Page 3 of A Very Denarius Christmas

“Nah, I’ll grab them.” Odem snagged another cookie on his way out.

“Alex, my love, are these ready to decorate?” He’d rolled plastic over everything while I mixed the frosting in various colors. The cookies would be interesting, but as long as the kids had fun that’s all that mattered. This was, after all, their holiday.

“About as ready as the cookies and us will be,” he sighed as he glanced around the plastic covered area.

Here’s to hoping they don’t destroy the kitchen.

Does frosting wipe off the ceiling or will we need to repaint?

Guess we’re about to find out.

Chapter Two

Alex

I didn’t have a lot of childhood memories stretching back to when my folks were alive, but one that stood out bright in my mind was decorating cookies. Mom would sing Christmas carols in that soft, sweet voice of hers, while Dad would sit in a chair at the kitchen table with Gramps, watching us and occasionally taking pictures. The scrapbooks mom had started for me, Gramps had added to over the years, explaining, more than once, that she’d have wanted it that way.

Now it was my turn to collect pictures for those we’d started for our own brood, and I knew just the dragon to handle capturing them all. I called Gramps to the kitchen and put my phone in his hands, grinning when he smiled at me.

“Can’t wait to capture the chaos,” Gramps said.

“Hopefully their uncle Odem has them settled down enough that my poor fire extinguishers can catch a break,” I muttered, “I brought a spare in just in case.”

“Shocked you didn’t bring two.”

“I would have, but their sweet uncle Odem is going to decorate cookies with us, so I think they will be okay,” I admitted. “He has such a calming effect on them.”

As if he knew I was talking about them, Odem stepped into the room with Kane and Hunter holding his hands and a big smile on his face.

“The boys have promised to keep the frosting on their cookies and the flames in check,” Odem said.

“How did you get them to agree to that?” I asked.

“Remember that cookie I snagged earlier? The one you threatened me with a spatula over?”

“How could I forget, you snagged it so fast I almost missed it.”

“Well, it wasn’t for me to eat,” he explained. “I charred it and broke it in half, so they could taste what burnt cookie was like. Between scrunching up their noses and trying to rub the taste off their tongues, I think they got the point.”

As soon as we had all four kids positioned in their highchairs in front of the kitchen island, I hugged my brother-in-law.

“Thank you,” I murmured and felt him hug me tighter, “Next time, you take as many cookies as you want.”

“Have I told you that you are officially the best wandering intruder in the world,” he said.

Giggling, I grinned up at him as I stepped back. “Coming from you, that’s the best kind of praise.”

He seated himself between Kane and Hunter, which I appreciated more than he could ever know. How he, the jokester of the bunch, had become our go to dragonet sitter, as well as the dragon I called on when I wanted to learn more about their element and the way it stemmed from their emotions, wasbeyond me. He’d already taught me that frustration was a big trigger for them and the hardest for them to control at their age, because so many things in this world that were new to them presented challenges and frustrations. Learning that had helped me to limit their exposure to new stimuli as well as choose better toys and gifts for them.

While I got that trying to fit a star shaped piece of plastic into its proper slot on a container was designed to teach hand-eye coordination as well as shape identification, when your babies melted the plastic so they could get the pieces to fit, it was clearly not serving the purpose that it was intended for. Maybe it was wrong, but I had started dividing up their toys and giving specific ones to Griffin and Luna when the twins were asleep. It cut back on the expense of replacing damaged items, not to mention tears and sorrow when something Griffin or Luna loved accidentally got melted or obliterated.

I set a cookie down on the plastic in front of each of them, along with small squeezable tubes of frosting, shocked when Odem met my gaze with a questioning look when I sat a cookie down in front of him.

“I’ve never decorated a cookie before,” he declared.

“Neither have they,” I pointed out. “How awesome is it that their first time should be with their favorite uncle?”

I swore I saw him tear up before I turned away. These sweet, loving, protective dragons had, in many ways, lost out on their childhoods after their mother had passed away. Having never known their father, except through the stories their mother had told them about him, they’d been forced to grow up way too fast. Because they’d been born in a time so long ago I couldn’t even imagine what it was like, such a simple thing as cookie decorating certainly hadn’t been on their to do list.