Thanksgiving

"The shear amount of sugar you have had worries me." Kahn muttered, "Its barely noon, you've only been awake three hours and- Oi! Stop eating the sweetened condensed milk!"

The kitchen was alive with activity. For the first time all the House members had stayed on over Thanksgiving, some of the squatters had stayed as well, and each of them seemed determined to be part of the already elaborate meal.

How the twenty-some plus teenagers and young adults all managed to use the kitchen without major injury (Dagger had lightly burned her hand on a pot of boiling water, but that didnt count) or bloodshed, Kahn would never know, but she enjoyed watching them co-operate to best utilize the four ovens and two cookng ranges.

Some of the more entrepreneuring ones had decided to try something 'new'; some one started a bonfire in a sawed off barrel and cooking stones were heating in side of it, one of the spiky haired boys (the blond-ish one) was making pancakes on what looked like a hot pizza stone, while the other one (darker haired) poked at somethng in a sauce pan held over a candle, Axel could be seen through one of the open doors poking at his ladder-cum-turkey frier contraption.

The kids were also amazingly organized, but only if you looked hard, a casual watcher would just see a mass of kids dropped where ever running back and forth for ingredients. Actully they had situated themselves into stations where most of the ingredients each needed was available. Kahn herself was in the corner with the component for most desserts making cookies, some brooding type to her left making eggs, and Kira to her right licking the lid of the sweetend condensed milk can.

"'S not my fault, 'Maru told me to make pie..." She pouted.

"Yeah, yeah. So what do- Um what is Axel doing with that welding torch?"

"Drawing a smily face on his turkey looks like."

"Oh."

0000000


Finally they were done, they could eat.

Some one had found a table that could, amazingly, fit all of them and set it up outside. So they sat covered in flour, gravy, and bits of unrecognizable...suff. Later if they survived the tryptophan they would get prettied up and have a second, smaller meal with a less graffiti-ed turkey, Axel hadn't stopped at the smily face or the initals or the tic-tac-toe game, and would take a group photo to send to parents and relatives.

None of that mattered now as they switched seats, laughed at stupid jokes, picked fun at each others cooking. Their familys may never see the pictures of their sons and daughters cooking, fighting, looking like they rolled in their plates, and lauging like they were all drunk out of their minds (they might well be; Kahn was sure she spotted a bottle of wine being passed about).

Kahn smiled, in the midst of the chaos and leaned against Vierrez with a happy sigh.

"So who's gonna clean up?"