4.20 'Family'

(Please don't listen to this as you read. If you're going to listen, please listen to it all before reading because this song doesn't fit with the chapter well enough to be background music. It fits with the story, so it's not totally random, promise! Have this picture to look at while you listen, as the video isn't much. It's pretty weird/creepy/cheesy/boring, to be honest)

 

 The weeks went by with Kaity moping alone, but putting on her usual happy bravado around others. Especially Winter.

Winter was over constantly, he'd kept true to his promise of helping to raise his son, and spent plenty of time with the twins too.

 

Elise was a gorgeous little girl, Kaity and Shaena could see a lot of their late best friend in her, which made it hard to treat her like the child she was. They were used to her face on Bonnie, and had to try their hardest to remind themselves that Elise was not their dead best friend. When Winter was over, he was a father figure to both her and Joshua too.

Kaity was amazed by how easily he'd taken to parenthood; like a duck to water, the saying went. Overnight he'd gone from being childless to raising five children under six.

Kaity would do anything for her children, and that extended to Elise and Joshua too. Raising the next generation was a shared responsibility in the house as it had been for their mothers. History was repeating itself in ways, but it differed in others. Both girls worked on the home lot in the attached shop predominantly, although Shaena had to go out more often to collect the insects, gems, rocks and plants needed for the herbal medicines and knick-knacks.

The shop was getting busier, and Kaity wondered if most of the custom might be journalists hoping to catch a glimpse of her 'mystery man', as the papers called him. They were yet to have cornered him for an interview, and she'd considered asking him to arrange an interview to stop the constant crowd from lurking around outside.

For now, though life was looking up. The kids all got on brilliantly, and played together constantly. Winter had never stopped talking to her as she'd assumed he would, but she realised that was because he was alot more mature than herself. She began to wonder how old he was, she was sure he was a lot older, and wasn't sure he knew how old she was. She was too nervous to ask, though.

They had both realised they hardly knew each other, and Winter would state something and ask her opinion of whatever the topic was. Kaity thought he was just trying to torture her at first, forcing her to interact with him after smashing her heart with his big, strong hands, but Shaena had pointed out that it was common in the "getting to know you" stage of a relationship to do things like that.

That comment gave Kaity hope, and she started doing the same thing back. She found out his favourite colour was orange, which shocked her as he usually wore white and grey. He said it was because orange didn't work with his skintone. This had made Kaity invest in some orange underwear, in the hope that at some point they would get to the stage where he'd see it and realise she could listen, and think of other people.


_____

It was a hot Saturday, the twins were begging to go to the beach. Kaity called Winter, and he agreed to come too, but Shaena pointed out that Elise being a vampire wouldn't be able to spend a sunny day outside, and so she offered to stay behind with her and Joshua.

Kaity had packed a picnic, and once it was all consumed the small family sat in the sand talking. Kaity liked thinking that one day they could be a real family. She'd love to marry Winter, and she'd never thought she'd feel like that about anyone. She was sure it was a long way off, but she decided to let herself hope that it could happen one day.

"Lyris told me that she saw a werewolf in the park at the festival." Sophie announced. "I think we should go there next."
"Soph, you've not even been in the sea yet! Maybe next weekend, we don't need to do everything at once."
"But Lyris-"
"I said next weekend, Sophie." Sophie pouted, attempting to change her mothers mind. "Change the subject. What else happened at school?"

"Lucas ran into a wall." Jaydean giggled.
"Yeah, your aunt Rose told me about that. What happened?" Kaity asked.
"He was playing chase with some other boys, and he was looking behind him to see if they were catching up. And then, BAM!" Sophie and Jaydean both burst out laughing. "It was so funny, you should have seen it."
"That's cruel, Jay. He's your cousin, I hope you checked he was ok?"
"Liana did." They both replied, causing everyone to smile at their cliched twin speak.

"Daa-deee ah-ah-aaahh" Autumn sang, picking up handfuls of sand and letting them run through his fingers, before clutching more handfuls and repeating the process.
"Aww, our baby brother is a clever cutie!" Sophie said, tickling his cheek with her finger making him squeal. "Winter? Will you play in the sea with us?"
"Course I will." He leant down and kissed his son on the head, before being dragged to the shoreline by the girls.

Kaity sat herself up and pulled Autumn to her.
"Your daddy is an amazing man, isn't he, Tummy?" She smiled at her stupid nickname, and wondered how many years it would last before he was old enough to find it embarrassing. Autumn reached for her, grinning at the mention of 'daddy'.
"Daa-dee!" He squealed, pointing at her.
"No. Muh-mee." She smiled. "Daddy is the big blue hunk with your sisters. You know that." She picked him up before flipping onto her stomach and facing the sea, watching her girls splash and squeal with Winter.

"See, I never had a daddy, and my mummy didn't have time for family outings. She was out making the town safe. You're lucky, because your granny is out catching the bad guys so mummy and daddy can take you out like this." She kissed his head as he squeaked, giggled and babbled.

I wonder what my life would have been like if my father had stuck around? Would I be this messed up? Would I already have Winter instead of this stupid game of cat and mouse? Would I have had the twins? Kaity had never really given much thought to her absent father, or why Taylor had never tried to explain what happened between them the way her aunt had explained Geoffrey's death to Shaena. Until she'd seen how happy her kids were with Winter in their lives, until she realised how much easier it was having a man around the house, she'd never even thought about it. Now she had questions, and hoped Taylor would be alright to answer them.

_____

That evening

"Hey, mum. How are you? ... Good, yeah I'm ok. Look, I know this is random and out of the blue, but I'd like to know about my father..." 




Damn, I'm so good at photoediting... :p
Yeah, so I forgot to put the phone accessory in-game, so I drew a phone into that last picture, and all but the first and last beach pics were really dark, so I had to fix them.

Sorry the pics don't link with the text in the first part. I got carried away playing with babies and forgot that there were adults who were meant to feature in the chapter, and then I realised I only had pictures of Elise (because she's sooooo cute!) and poor Josh got overlooked, meaning Shaena did too. So they're in the bathroom peeping at us in one of the shots ;) 

Shaena got a new outfit, because it's now late-spring in game and didn't want her to get hot in that jumper. (And I will name the seasons this generation! WOOO!)
I realised after reading GigaRevival's new Dean Legacy chapter, that people might not know how to pronounce most of the names this generation, so here's all the names.
Kaity - Katy/Katie/K.T/Kaytee, there are a million different spellings. Kaity is Irish, I think.
Shaena - Shay-nah (I recently discovered this is a real name! Although spelt 'Shayna')
Winter - Win-ter.
Sophie - So-fee.
Jaydean - Jay-deen.
Joshua - Josh-yoo-ah.
Autumn - Or-tum.
Elise - El-eese. 

This authors note is about as long as the chapter. Oops. Sorry :p 
(Oh, does my font look smaller to anyone else? :/)