Half Truth was wandering back towards the fire when she spotted them. Changes and a small army of foals of various colors and shapes were throwing small twigs and pine needles into the fire for no apparent reason. “What the- come on, kids, don’t play near there!” She shooed the children away from the bonfire’s edge, herding them a safe distance away from the glowing embers. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that those aren’t fireflies? And you,” she said, rounding on Changes. “You should definitely have known better! You’re-“ She sighed. Her kid was giving her that look, and besides, she couldn’t humiliate him in public like that. “Hey, come on. All of you. Come on over here and we’ll play together, won't that be fun?” She certainly hoped it would be. Or at least distracting enough that they wouldn't want to go run at the fire. However, once she had the kids in her thrall, she wasn’t too sure what to do with them. A running game wouldn’t work here; there were too many kin about for that. The poetry game… probably wouldn’t go over too well with a group this rambunctious. What did kids like? They liked stories, right? Maybe she could tell them a story. Waving them closer, she drew them in, making goofy faces to get their attention.
“So, who wants to hear a story? Ok, good, because you’re all going to get a story. It’s a cautionary tale full of misadventure and woe- you guys like hearing about that sort of thing, right? Everybody likes a story with a little danger in it. When I was your age, I came to the festival of plenty myself- mostly to eat the delicious food and hang out with other kids. We’d always play like you do now; we’d form a big roving pack that moved throughout the festival, striking terror into the hearts of anybody who would stand between us and the grub. Oh, those grubs! A good few waxy grubs, toasted over the fire- have you guys had any of those? No? You haven’t tried the grubs? Hang on, we’re going to rectify this immediately.” Rising to her feet, she herded the children over towards the food, making sure that each of them got as many of the sweet and salty snacks as they could possibly want. Certainly more than any of them needed, but what the heck, this was a party. What was the point of a party when you were a kid if not to eat yourself sick? Once everybody had food, she got them settled again. Most of them were only paying half-attention, as they were otherwise focused on their snacks, but that didn’t matter because they weren’t playing in the fire anymore.
“Anyways, as we were playing with each other, we all got too close to the fire. One of the other kids told us that the embers were fireflies, and that this was where fireflies came from- and of course we all believed it because of course fireflies come from fire. That made so much sense. So we all tried to catch them. I mean, he sounded so confident that this was where they came from- and have you ever seen a baby firefly? Neither had we. So we decided that he must be right and we were going to capture these fireflies. It wasn’t a very easy game, because as you all know- you’re so much smarter than we are, isn’t that amazing?- as you all know, this is a fire and it is not where fireflies come from. But we didn’t know that!
Anyways, one of the others was a little acha girl. She was really pretty- she had this really delicate pale pink fur like cherry blossoms and the sweetest laugh- and she was one of those girls who always had the best of everything, so while we were floundering about and failing miserably, she developed a plan. It wasn’t a good plan, but it was her plan. So she decided that she’d be the one to catch the most fireflies, and she was going to do this by leaping higher and closer to the flames than any of us. At first, we were kind of impressed because she was really talented- she had a very acrobatic way of moving, so when she was actually in motion and doing stunts, it was amazing to see. But then she got closer and closer and finally…”
Half Truth paused for dramatic effect, looking at the faces of her little audience. “…Her tail caught on fire!”
“And?”
“What the- who said that? What do you mean, and? Her tail caught on fire! It was tragic!”
“Yeah, but did anything good happen?”
“Well, she rolled around in the dirt and cried a lot because her fur was singed, and-“
“So nothing good happened.”
Half Truth’s face fell into an exasperated stare. “What do you want, kid? It’s a story about somebody catching fire!”
“Yeah but it’s just her tail.”
The kimeti sighed. “Ok, this clearly isn’t working. Who wants to go look for sticks? Let’s go find a bunch of stuff and we’ll throw it onto the fire and see how it burns.”
As the group of children sprang to their feet, Half Truth was both impressed and slightly taken aback at how much they wanted to burn things. Kids. They were brutal.