“Oh, Collin! Look over there!” Millie yelled as she pointed towards a red…tent thing among all the other red tent things.

“Look over where?” I asked Millie. Like I would know where she was pointing at when all the tents at this fair looked the same.

“Oh, you mean that over there?” Katie asked as well, pointing in the same direction that Millie was pointing at.

“Do you mean that game over there, Katie?” Bridgette pointed out, and again in the same direction as everyone else. Does no one know how to be specific about where they’re pointing?

Luckily for my sake, the girls walked (or rather, skipped, as they were very jumpy while walking) to the game tent they were pointing at. It was one of those pellet gun games, where you put a pellet on the tip of the gun and shoot, and the pellet would hit some kind of target.

A gun game in this part of town? I bet it was very popular for a short while. A quick glance at the prizes told me though that not a lot of prizes were won.

That meant either I was wrong about people as this game was as popular as sorting pennies by year, or this game was meant to be so hard, no one could possibly beat it without buying off the clerk for one of the prizes.

Seeing as how the clerk was counting a huge wad of cash, I would guess the latter.

“Collin, can we play? Pleeeease?” Millie asked in her “I gotta” voice. She always asks me to do anything in the fair, which might seem normal and polite for some people, but it just reminds me that she knows about how stingy we have to be with our money.

A kid shouldn’t have to ever worry about money.

“Millie, I…”

“I can pay for her, Collin,” Bridgette piped up.

“Are you sure? I mean I can pay just fine with my own-”

“Don’t worry Collin. Save the money for dessert, okay?” Bridgette had a good point. Although I still felt uneasy about letting someone else pay. Especially when she was paying.

“Thanks miss Carrolyn!” Millie thanked Bridgette and took the money from her to the clerk.

Yeah, something is telling me Bridgette is trying to get on Millie’s good side. I better ask Millie later what she heard about me and Bridgette. Probably wasn’t even the whole story either.

Millie and Katie got up on the little stools and started to hold up the guns, which were evidently very heavy for 10 year olds to aim. The clerk gave them a pellet and told them how to play the game. They had one shot, and they could either go for the near target, the middle target, or the far target, with the far target awarding the biggest and best prizes.

I saw Millie holding the gun way away from her body, and I decided to do a little lesson about aiming, the way my grandfather taught me. Well, tried to teach me, anyway.

I’ll make sure that in this lesson I won’t smack Millie with the gun if she gets posture wrong.

“Millie, wait,” I started, “Don’t hold the gun like that. Here,” I showed her how she should put the barrel of the gun right into the shoulder, making sure she didn’t outright jam it onto her collar bone either.

Guess who did that when he was younger?

“Fingers off the trigger. Don’t ever put your finger on the trigger until you are absolutely ready to shoot,” I closely whispered to her as I leaned down next to her. She did as I said and put her finger on the stock of the rifle above the trigger guard.

Hey, the more people that understand trigger discipline, the better. ‘Always start young’, my grandfather said. And then he took me hunting.

“Control your breathing and line up the two sights on the gun with that little prong you see at the end of the rifle. Don’t be scared of the gun. As long as you are in control, there’s nothing to fear from it. Also, it’s not like the real guns, it won’t kick back. Just take it nice, and e-“

POP

The sudden sound made us both jump a little bit, and we turned to see Katie already taking her shot, and hitting the near target just barely. The clerk nodded in some weird satisfaction smirk, and showed Katie the small prizes she could choose. We turned back to our target, and I stood back up. “Let ‘er rip!”

After, maybe, three seconds, Millie shot her pellet and it barely missed the middle target. From my position, I knew she was aiming for the far target.

Huh. This gun’s rigged.

“Let me try, Millie,” I held out one hand towards the rifle while pulling out money for another pellet with my other hand. Once I was given the pellet, I put it on, put the rifle stock into my shoulder, aimed down the sights…

“Don’t put your finger on the trigger all the time, like you said Collin!”

…Thank you, Millie.

Alright, so the pellet went down, way below where the aim is going. This is going to be a bit of guess work, as I aimed the gun up but kept the end prong still trained on the far target. Once I was about 90% sure I would hit it, I put my finger on the trigger, exhaled, and shot the pellet.

Bulls-eye.

“Well, now, sir, you hit the far target!” the clerk told me in an obnoxiously nasally tone. “You win a prize from our selection of large prizes!”

I took a closer look through the top shelf where the large prizes were. It was the usual fair prizes, with a large stuffed panda, stuffed giraffe, stuffed shark (it looked like it was high on something, the way its eyes were so glazed over).

What made me slightly freeze, however, was the giant stuffed Princess Fucking Celestia all the way at the end of the prize row.

“Oh, oh, I want the pony!” Millie jumped up in excitement. I gave a look to the clerk, and he nodded before pulling down the stuffed Princess and handing it over to Millie.

“Have a great day, and hope you had fun at the fair!” the clerk, in his annoying tone, waved goodbye to us as we walked away. Katie put her prize, a tiny little panda, on top of Millie’s Celestia, and the two ran around a bit having fun with throwing their prizes up and down.

“You know, it’s just a pellet gun, not a hunting rifle, Collin…” Bridgette chuckled.

“Yeah, well, if our grandparents ever come back around, at least she won’t go through my grandfather’s lessons in hunting.”

Soon we found ourselves at the food court. We had a big breakfast, but that was a long time ago. Now, it’s getting a bit late, and I saw some tents on our way closing down. Luckily, the food tents were still open, so we found a table and ordered our food.

Oh God, this funnel cake is going straight to my thighs, aren’t they?

“Cole?” Bridgette called me by that name again. I made sure of my displeasure by giving her a dirty look while giving her my attention. “Th-thank you for coming with me and Katie to the fair. I think Katie had a lot of fun with Millie.”

“Ah, no problem,” I calmed my look. “I was already going to ask Millie if she wanted to go. I asked for this day off so I can spend the whole day with her. When Katie mentioned she was also going to the fair, of course I would say yes when Millie asked me if we could go too.”

We took a couple more minutes of eating, before I had an idea. I gave Millie some money and told her to pick out some ice cream pints for us to take back home.

I shot a look towards Bridgette, and she got the hint, also giving Katie some money. With the two kids out, I needed to ask.

“Cole…”

“How’s the whole thing doing with Katie’s father?” I asked.

Bridgette looked slightly startled by the sudden question out of nowhere, before sighing with exhaustion. “Not as well as we hoped. IRS are still tracking him, and now because of not filing his taxes as well as not paying child support. It might be that John left the country now, the way things are going. It’s been three years, he’s probably never coming back, Collin.”

No matter how much I may dislike Bridgette for what she tried to pull with me, along with how she treated Katie before, I feel sympathetic for her. I only met John once, right at the funeral for my parents.

We… had a loud disagreement over what happened to my parents and how it related to Bridgette and me. In reality, it never involved her, but he left without any sort of warning or note a couple days after. Never found him since.

Sure, cheating on your husband is bad, but having that husband suddenly leave you and their daughter alone is going to be the top tier for my shit list.

“Collin?” Millie called. “I’m tired. Can we go home?”

“Heh, I think that’s the food coma talking. But yeah, it’s time to go. Say bye to Miss Carrolyn and Katie.”

“Bye Miss Carrolyn! Bye Katie! What’s a food coma?” Millie asked as we left the food court and started our walk home.

“Basically, when you eat so much food, you can feel tired and lazy instead of hyper and full of energy. Usually that’s because you ate so much bad food. No nightly desserts for the next week, Millie.”

“Aww…” she whined.

“Hey, I’ll make it fair, and I won’t eat anything sweet either next week. Deal?”

Millie looked up at me with pleading eyes, before looking at the ice cream pints in between her hands as she cuddled Celestia up close to her chest.

“Of course we’re going to finish those first before we start the no dessert rule,” I assured her with a laugh. She smiled back and nodded, and we walked silently back to the apartment.

When we got to the apartments, it took me a little while to fish the keys out of my pocket. We heard fire sirens roaring down our street as I opened the door, and I silently wondered and wished it was my work that suddenly had a fire because someone forgot to unplug something correctly with all the papers lying around.

The first thing I noticed about the apartment was that the TV was on. I could have sworn I turned it off when I left to pick up Millie this mor-

No.

No no no no.

On the couch in front of the TV stood a little white horse-shaped mouse which I knew as Princess Celestia. She was currently watching TV of another show involving some fairy tale characters in a forest, with one character going, “Elsa, no, don’t listen to her!” in the background.

…Why is the Princess here?!

“Oh, hello again, Collin Kierkas. When I came back I noticed you were gone, so I decided to explore your dwelling for a while, especially your TV. Oh, and is that Millie Kierkas, the sister you were telling me about?”

I quickly turned with worry to Millie, who stared with fear at the little creature on the couch. She dropped the ice cream pints first before the Celestia plushie fell out of her arms.

She then fainted as well.

Author's Notes:

No procrastination, just a chapter that I had sitting on my drive since the weekend that I never got to look through and then upload.

Also, thanks a lot for all the likes and the favs! Now I have to get through my other stories that I worked slightly on but never finished as well...