Colonel Seeders' Mail Order Bride, Hank

23 Hawk & Michelle

Hawk:

His heart beat so fast, it would surely explode if it did not slow down. His parents mated and almost confirmed their love for each other. Almost, but the words never left their mouths. What were they waiting for? They practically screamed it in their thoughts.

Hawk snuck down to the kitchen while they spoke in the bathroom and started preparing a few steaks for his new mother. She would be hungry after she changed.

Hawk called up a program on his father's com-device. It showed the calendars for all the different planets. The date on their calendar said that they had a few hours before Thanksgiving, where Earth would be celebrating Easter. He never realised that they were that far ahead in time. In fact they had years on them. Probably because of the water destruction.

He rushed back into the kitchen, pulled out the huge bird he found in his trap, thankfully cleaned by his father before he shoved it into the freezer, and laid it in the basin to thaw out.

He would make her a Thanksgiving turkey, even though the bird was a Clunch. It looked like an ostrich from earth, but with a shorter neck and their Clunch could fly. His father always said it was the thought that counted.

The steaks looked a bit like road kill by the time he carved them, but she would not be looking at it while she ate. Eating raw meat for the first time could probably set her off again, but she would need the protein.

Each time she saw blood, the memories flooded back. He would keep it covered until she had her eyes closed.

Running back to the device, after cleaning up the kitchen, he researched Thanksgiving. They gave thanks each day, so never bothered celebrating the day. He did not know anyone that did celebrate it on Trachtaria.

As per the net, Thanksgiving was meant to be a day for giving thanks. He already knew that. The food they ate included a turkey and some things he could not fathom. Minced pies? Why would someone make a pie and then mince it? Giblet sauce? No way would he touch those things, even if he knew what they were.

He logged out and went to the fridge. They had cranberries, so he could make that sauce. To hell with it.

The thought mattered, right?

He had the bird. He would make a vegetable dish and ask his father to help him make the grilled corn and maybe his new mother could make them a bread or buns to have with it. Nothing smelled better than bread baking in an oven. Except for the flowers that grew around their house in the summer. They smelled like her.

His mother. He had a mother. She had agreed to be his mother and she loved him just the way he was. She did more for him in two days than any doctor or his uncle had done in ten years. Before she came, he would not have been able to cut steaks, even though they looked like hacked off chunks of meat. Nor would he have been able to make a Thanksgiving meal for his family. He still needed help with the oven and probably with the bird itself, but he would start it off.

While preparing the vegetables according to a recipe he found in one of his father's books, his mother started growling in her sleep.

"Dad, it's time. Wake up!" he shouted when neither of them came down.

***

Michelle:

***

A black dragon flew passed her and then swooped up into the sky. She followed him. She had to be dreaming. She couldn't flap her arms and take off into the sky. That was just ridiculous, but in dreams she could be and do anything she wanted to. Including fly.