer! said his mum, and apparently he had to be hygenic for cooking. He'd been carrying his tail carefully off the ground, too. "Uh," he said. There were three girls about his age and Mr. Prosper the art teacher, and he vaguely recalled seeing the girls from school. "Hey."

Looked like all the dishes were going on the counter; he carefully put them both down. "Mum's marked the one V for vegetarian," she said, "would've been vegan, she says, but she used butter at the last minute. Que sera, sera."

The homemade icecream in her hands was beginning to numb her fingers by the time she'd made it into the kitchen with everyone else.

"Hey guys," Madeleine grinned, recognizing several faces from school and elsewhere, "Anyone got a freezer?" She held out the treat Olivia had painstakingly made herself as a consolation for not being able to make it herself.