The Spawns

The Spawns | Chapter XXVII -- The Little Moments

THE SPAWNS

The Little Moments

Chapter XXVII—Lilibeth

© DarknessAndLight

Fortunately for me, the next morning I did not wake up to the lovely stench of flatulent burritos coming from my cousin.

I was alone in Nikki's bed and I could hear her and her brothers arguing in the kitchen. I assumed it was the kitchen since I was hearing dishes clinging together. There was something strangely comforting about waking up to these sounds. They were the sounds of a lively household.

It was strange, but I loved waking up some morning to the sound of my parents bickering over some silly thing. I loved waking up to my annoyed mother telling Jayden to put his dishes in the dishwasher. It was probably wrong to enjoy waking up to the sound of arguments, but to me it was those little feuds that made a family whole. Never arguing over silly things sort of felt like we didn't care enough about each other to be annoyed with one another.

After getting out of bed, I followed the sound of arguing and walked into the kitchen to find Jackson and Gavin running after each other around the big central counter, Nikki trying to catch them each time there whooshed past her, while my uncle and aunt were slowly eating their breakfast basically ignoring their kids.

I wasn't sure if I should speak up or hide or just ignore the whole ordeal. The whole thing looked kind of amusing though.

"Jackson knows that the Cheerios are my cereals," Gavin the youngest of the Grayson family was whining.

Oh so this was a sharing food issue. It made sense.

My uncle finally stopped ignoring the kids, but instead of talking to his son, turned to my aunt. "Did you hear that honey? His cereals. I didn't know that," and then he looked at my cousin, "Tell me, Gavin, when did your seven year old butt get itself to work to be able to afford the said cereals? Because the last time I checked, the Cheerios aren't your cereals. They're your mom's and mine. Everything here belongs to us and we graciously share it with you."

"But daaaaaad," Gavin whined, and stomped his foot. I chuckled.

"What is this butt-dad you speak of?"

"That's a very bad dad joke," Nikki pointed out.

At this point I stopped hiding in a corner and made my way to the counter where everyone smiled and greeted me.

"I don't do these jokes for you, I do these jokes for me," Uncle Tyler told Nikki, after greeting me.

"I don't even want to start thinking about how senile you'll be when you're way older," my aunt said, shaking her head slightly. "You're already a lunatic. Right about now, you know who we would need to work on a cure for the degeneration of our brain in our old age?"

"Well, that sure isn't going to happen," Tyler snorted. I figured they were talking about uncle Nik.

"Speaking of which, we really need to go to the penthouse and water his plants."

"Oh! That's a great idea. We can go in his pool afterwards!" Nikki squealed happily. "Unless you're anti pool and sunshine and happiness Lili?"

I smiled at her. "I'm okay with all of that."

"Perfect! Because it's either that or going to buy yarn for my future catastrophic knitting projects."

I frowned a little. "Did you ever take classes?"