"We're here," Bree says as we stare up at the huge castle. It took a day and a half to travel through the town, seeing dogs and cats alike all walking the streets. Like the bird and rodent kingdom, this one is extremely peaceful, even with two different kingdoms being combined.
"Are you ready to meet your mom?" I ask Gold. She looks over at me and nods, pawing the ground anxiously. Bree pats her on the side softly and reassures her that it's going to be okay. I bring my hand up to the door and knock on it before stepping back, not sure if it swings out or in.
"Yes?" A wolf sticks his head out of the doorway. He sees us and his eyes widen before he opens the door all the way and lets us inside. He closed the door behind us and leads us up the stairs and into a room. I sit down on the bed and we wait for him to say something.
"She is in a meeting currently and will be up to talk to you later, " he says finally before walking out. I look over at Bree and she shrugs as Gold paces the room. She sits down on the floor before getting up and pacing around again.
"You literally haven't seen her since a baby and she can't skip a meeting to come see you?" I think out loud. Gold lies down in her cat bed and curls up. Me and Bree get off the bed and walk over to Gold, talking off the saddle and putting it onto a hook in the room.
I sit back down on the bed and watch as Bree walks around the room. She walks into the bathroom and quickly back out of it, looking like she saw a ghost. She looks at me and shakes her head, silently telling me not to go in there. I nod and she continues to wake around the room.
She stands next to the podium for a minute before walking over to a closet in the corner of the room. She opens the door and flicks on the light, walking inside the closet. I hear her rummage around inside for a minute before the noises suddenly stop.
"Hey, they have board games!" Bree exclaims. I get up off the bed and walk into the closet to see Bree standing on a laundry basket while taking board games down off of the top shelf. She sets them down on the floor as she takes them off the shelf and I quietly sigh, knowing that she and Gold are going to want to play every single one of them.
"Can you bring some into the bedroom for me?" Bree asks me as she gets down off the laundry basket and picks up some of the board games. I go to shake my head no but she gives me the puppy dog eyes and I sigh quietly before picking up some of the board games off the floor.
I can't see over the huge pile of them in my arms, so I look to the side a as I walk out of the closet, trying not to drop any of them. I finally get to the extra bed and set them down next to Bree's pile, spreading them out so they aren't so dangerously stacked.
"Which one do you want to start with first?" Bree asks, turning towards Gold. Gold picks her head up off her paws and gets up, yawning and stretching. She pads over to where we're standing and looks over the hundreds of board games lying on the bed.
"This one," she says, nudging a box I've never seen before with her nose. Bree nods and picks it up off the bed, setting it on the floor and opening the board game up. She takes out the pieces and Gold decides that she wants to be a mermaid.
"What do you wanna be Cloud?" Bree asks me. I sit down next to her and watch as she picks up a siren game piece and sets it on the starting point. I look over the games pieces and then find a pirate. I pick the pirate up and set them on the start.
"A pirate?" Bree asks, turning to face me. I smile at her and nod. She shakes her head but smiles at me nonetheless, taking the instructions out of the box and reading them out loud.
The goal of the game is to find as much treasure as you can on the map while avoiding the different things in the water that could hurt you, meaning that you lose a turn when you get hurt. The player with the most treasure wins.
"I'm literally a pirate. We're the best at getting treasure!" I exclaim excitedly. Bree smiles and we start playing the game, rolling the dice so we can move and collecting treasure by landing on certain spots on the board.
"Music anyone? " I ask them a quarter of the way through the game. Bree nods and I walk over to the podium and lightly set my hand down on it. I think off music and it starts playing, the music from the podium filling the room better than any speaker.
I sit back down next to Bree and Gold, playing the game until we get tired of it. Bree ends up winning the game and Gold for a close second, leaving me in last place.
"The pirate didn't win?" Bree asks sarcastically. I nudge her in the side with my elbow and she glares at me. We out the game away and Gold walks back over to the bed and picks out another game. She sets it down on the floor and it's finally a game that I've actually heard of.
"How are you going to play Uno with paws?" Bree asks Gold as she shuffles the deck. She deals out the cards as Gold shrugs. Bree sets the cards down in the middle of us and flips over the top card, sowing that it's a green eight.
We watch as Gold struggles to pick her cards up off the floor, before she goes over to the podium and had it float the cards up in the air for her to see. We play Uno for a long time, most of the time Gold loses while Bree manages to get a few wins here and there.
"How are you so good at Uno?" Gold asks me as I shuffle the cards together. I think of my mom and how she first taught me to play Uno when I was little. I loved the game then and I still love it now, considering that I haven't gotten bored of playing it almost every day.
"Me and my mom play it after dinner," I say, my voice somewhat chocked up. Bree rests a hand on my shoulder reassuringly and I force a smile, trying not to show how homesick I am. I deal out the cards and we play what feels like only the second game but I know that it has to be at least the tenth.
The door swings wide open and slams against the wall, making me drop my cards and stand up in panic. Bree and Gold stand up behind me as I look at the cat standing in the doorway, looking extremely panicked as she looks around the room.
"Mom?" Gold asks.