Fall Fest Bingo/Holiday Prompts (Autumn) 7

[kiramaru7]

Title: A Lucky Man
Author: kira
Table: Autumn: Images (Holiday Prompts)
Prompt: Image 7; a cup of tea by a lake
Fandom: Original
Characters: Orvis Jones, his wife Hazel, and various family members
Word count: 483
Rating: G
Summary: Orvis Jones realizes he’s a lucky man…
Author’s note: Special thanks to my beta Kat for pinking this. Please also note that this was also written for Holiday Prompts Autumn: Images table.





Orvis Jones set his cup of tea down on the deck’s railing and looked out across the lake. Autumn was just starting to paint the trees in a mix of reds, oranges, and golds, and the morning air had a definite nip to it. His wife, Hazel, lay sleeping in their bed and he wondered if he should wake her so she could enjoy early morning quiet, before the last of the summer renters disturbed the peace with their loud motorboats. He could not wait for them to leave so he could get out his kayak and paddle over to his twin brother’s place without worrying about getting run over by a larger boat.

Orville, his twin, had a similar cabin across the lake; his parent’s cabin sitting roughly midway between theirs. Despite the distance across the lake, or around by car, the families were close, with the cousins growing up like siblings. He remembered the first time his eldest Ian took out the old canoe and paddled across the lake to his aunt and uncle’s. Orvis still got chills whenever he thought about just how close that speed boat got to his son. Ian at the time merely shrugged it off. His cousin Jeremy, a few days later, had a similar incident and was not so lucky. The older teen, while narrowly missing getting hit by the boat, was capsized by a collision with a water-skier when they were whipped around by the boat. That was the summer his sister-in-law discovered her first grey hair, or so she said. It was also the summer all the kids got a crash-course in water safety as well as a few lessons in getting up early to avoid what Grandpa Jones called “Moe-Rons.”

Now their kids were all grown up, and starting families of their own. He was glad when his youngest, Brandy, and her husband bought the rental next door. The little cabin had seen better days, but with everyone’s help, they had turned it into a storybook cottage. Next summer, they would work on the dock as Brandy’s husband was eager to get a boat so he could enjoy water and go fishing too.

Orvis smiled and sipped his tea. He finally understood why his parents were so happy he and his brother had bought property here. It was not so much that they would see their grandkids all summer long, it was that they would all grow closer as a large extended family, instead of apart. He could feel it in the way Hazel had quietly joined him on the deck and in the way Brandy, her husband, and her cousin Alfred and his wife, all waved as they paddled by on their way to grandma and grandpa’s. He sipped his tea again, kissed his wife on the cheek, and knew deep down in his heart that he was a lucky man.

Comments

[kattrip033.livejournal.com]

Lucky indeed.

[kiramaru7.livejournal.com]

Yup! :D