“I think the thing we’re missing is the fact that we were not just feral.”

“We were feral as fuck, though-“

“But we were something else-we were raised by people whose fathers came back from ww2 mostly for worse. And our parents bought the propaganda hook line and sinks- they were actually young-“

“They looked old as fuck” Beth laughed.

“Like that movie grease-” Ann chuckled.

“Yeah, but maybe being raised by the self-medicating with a bottle of booze dude who’d buried ¾ of his graduation class over wars he’d had nothing to do with, only to have night terrors for 25 yrs afterwards…and nothing in place in society to unpack all that…accelerated cell turnover in our parents, who were breaking their necks to get out of dodge-?”

“They do say old age is basically exacerbated stress markers, so you may be onto something here.” Ann muttered.

“It’d explain our relative effervescence, comparatively speaking, too.” Beth chimed in. ” To those ahead of us in the age game and behind us-“

“Yeah. Our parents making us latchkey kids and making us feral… could have been them trying to show us love… by not being around, swinging on us all the time. “

“What they did pass down to us is as important as what they fought like hell not to pass down-“

---

“Great pep talk, Maisie-“

She nodded and sipped her champagne before waving the compliment off. ” No cap, though. No gaslighting either- I mean, not trying to cajole any of You into Going home tomorrow to- “

“…you better Not have been-” Ann chuckled darkly.

“The happiness we’re rolling with would NOT be accepted at zee familial INNs and we allllll know it-” Robert laughed.

“Hell nah~” Carmen laughed. “Gladys can rain down on everybody else’s parade but mines!”

“Bet chu wouldn’t say that to her face,” Ann grinned, “with that fresh mouth-“

“She grown! She can call her momma by her first name if she wants to-“

“Clearly, you do not understand that Carmen is Not that type of Whyte woman-” Beth chortled as she sipped her Pinot.

“I am grown!”

“I’mma call Gladys mySelf to see exactly how-she feels about all this-” Beth giggled

“GirrL, you better not- put that phone down- put it down~” Carmen murmured seductively, ” Because I will call- what’s your mom’s name-“

“Mom!” Beth giggled, “That’s her government name! For real-“

Maisie looked at her screen and felt nothing but love. So many more of them had survived than any of them had expected, and here they were , now, happy, the day before thanksgiving, grateful by leaps and bounds, with none of the nonsense afoot to remind them of why they’d respectively left home in the first place.

“To DIY And DEi!” Robert toasted his crew of crews from an Atlanta he was wrapping up his sojourn in as he noshed.

Here, they were reminded of something completely different with one another. They were reminded of who they’d left, and who and what Home had really been.

“Leave them to That crazy-” Anthony yelped, ” nihilism , with a splash of peace any day-“

“Dude, see this is what I’m talking about-” Jeff hollered.”That right there- Straight gibberish!-“

“You mean Giblet-ish~” Anthony corrected his boy in Paris from being posted up in Paraguay.

Tasha smacked her lips “Maan! What does that even mean?”

The constellation of Friendsgiving feasts carried on across time zones and generations. One of the most beautiful perks from all of them having grown up wild was how much each of the assortment of authentic human beings had happily gotten up to their own devices as adults.

No one kept track of how this “Phoned in feast from wherever the fuck ya were” had come together, but all agreed that it had worked. And given each and every one of them the perfect excuse to be unable to be at childhood homes they’d spent most summer days locked outside of anyway when the rest of the trauma trussed up alongside turkey showed up six weeks before Christmas.

The vegans amongst them ate their Tofurky cutlets in all the peace they gave carnivorous buddies scraping succulent marrow out of cracked open and roasted bones in their faces. Turkeys danced across plates in all unnecessary to be agreed upon iterations: from roasted to smoked, deep-fried to stuffed full of duck and chicken.

And those who blasphemed the entire proceedings by slathering themselves with broiled fish- which they’d fight to the death pointing out was much more likely to have been on the menu than macaroni and cheese for any harvest feasts the people of turtle island offered to the starving white folks whose pestilences had already begun wiping their indigenous asses out- were able to eat without throwing elbows.

©AngelBrynner 2025