Round 3: Fish

Aurelia Fish is an Elder. Her grandson Dmitri Fish is a Teen, and her granddaughter Dzika Fish is a Child.

* * *

After meeting Autumn Brennan, Dzika started focusing on her art with a new fervor. Her goal in life was now to become a painter just like Autumn.

Aurelia wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Dzika was a prodigy when it came to the visual arts, she was sure, even if she hadn’t taken to music quite as well. But painting wasn’t a very stable career path. She wanted to make sure her grandchildren both had solid futures, especially now that their parents were no longer around to support them. She tried to encourage Dzika, but also started dropping hints about other careers that she could think about working towards.

Dmitri was finally starting to do better in school. His friendship with Liss, though, was suffering. He was trying not to let her relationship with Ellis get to him, but he couldn’t help the way he felt about her. It wasn’t something he could just flip off like a switch, even though he might like to. And between her dates with Ellis and her new friendship with Autumn, Dmitri didn’t get to see her nearly as often anymore. More and more, he was afraid that they might be growing apart – or rather, that she might be growing away from him, leaving him behind.

And then, one night on the porch, she started acting… strange. Almost like she was flirting with him. He didn’t know what to make of it, or how he should respond.

He knew he shouldn’t. He knew about Ellis, and he had promised himself he was going to be done thinking of Liss that way. But before he could talk himself out of it, he leaned over and kissed her.

She didn’t pull away.

It was a very long time before he finally went back inside.

That night, he stayed up all night turning the events of the evening around and around in his mind. One part of him was feeling nothing but happiness at the fact that he had finally gotten to kiss Liss Kirsch – and that it seemed like there was a very good chance that he would get to do it again. But the rest of him was just confused. What had changed her mind so suddenly? And what about Ellis – was she cheating on him with Dmitri? That didn’t sound like the Liss he knew, but he was beginning to wonder if maybe he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did.

The next day, they talked for a long time. He said that if they were going to do this, he wanted to know exactly what it was they were doing – and that if it involved Liss cheating on Ellis with him, he wanted no part of it.

The first kiss had been a mistake, Liss said. She had just gotten back from a date with Ellis, and he had been talking about what he wanted from the future, which, for Ellis, didn’t extend further than good food and lots of fun. Liss had found herself wondering what kind of a future their relationship had, when she wanted so much more from life than that. Talking to Dmitri, she had been reminded of the intense mental connection they’d always had, and all of a sudden that had seemed like the most attractive thing in the world. She had kissed him… and she had realized she wanted to keep on doing it. It was that simple.

A part of Dmitri didn’t want to question his good luck. Nevertheless, he insisted – Liss had to break up with Ellis before anything could happen between them. She assured him that she would – she just needed to find the right time.

But days went by, then weeks, and Liss and Ellis were still together.

He tried to distract himself by throwing himself into his schoolwork, even doing extra credit work, which he had never done before. Dzika knew something was up – she pestered him until he finally told her the truth. She did not approve. She and Liss had never gotten along, and to her, this only proved that Liss wasn’t good for her brother.

Dmitri insisted that Dzika was wrong about Liss. But he couldn’t deny that every time he saw her with Ellis, it sent him into a mood for the rest of the day. Especially since she was still coming over to his house in the evenings, and he couldn’t bring himself to turn her away.

Eventually the stress started getting to him to the point where he couldn’t even concentrate on his schoolwork anymore, and his homework started going undone despite his grandmother’s lectures. She disapproved of his relationship with Liss, and she didn’t even know the full story. She just knew that Liss was distracting him from what he needed to be focusing on. Their frequent arguments didn’t help Dmitri’s state of mind.

He started asking Liss more and more insistently whether she was going to break up with Ellis, and getting mad when she evaded the question. More than once, he almost told her that they were done. But the thought of losing her forever – not just as whatever she was to him now, but as a friend – always made him stop.

* * *

(I'd just like to note that I am not to blame for this drama. Liss was the one who kept refusing Dmitri's advances. Liss was the one who started stalking Ellis. Liss was the one who showed up at Dmitri's house sad and looking for comfort, and then started flirting with him for no reason. And Liss was the one who agreed to be Dmitri's girlfriend even though she hadn't broken up with Ellis. She's doing this all herself; I'm just trying to keep up.)

Round 2: Brennan

Liam Brennan and his wife Dawn Brennan are Adults. Their daughter Autumn Brennan is a Young Adult.

* * *

Autumn knew she should think about moving out eventually. But she was trying to put it off for as long as possible. Their new house was a lot less crowded with Silas gone, and she had a place to practice her painting with a great view of the riverfront. She didn’t have to cook for herself, and she didn’t have to worry about bills.

Even if her parents’ enthusiastic reconciliation did get a bit awkward to be around sometimes.

Dawn and Liam’s relationship was better than it had been in years, and with her new job – even though she was still doing entry-level work – Dawn thought she might be happier than she had ever been. But Liam couldn’t say the same for himself. With Dawn gone all day and often needing to get extra paperwork done even after she got home, all the day-to-day cleaning tasks fell to Liam, as well as the cooking. He was getting better at cooking now, but he couldn’t say he enjoyed it. It was no substitute for the job he still missed.

Even raising Autumn didn’t give him the pleasure it once had, now that she seemed determined to waste her life. She had always been bright and motivated in school, but now she spent too much of her time on paintings she didn’t even know if she was going to be able to sell. The art gallery hadn’t even promoted her yet, which Liam was sure had everything to do with the fact that she just wasn’t motivated. She had even started talking about quitting her job to paint full-time.

One of the teen girls from down the street stopped by one day when Autumn was out painting. She was an aspiring artist herself, and wanted to see if Autumn had any tips for her. Autumn, who had been working on what looked to her like the worst painting she had done in years, was flattered. They stood on the porch for hours just talking, and discovered that they actually had a lot in common. Not only did they both love to paint, but they both enjoyed geeking out about different techniques and art styles.

Until she met Liss, Autumn hadn’t realized quite how lonely she  had been. Ever since the move, she had spent most of her time hiding from her parents’ arguments – and then from their reconciliation – and trying to improve her art. Aside from a lot of evenings chatting with Knox, her old friend from high school, she hadn’t had a real social life in… she wasn’t even sure how long. And even her time with Knox didn’t really count, because that was more about giving him a sounding board than anything else. He had somehow ended up married to a woman her parents’ age, who had just given birth to triplets. Autumn couldn’t even imagine. She knew her parents couldn’t wait for her to get married and start popping out grandkids, but just the thought of getting into a serious relationship at her age made her shudder.

After that afternoon, Liss often stopped by after school to chat. Of course, eventually that led to Maxwell, one of Liss’s dads, coming by, demanding to know why his daughter was spending so much time over there. Samuel and Liam had never gotten along. Liam wasn’t even sure why. Something about the other man – his slobby clothes, his lazy attitude, the way he didn’t even bother putting in a little extra effort to get promoted out of his nothing job – just rubbed him the wrong way.

One day while Autumn was still working on the same terrible painting, Dzika Fish stopped by, in awe at actually meeting a real artist. Autumn was beginning to feel like a mentor to the aspiring artists of Wanderer’s Cove.

She had to admit, she was actually starting to do well as an artist lately. She was even able to sell some of her paintings to the gallery where she worked. Her dream of making a living at this was beginning to look not so impossible after all.

One day Dawn came back with good news – she had finally been promoted out of the mailroom. But although the promotion made her happy at first, soon it caused a resurgence of the depression she thought she had put behind her. She unloaded her feelings on Liam one day – she loved her job and the mental stimulation it gave her, but somewhere in the back of her mind, it had always felt temporary before. This made it feel permanent. And that meant giving up the idea that any day now she would be getting ready to stay home with the new baby.

They had talked about giving up on the idea of another baby before, but they had still kept trying. They had both wanted a larger family for so long that neither of them wanted to let go of that dream. Dawn dreamed of a house full of children, and especially after seeing how little Autumn cared about making something of her life, Liam wanted a second chance to see if he could do better this time. But right now this dream was doing nothing but sucking the life out of their house.

They decided together. There would be no second baby. The family they had now was all they needed.

Autumn finally made the decision to quit her job, and once she did, she felt happier than she had in a long time. Now she had the freedom to paint all day in her pajamas if she wanted to, with no one to tell her not to. Liam, on the other hand, was horrified – but even if he could have convinced her to change her mind, it was too late. She had already made the phone call.

Her decision wasn’t without consequences, however. She quickly found out that the gallery she used to work for was not only no longer interested in purchasing her paintings, but they had blacklisted her among many of their buyers. She couldn’t find anyone willing to pay as much for her paintings now. But she still considered her decision more than worth it.

Liam still saw Silas from time to time, although they didn’t talk very often. Liam and Dawn still hadn’t met their new niece Phoebe, even though she had started school by now. Liam was privately surprised that Silas was still living with Lacey Li, but Silas seemed happy with his life, even though he scowled whenever he mentioned Lacey’s older daughter. Liam knew he should be happy for his brother, but he couldn’t help the unsettling thought that Autumn’s problem was that she took after her uncle.

Round 2: Kirsch

Maxwell and Samuel Kirsch are Adults. Their daughters Felicitas (Liss) Kirsch, Caritas (Cari) Kirsch, and Iusticia (Izzy) Kirsch are Teens.

* * *

With all the time they had been devoting to keeping their younger two daughters from ripping each other’s throats out, Maxwell and Samuel were beginning to realize that they hadn’t been taking nearly enough time for each other. They were starting to get out of the habit of spending time together, which had never been a problem in their family before. They vowed to take some time each day to just talk – as long as they weren’t talking about the kids.

And Maxwell finally convinced Samuel to take up chess. He had been trying to get him interested for years.

 

Liss barely noticed the trouble at home anymore. She didn’t have room to think about her squabbling sisters when there was Ellis. With Ellis, there was none of the ambivalence she had felt with Dmitri. In a lot of ways, she and Dmitri were kindred spirits – their minds worked on the same level. They could easily stay up all night dreaming up all kinds of crazy futuristic technologies or discussing world politics or planning out elaborate business ideas. But she had never been sure if she wanted that kind of intensity in a romantic relationship. Her relationship with Ellis was entirely different. With Ellis, things were simple and fun. He grounded her in a way Dmitri never could.

But their relationship had made things awkward between her and Dmitri. She had hoped it wouldn’t, but it had. Dmitri had said he was over his crush on her, and she knew he was trying to be, but that wasn’t the kind of thing you could put a stop to through sheer willpower alone.

Izzy was still doing her best to distract herself with Cornelius. It wasn’t working all that well. As it turned out, he just wasn’t that interesting – and meanwhile, Cari was just always there.

But she was trying. She really was. Even when Cari seemed to purposely be driving her crazy. Even when Cari sat there with that fake smile on her face and no one could see through her but Izzy.

Cari was trying too. And if the thought that made her start laughing under her breath during family TV time was the thought of finally punching Izzy in her obnoxious self-righteous face… well, no one had to know.

Now that both of her sisters were dating, Cari briefly considered finding a boyfriend herself, just for the sake of keeping up with them. But it wasn’t worth all the extra time dating would take. She would start dating when it looked like it would be useful. Right now she needed that time to keep up with her schoolwork. She was falling further behind every day, and she didn’t know why. Liss had always made schoolwork look easy, but these days Izzy never even started her homework and she was still doing better than Cari.

But Cari didn’t want her sisters having all the fun while she stayed at home doing nothing but studying. She resolved to do something fun for herself, too. She started going down to the gym every week for a couple of hours. Her family didn’t understand it, she knew, especially her dads, both of whom liked nothing better than spending all afternoon on the couch in front of the TV. But working out was the one time she felt relaxed. There was no one to pretend for, no one to impress. There was just her and her body.

She couldn’t help noticing that Dmitri Fish really liked watching her work out. His attention gave her a quiet thrill of pleasure. What would Liss say if she knew?

She couldn’t resist flirting with him just a little, just to prove she could get a reaction. Just to prove to herself that she could have him if she really wanted.

Round 2: Anatole

Amara Anatole is an Adult.

* * *

Amara was doing well at her new job. She liked the better pay, and no longer having to deal with angry customers. Maybe there was something to this career advancement thing after all. She kept studying programming on her own, just in case another job opportunity came up – although the idea of leaving the company she’d been working at for so long made her much more uneasy than the promotion had. In the meantime, she found that she had learned enough to make a basic browser plugin, and even made a few bucks off it.

But with all the extra work she’d been doing, her social life had started to suffer. She hardly ever invited friends over after work anymore. There just weren’t enough hours in the day – if she went too long without working out, she got antsy, and after a run and a couple of hours of working on programming, she was too tired to think about inviting a friend over.

She found a local forum and started chatting online with someone there. His name was Payton, and she was pretty sure she’d actually run into him at the gym a couple of times. It was good to have someone to talk to while she worked – it helped her focus. And if the conversations got a bit flirty from time to time, well, there was nothing wrong with that.

At least that was what she thought until he showed up at her house one day without warning.

Against her better judgment, she let him in. He hadn’t meant anything creepy by it, he claimed – he had just been out for a run, when he’d passed her house and had figured he’d stop by. He hadn’t realized how odd it could look until it was too late. She wasn’t sure whether to believe him. Would anyone actually say, “I stopped by your house because I’m a creepy stalker from the internet?”

Still, she couldn’t deny that some part of her was attracted to him, or at least to the way he had sounded in their online conversations. And hadn’t Stella told her she should find a boyfriend, one she could imagine marrying someday?

Although she was pretty sure Stella hadn’t meant someone from the internet who would randomly show up on her doorstep.

But really, where were her other prospects? All the other men in Wanderer’s Cove were either old or married. And there was certainly no one interesting at work.

Knowing it was almost certainly a bad decision, she asked him on a date.

Almost as soon as their date had begun, she regretted it. He barely seemed interested in anything she said. Being out around other people seemed to make him uncomfortable. And he glared every time another man so much as looked in her direction. He was like a walking example of why meeting people online was a bad idea.

But online he had been so friendly and engaging, and so easy to talk to. He had quickly become one of her closest friends. Maybe she should at least give it one date’s worth of effort.

And then she met Knox.

He wasn’t even sitting at their table. But when she and Payton started talking to another couple at the club, who she suspected were having about as good a time as she and Payton were, Knox kept interjecting himself into the conversation, and she quickly learned that he loved computers as much as she did. Even more, in fact. He knew all the latest games, and was clearly prepared to talk about them for hours on end.

  

He was also much too young for her. And on a date with someone else. And, of course, so was she.

She tried to give Payton the attention he deserved. She really did. But she and Knox were drawn to each other in a way she couldn’t explain, and she didn’t want to resist it. Not to go back to her boring date with someone she knew she probably shouldn’t be with anyway.

In the end, Payton went home early – and Amara and Knox went home together.

At first she was afraid she would never see him again. But those fears quickly proved to be unfounded. Soon the two of them were seeing each other almost every day.

Amara knew Stella had advised her to find someone she could imagine marrying someday. Which obviously meant someone closer to her own age. Definitely someone older than Knox, who had turned out to be even younger than she had thought – he had only just graduated high school! If she wanted to start to grow up, this relationship definitely wasn’t the way to do it.

Next to how she felt when she and Knox were together, though, none of that seemed to matter.

But as she left the bathroom one morning after yet another bout of nausea, she realized that maybe she had been worrying about all the wrong things. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so concerned about their ages. Maybe she should have been more worried about remembering her birth control.

She told herself she couldn’t possibly be pregnant – right up until she saw the result of her pregnancy test.

Even then, she had a hard time believing it. Although she certainly didn’t consider herself old, she also knew that she was no longer young by any stretch of the imagination – but deep inside she still thought of herself as closer to Knox’s age. Despite the recent changes she had made in her life, she was still basically living like someone who had just graduated. She wasn’t the kind of person who could take care of a child.

And Knox? He was practically a child himself. He didn’t even have a job. Surely this wasn’t what he wanted for his life – and even if it was, did she want to live that life with him? Did she want to create a family with someone who wasn’t even old enough to know who he was yet?

Everything she did reminded her of all the ways her life would change once she had a baby. When she made herself dinner, she thought about how once she had a child to take care of, she would have to eat something besides cereal for every meal. Going to bed reminded her that she would need something bigger than this one-bedroom house – and how was she supposed to afford that?

Unwilling to admit to herself that this was actually happening, she didn’t tell Knox until she couldn’t keep her growing belly hidden any longer.

He didn’t take it well.

But after a minor meltdown, he offered to move in with her to help her take care of the baby. He didn’t say anything about marriage, but to be honest, she was relieved – yes, she had been thinking about finding somebody she could consider marrying someday, but now that the possibility was so close, she wasn’t at all sure that it was what she wanted. Or that Knox was the person she wanted it to happen with, for that matter.

For his part, Knox wasn’t at all averse to the idea of marrying Amara someday. Just… not now. He was only just out of high school; marriage wasn’t anywhere close to being on the horizon. He wanted time. He wanted to romance Amara the way she deserved. Jumping straight into marriage would be like skipping all the best parts.

And now there was a baby on the way. He wasn’t at all sure how he felt about that. He wasn’t even sure whether he wanted kids. He had figured he had plenty of time to think about that.

But sometimes, like when he would tuck Amara in at night, he knew that as long as she was in his life, everything would be all right. This was exactly where he was meant to be.

Living with Knox was hard for Amara to get used to. For one thing, he had a tendency to get up and make salads first thing in the morning. For breakfast! Her cereal routine was completely thrown off.

But the salads were the least of it. She hadn’t lived with another person since she had moved out of her parents’ house. She was used to following her own routines, living on her own schedule, and not needing to think about sharing her life with another person. Now, all of a sudden, she had somebody else in her house, living alongside her. So far it wasn’t affecting their relationship – in fact, she was surprised at how little they were fighting, considering the stress and the move and the pregnancy hormones. But between Knox moving in and the baby growing inside her, she was beginning to feel like her life didn’t belong to her anymore. She had lost all control, and it had all happened so fast.

The closer she got to her due date, the more afraid she became. Sharing her fears with Knox was no help – he wasn’t feeling any better than she was. What were the two of them supposed to do with a baby?

Amara was feeling even more helpless now that it was beginning to look like she would be the sole provider. She kept pushing Knox to find a job, but he didn’t seem to be working very hard at it. He spent most of his time all day playing video games, which began to annoy her despite herself.

As Amara got closer and closer to her due date, Knox decided he wanted to take her out on one last date before the baby came. They went out to the museum together – normally neither of them were very into art, but there was a new video game art exhibit that Knox had been wanting to see, and as clumsy as she felt with her giant belly, Amara was grateful for anything that didn’t involve dancing.

Their date left both of them in higher spirits. For the first time, they began to feel like maybe this was something they could do after all.

Still, Knox found himself needing to talk his fears out with somebody, and he didn’t want to dump it all on Amara, who was stressed enough already. He started talking to his high school friend Autumn a lot more. She got it – she couldn’t imagine getting married at their age, and didn’t know if she ever wanted kids. She was a patient listener, and talking to her always made Knox feel better.

Their friendship was entirely innocent, but he still downplayed how much time he was spending with Autumn to Amara. He didn’t want to risk her getting the wrong idea.

Amara kept expecting that eventually she would start feeling ready. Instead, she woke up one night with the certainty that the baby was about to come whether she was ready to be a parent or not.

And several hours of labor later, she learned that there was a very good reason she hadn’t felt ready.

Arden, Elijah, and Xandra Anatole – two girls and a boy. Somehow her doctor had neglected to tell her that she was having triplets…

Round 2: Li-Brennan

Lacey Li and her boyfriend Silas Brennan are Adults. Lacey’s daughter Winter Li is a Child, and Lacey and Silas’s daughter Phoebe Li is a Baby.

* * *

 

Now that Winter and her mom had moved in with Silas, everything was different.

She knew she should be happy. And she was, a lot of the time. She had a real bed now, and a room of her own, even if she did share it with the baby. They had a refrigerator, with real food in it. She had a real house where she could invite friends over, instead of just asking them to hang out at the playground and pretending she would have to go home eventually.

But she barely even knew Silas, except for going over to his house a few times. And now all of a sudden they were living with him, and she had a baby sister. She couldn’t remember a time when it hadn’t just been her and her mom, and now it was her and her mom and Silas and Phoebe.

And her mom was still the same as she had always been, but it was like Silas didn’t even notice when she talked to people who weren’t there. He just wanted to kiss her. All the time. Yuck.

Winter tried to warn Phoebe about what she was getting herself into, but she was probably too young to understand.

Phoebe was too young to do anything but cry and wake Winter up at night. She hated sharing a room with the baby. If it were up to her, her mom and Silas would be the ones who had to be woken up by the baby all the time, since they had been the ones who had decided to have a baby in the first place. But nobody had asked her.

It seemed like everything was making Winter mad these days. It wasn’t just the baby. She kept getting into fights with her friends even when they had always gotten along well before. Even she and her mom were fighting almost every day, and it was always her fault. It was like she just couldn’t manage to calm down.

Silas wasn’t helping. It seemed like he did nothing but yell at her all the time. She didn’t understand why her mom had wanted to live with him in the first place. Her mom said Silas was her knight in shining armor who had come to rescue her, but Winter didn’t get how anyone could even like him. He left messes all over the kitchen, he was always criticizing her for doing the smallest thing wrong, and he was mean for no good reason.

But with the baby it was like he was a totally different person.

There were some things going on that Winter didn’t even know about. She didn’t know, for instance, about the times when Silas was asleep after his night shift and his mom would have friends over in Winter’s room.

Her flirtations hadn’t gone anywhere serious. At least not yet. In Lacey’s mind, Silas was still her knight in shining armor. But sometimes it was just fun to play the game. And it was easy to let it go just a little bit too far.

Lacey had developed an inexplicable interest in cooking. She would cook all kinds of impractical things like heart-shaped cookies while she ignored the crying baby in the other room.

But she did bake a cake for Phoebe’s birthday, even though it tasted terrible.

At least having a sister who was old enough to play with would make life a little more tolerable. That, and no longer being woken up by a crying baby in the middle of the night.