Thread:Doctor Ibrahim/@comment-28718853-20170315180135/@comment-28358106-20170315190347

"Aurum, honey, you got a letter and a package! I'm leaving it on the entryway table!"

Regina calls out as she walks back in from the covered stoop, brushing off a little rain. Both Aurum and Lucida nearly drop their respective chess pieces and look up simultaneously. Aegis, bathed in gray as she quietly dozes in the nearby bay window, nods awake.

"Really?...For me?" Aurum says, shock on her face.

"A letter AND a package?" Lucida says disbelievingly, almost as if she's offended at the sudden volume of attention her sister is getting. "Who would send you a letter?"

Aurum leaps out of her chair and plucks up the bundle. "It says it's from Radono," she says, reading aloud, her face lighting up. "Radono! She wrote me a letter and sent me something!"

"What's it say?" Lucida leans over and peers at the envelope.

Aurum pulls it away from her face. "I'll find out! Just give me a second!"

"Well, hurry up and open it!" Lucida says, putting her hands on her hips.

"Don't get snippy," Aurum scowls. "I want to savor this." She carefully opens the envelope and begins to read.

"Is it an invitation?" Aegis yawns, shuffling over and rubbing her eyes. "It looks like an invitation. Are we all in it?"

"Why in the world would it be an invitation? And how would you know what one looks like?  You've never been invited anywhere," Lucida says, looking at Aegis from the corner of her eye.

"Maybe I don't need one because I go where I want," Aegis sneers.

"Or maybe nobody has an insurance policy that covers your potential for calamity," Lucida sniffs, rubbing her nose with a finger.

"Hush, you two!" Aurum huffs, turning. "No, it's not an invitation! It's a thank-you letter.  She's thanking me for the Weresheep wool I gave her."

"Ha! See?  I HAVE gotten thank-you letters before!" Aegis says triumphantly.

"Who in the heck would want to thank you??" Lucida says, her voice rising in disbelief.

"Plenty of people, that's who!" She snaps. "All the farmers whose fields I watch? Or how about the Bevinses, when year before last their corn went bad, and I brought them fish from the -"

"My package!! It's gone!!" Aurum shouts.

All three of them turn. The package is missing. All that's there is the twine that held it together. Aurum stutters silently in disbelief.

"I...I...I can't believe it! My back was turned for only a min - "

Entering from the side entry boot room, her hooves caked in mud and her body covered in rain, Ferra ambles around the corner. Tucked under one arm is the package, now open. In her other hand are the remnants of a cinnamon roll, which she crams into her mouth. She has an expression of slow revelation as her sisters stare at her. Aurum speaks up.

"Was...that the cinnamon roll from the package?"

Ferra nods slowly, unsure if her answer will condemn her. Looking around guiltily, she hands the package back to Aurum, who looks at it with growing anger.

"You...TOOK my package and opened it?" Aurum says, her anger rising.

Ferra shakes her head rapidly, her cheeks still crammed with cinnamon roll. "No! Given to me!" She mumbles innocently.

Just then, a tiny giggle can be heard far down the hallway, followed by the pitter patter of little feet running away. Aurum sets down the now-open package hastily and breaks out into an unladylike dash.

"GEMMI! COME BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!" She shouts.

Lucida, Aegis, and Ferra look at the the package, then at each other. Ferra grins and shrugs, reaching in and pulling out three more cinnamon rolls, handing them to her sisters.

"I saw nothing," Lucida says, sliding off to the parlor.

"Yup." Aegis heads down the hall and upstairs.

Cramming her second cinnamon roll in her mouth, Ferra steps around the corner and into the side entry boot room, pulling on her poncho. With a musical laugh that belies her huge, muscular frame, she steps back out into the rain to finish her chores.