Jay Prompt

“Did you know the neighbours are having a barbecue?!”

Charlie looks up from playing a game on her phone, stares at me. “Jay. We are staying in a cabin because the wandering magician asked it to let us in, and it did because the owners aren’t here and it is lonely. The neighbours likely would not understand that, given they probably know the owners. Nor would they invite us to a barbecue.”

“Oh. But I maybe kinda invited myself,” I boast, because I am pretty jaysome at a lot of things.

Charlie blinks. “You invited yourself?”

“Well, I asked the barbecue and it said yes since it will have lots and lots of food on it, and a Jay can eat a lot so I’d be doing a big helping. Also, the barbecue doesn’t like that they’re called Barbies because he thinks he’s more a Ken. Which was a joking!”

“Barbecues make puns. Of course they do.” Charlie puts her phone away and stands. “And you want my help making sure the people invite us, too?”

I nod. “Cuz if I ask, I might use bindings and that would be mean and not a proper asking and I am pretty hungry like a Jay.”

“So, what happens if I say no?”

“Charlie!”

She laughs at that and ruffles my hair as we depart. “For a kid from far Outside the universe, you’re really ease to tease.”

“That’s just because I’m hungry.”

“You had breakfast an hour ago, Jay.”

“But that was only my first one,” I explainify, because Charlie sometimes forgets.

And the neighbours do have a hugey barbecue and Charlie talks to them all charliesome so we get to eat and it’s entirely okay and they’re not cooking a Bigfoot or gods or even people, all of which Charlie suggestified on the way because sometimes we have a lot of adventures even when we don’t mean to. But this one is just eating food, and I am pretty jaysome at that so I impress lots of people and make Ken the barbecue happy and even take extras for Honcho to eat when he comes back from the deep part of the woods.

“We didn’t have to do anything appalling, or stop anything that was even worse.” Charlie glances over at me. “Which, given how you find adventures, is rather astonishing.”

And she says it with this really waiting pause after. “Well, maybe there was one person who kinda wanted to do not-nice things with Ken but I did some bindings and fixed it all up so you didn’t have to.”

Charlie stares at me. “What qualifies as ‘not nice’ to a barbecue, just out of morbid curiosity.”

“A lot of cleaning and painting Ken pink,” I explain, “which I said was weird because pink is a really jaysome colour but sometimes people cook food pink too and Ken gets really sad over that so I can kinda understand it.”

“Ah. Well, we got invited to dinner as well. I think Mr. Chow was rather impressed at how much you ate.”

“Uh-huh. I even didn’t eat too much so they wouldn’t be suspious of us!”

Charlie blinks. “Three chickens in under ten minutes,” she says, but to herself and not to me at all, so maybe she just wishes she’d had more chicken too :D