Carol, Part 18 - Games

"Dammit!"
It's another few days later, and we're having a boardgame evening with My and Nick. My's small reach couldn't get her right hand on green and she fell on her knees on the Twister carpet.
"I'm not playing this game any more," she says and slips off the carpet, poking Nick on her way. He almost loses his balance, being in quite an impressive knot.
"Oh, come on," Leea says from under Nick's arm, "You were doing great."
"I'm short," My makes a face, "That's kind of a disadvantage in this game."
"Left foot yellow," I say.
"I'm short too," Leea says while trying to figure out how to move her foot without falling, "And I'm not complaining. We're also light. Less weight to be held in weird positions."
Nick crashes to the ground behind her with a loud thump. He rubs his elbow and gets up while Leea straightens.
"I agree," he says, "With My, I mean. Let's play something else next."
"Trivial Pursuit?"
"Nah."
"Pictionary?"
"I'm terrible at drawing."
"Doesn't matter."
"Carcassonne?"
"Takes too long, I don't have another couple of hours before I need to leave."
We're all silent for a moment.
"Let's make a game out of making lyrics to the carol?" I ask.
We've all been working on the lyrics for some time already, but they're still not quite done yet. We'd like to have one more verse that hasn't been even started.
"We'll take a half an hour and see who's gotten the best lyrics for that last verse," I suggest.
"You can't make a whole verseworth of good lyrics in a half an hour," Nick says.
"Of course you can't," I say, "But after that we'd have something to start working from to try to make it better. And we'll get a good competition out of it."
"Oooh, I like it," My gets excited, "What does the winner get?"
I look around in the house, trying to think of something we could give the winner.
"I think there's some dough in the freezer," I say, "We could make plum tarts later and the winner gets more than the others."
"Good enough for me," Nick says. My's excitement is contagious. Leea looks already like she's about to sprint off to a lone corner to work on her verse. I can almost hear her brain working on the lyrics.
"Ok, so we can go and sit in different places so we don't bother each other. And we'll come back here in a half an hour. Right now it's.... Five to seven. So we'll be back here at half past?"
Everyone nods.
"Ok."
And we scatter around the house. I climb up the stairs to my room and close the door. Flame jumps out of the knitting basket, where it had been hiding under all the thread and half-finished bigger projects. I throw myself on the bed with a pen and a notebook I always have with me and been using to write down lyrics to anything when they come to me.
Flame jumps to the bed next to me and I scratch it behind the ear, thinking and staring at the empty page in front of me.
Why did I suggest this? I am lousy at writing lyrics when I have to instead of when I have an inspiration for it. I'm going to lose so bad. I look at Flame.
"Could you help me?" I ask it quietly, "You're an expert on amazingly beautiful songs. You could put the lyrics in my head."
Flame yawns and makes a small peeping sound. I frown at in, thinking hard. It turns it head sideways, looking at me curiously.
"You really could help me. I've been keeping you safe for weeks now," I mutter and turn back to the paper.
I feel Flame moving closer to my head. Then there's a soft sound right next to my ear. It's sniffing at my ear. I wave my hand at it to make it go away. It touches my earlobe with a moist nose. I wave at it again.
And then the inspiration comes.
A half an hour later I return downstairs to my friends.
______________________________________________________________

And then I would have to write perfect Christmas carol lyrics if I wanted to continue.
As we learned from last year, it is a very, very bad idea.
So I won't. I'll stop here.

Your topic for tomorrow is Secrets.

~matu