An Expedition--with a Kangaroo.

Hunt

"The sky's awake, so I'm awake!" I jumped out of bed early in the morning. I had a mission to get Heather to enjoy Easter, which was today, so I had to get started. First, I made an Easter breakfast complete with colorful eggs adorning the side of the plates. I hung Easter egg and Easter bunny decorations around the house for a vibrant and joyful atmosphere in hopes that Heather would also brighten up.

"Hey, sleepyhead, happy Easter," I tossed some random clothes with bunnies printed on them in the general direction of my sister. However, Heather merely groaned and turned around to face the other way. 

"Let me sleep." she said drowsily but firmly. "Don't even bother getting me into the 'festive' mood or whatever you have planned, Kayleigh."

"You still have to listen to me, you know. I am your older sister."

"But you don't act like it," Heather retorted.

Ten minutes later, Heather was seated at the dining table facing me, picking at the pink-dyed egg with her spoon. "I still don't see the point in celebrating Easter like this," she sighed. 

"Eat." I looked at my sister. "You'll need the energy for the hunt later."

After breakfast, I handed Heather a purple basket. "Now give me some credit here; I still remember your favorite color." 

Heather chose to clap unenthusiastically in response. "I have things to do, can we please do this quickly?" she asked.

"Well, it depends how fast you find the 100 Easter eggs hidden around the entire penthouse." I laughed, but Heather just buried her face in her hands. 

And so began a wild goose chase around the house (that, of course, did not involve any actual geese) with Heather trying to run around in different places in search of the eggs. Soon enough, my sister had found almost all the eggs, with only around 25 left to uncover.

"We haven't checked the attic." Heather suddenly realized. 

"Well done," I tried to keep smiling, even though I could see my sister getting bored.

How do I explain our home, our supposed 'penthouse'? Typically, it was a large flat on the top of a tall building, but we had to make do on the tenth floor because Burgess was a very small town. The building was designed to look like a house, complete with a slanted roof and round windows, and a very large, wooden door. However, because we lived on the top floor, we also had access to a small attic atop our penthouse. That was a place where items were frequently hidden for us, and where lots and lots of miscellaneous items were stored in a very, very cluttered way. One could only wonder how we were able to locate items we needed from the attic.

Boxes of Christmas ornaments were usually kept to the side, but more often than not were taken out for the plastic Christmas tree to be decorated. Earlier this morning, I had ransacked the attic for Easter decorations, so it was obviously still a mess; boxes were scattered around the room and the attic floor was covered with trinkets—but it made hunting for Easter eggs much more fun.

Once we arrived, Heather started to walk through the different items strewn across the floor with caution. "Have you ever heard of cleaning up, Kayleigh?" she looked at me disapprovingly. 

"I'll clean it up afterwards—the items on the floor might be hiding the Easter eggs." I chose to smile and reply.

Another 15 minutes later, Heather had found all but one of the eggs. I remembered that I had hidden it behind the toy box in the corner of the room—I had used my phone to jot down all the hiding spots. (Look, just because I'm childlike doesn't mean I don't have a mobile device—for fairy godmothers' sake, I'm 13!)

As if she could read my mind, Heather started to move towards the antique box. However, she chose to push the cover of the box open, and it did so with a loud "creeeeeeak". I raised my eyebrows as I stood behind her, knowing that she would only find some of our old toys inside the box, but not an Easter egg. But the reaction I got from my sister was something I hadn't expected at all.

"Kayleigh, where did all our toys go?" Heather peered nervously inside the box. I worriedly rushed over to her side and looked into the box too, and gasped loudly.

The box was empty, save for a round, shimmering object resting at the bottom. 

"What is that?" I whispered. 

"Beats me," Heather whispered back. 

I reached a hand out hesitantly and brought the object to our eye level. "It's a snowglobe," both of us said in unison.

The snowglobe was quite a wonder, and was definitely not one of those tacky gifts you'd receive in a Christmas party--in fact, there was no sign of a Santa Claus, Christmas tree, reindeer or anything you'd expect to be in a Christmas snowglobe, simply because it WASN'T like that.

This snowglobe seemed to glow, and a lone tree stood in the middle of the snowglobe. It was unlike any other tree we'd seen before; this one was awfully majestic and looked as if it were capable of holding immense power. The tree was breathtakingly golden, but did not emit the kind of sparkle that blinded your eyes. Silver glitter sprinkled down onto the tree when I gave it a shake, the small crystals drifting down to the bottom of the snowglobe or resting on one of the special tree's branches. When rays of sunlight coming in from the tiny attic window passed through the snowglobe, a rainbow was visible on the side of the attic walls, all colors present and so iridescent. Even Heather couldn't help but let out a gasp of sheer delight upon seeing the rainbow--none of us had ever seen one of them as prominent as this one.

Time seemed to stop as Heather and I gazed at the beautiful--no, breathtaking snowglobe. "It's beautiful," Heather breathed, and I couldn't help but agree silently with a nod of my head.