Mischievous Function

Brothers and Sisters, One and All

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SUNDAY

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"Have fun on your trip!" Bubble's mom said as she helped Bubble out the front door, rolling her suitcase behind her.

Bubble turned around and took her suitcase from her. "Thanks, Mom!" she replied with a smile.

Soon, however, she sighed and turned around again. Bubble's mom noticed her forlorn expression and frowned. "Hey, what's wrong, honey?"

"Nothing, it's just..." Bubble ran her hands through her hair and shook her head. "I wish Leafy was here, you know? A vacation trip with all of her friends to Yoyle Mountain, where she could have finally been able to see a hotel outside Yoyle City, or have a real snowball fight, or just enjoy herself while walking through a snowy park with the warm glint of the fading sun behind her—oh, Mom, she would have loved it!"

Her mom nodded sympathetically and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "...We'll find her soon, honey. Don't worry. Just give her some time! You know her."

Bubble nodded and smiled. "Yeah. I guess so."

The two of them shared one more hug before Bubble waved goodbye and walked down the sidewalk with her suitcase. Her mom smiled and walked back into the house, shutting the door behind her.

Bubble shivered and hugged her coat closer to her body with her free hand as she walked, looking around at the snow falling around her. Soft white clouds filled the sky above her as the sun's rays peeked out and bathed random patches of earth with a faint yellow light. All the trees in the neighborhood were covered in snow. Nearby, a small mother bird landed on a branch and shook its body before heading back to its nest.

"Leafy would have loved this," she repeated in her mind sadly, gazing at the white grass next to the sidewalk. She faintly recalled the letter Leafy had written to herself on her last birthday. Both of them always made it a tradition to write to themselves on their birthdays; it was fun and it helped them see how much she'd grown since then. She sighed as she remembered that Leafy had always wanted to get out of the house and see the world. And what better way to do that than to go to a culturally diverse winter paradise?

Speaking of culturally diverse, Bubble softly laughed to herself as she recalled a letter Leafy'd written to herself on her 12th birthday. "What did she say?" she thought. "Oh, yeah! Something like 'I want to learn Joylese one day so I can understand all those weird cartoons Bubble's dad watches.'" She knew that people from all walks of life would be there at the hotel for the winter, and a lot of them probably didn't even speak her language. Unlike Leafy, Bubble didn't have the slightest clue of how to speak any Joylese—past what she remembered from her dad's choice of TV shows, of course—which meant that she might have a hard time communicating there.

"Hmm...I guess Yoylish is starting to become the universal language, huh?" she thought. "NC, Objectia, the SJD, Pericolo—they all have a large Yoylish-speaking community. Even Joyle City's starting to integrate a little bit of it into their culture. I haven't ever really thought about how privileged I am to learn Yoylish as my first language."

She chuckled as she recalled a particular grammar quiz earlier that year, right before Leafy had gotten her hands on a green lovely old little whittling silver rectangular Western Davidian knife for her collection. Both David and Dora had been absent and had missed the quiz, so they had made it up the next day. One of the questions Four had given them had to do with whether it would be better to use "had" or "had had" in an example sentence. Once Four had collected the quizzes, he had looked over the answers and, as with everyone else's quiz the previous day, read David and Dora's answers to that  particular question out loud. David, while Dora had had "had," had had "had had." "Had had" had had a better effect on Four.