How Green Becomes Wood

"We split the teams so none of us are with people we are extremely familiar with, for fairness," Dark said, explaining the team order, relieved about how it had worked out. Since Sally was his wife's best friend, he felt he probably knew her better than either Jack or Peter.

"Good, it'd be unfair to let the twins work together," Daizi laughed, "No offense, boys, but surely you understand."
 
"We get it, you want a chance to win," Xander said. "It's understandable."

"Now," Sally said, picking up the cards and shuffling them. "It is very simple, but surprisingly difficult. We need to each sit opposite our teammate and go around the table. When it is your turn, you draw a card. This card has the word 'test.' I now need to get my partner, Mr. Dark, to say the word 'test' but without using that word, myself, or using this list of words and phrases. On this card, the words I am not allowed to say are, study, learn, school, teacher, or answer. I can say anything else I want as long as I do not use those words. If Mr. Dark guesses the word correctly before the timer runs out, then we get a point. We keep these cards to mark our points, but if we fail, then the card is discarded. Does that make sense?"
 
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"Well, to be fair, Daizi and I have been a couple for longer than you two have been alive, so I think, ultimately, if it came down to you and Alec or Daizi and myself, the winner would be clear." Dark replied, his competitive side taking over.

"Oh that doesn't sound too hard," Daizi said, "Although, since I can't see the card, nobody can fault me if I accidentally say a word that's on it. You can only hold so much in your head when you're sleep deprived."
 
"I'll make sure to remind you of the words, but it doesn't look like there are too many," Alec assured her.

"Even when you can see the list, it's still easy to slip up when you get excited," Sally said with a smile.

"This is a weird game," Xander grumbled, finding his spot while the others did the same. "Who goes first? Oldest or youngest?"

"How about least grumpy?" Alec challenged, standing at Daizi's shoulder.
 
"So Peter and Daizi," Dark filled in, although he had already been in the process of averaging everyone's ages. He wasn't exactly certain how old Jack was, and he also wasn't certain if Peter was 14 or 15, but he guessed Jack was older than Daizi, which meant Jack and Xander's team would average heigher than Daizi and Peter's, so regardless of if they went with the youngest or least grumpy they would still go first. But math wasn't necessary to determine who would go first if they decided to go based on oldest.

"Wait, do the teams go in a row, like we'd both take our turn before moving to a different group, or do we need to be more specific about turn order than that?" Daizi asked, immediately rendering all of her husband's mental arithmetic worthless, "And if we start by team, how do we decide who is the second least grumpy?"

Dark glanced at Xander. That was a difficult determination, it would have to come down to Sally and Jack.
 
"How about we go by age before we get into a discussion on how to discern such arbitrary traits?" Sally chuckled. "How our turns go is we just go around the table from left to right. As long as we alternate and always sit across from our partner, it should even out. Whoever wishes to admit to being the oldest can go first, and then we'll go around from there. Does that sound fair?"
 
"Daizi is younger than I am," Dark said, "so she would go after me." He wanted to say 'go near the middle' but absolutely refused to guess who among the remaining three adults was oldest. Typically he presumed himself to be. Having that thought, he realized an easy answer to their conundrum, and sat casually on the couch beside Daizi (if they were supposed to sit across from their partner, he was very much within his rights to sit next to his wife), "Did you know, I do not actually know when my birthday is? The year I give is really only a best guess, so in theory I could be older than I think, which would make it impossible to prove who is the oldest. Instead of making everyone reveal themselves, we can say I am theoretically the oldest, since it cannot be disproven. And since Sally and I are the only pairing of two adults, our team would have the highest composite age, even though you are, what?" He looked at Sally, and revealing a bit of the charm he normally kept underwraps, "not a day over 34?" It would have put her at having Peter at 19, but he was trying to both intentionally undershoot her age and avoid accusing her of having him while in high school, which was a very delicate line to walk.
 
Sally looked at Dark and raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow at him with a faint smile to show she knew full well exactly what he was playing at. "A few days over 34, Mr. Dark," she replied blandly. "Why don't you draw first, and I'll see if I can read your smooth mind, shall we?"

Jack sat next to Sally while trying hard to hide his cackling. Xander sat on Dark's opposite mind, frowning as he tried to figure out exactly what was so funny. Peter sat across from Daizi and grinned, fully understanding the situation.
 
"Really?" Dark asked, pulling a card in one fluid gesture, "Thirty five, then. But nobody will believe you."

"Smooth mind? Oh, Sally, my dear, no, it's terribly convoluted in there. It's a maze. It's very endearing, but very complicated." Daizi said, leaning against Dark's shoulder, feeling no qualms about fraternizing with the enemy. And he smelled wonderful, "But I don't really care much for ages. You all look very young to me, and I can't wait to be a hag. Well, I guess right now I need to delay hag-dom for a little while, since I've got a baby. But as soon as she's 18, I'm turning into a hag."
 
"I think... 'hag-dom'... comes about during toddlerhood, to be honest," Sally said in amusement. "You get a little more sleep while expending far more energy."

Alec inched over and peered over Dark's shoulder at the card he'd drawn.
 
"I think technically that is good news for me. I'm excited to be a hag, and I'm excited for when she's a toddler and she starts speaking and believing in magic and those things," She sighed contentedly, kissing Ivy and grinning down at her perfect little face, "But what I'm not looking forward to is meeting the other parents in the inevitable baby playgroup we'll join. I'm sure they'll all be a decade younger than me, and they'll be wondering why I had her so late. Ivy! Say, 'I arrived exactly when it was time!' And 'Actually I arrived early!' Right?" She laughed, kissing her baby again.

Dark smiled over at his wife and baby, but didn't add anything. Instead, after taking a few moments to think, he looked up at Sally and said, "These are famous structures erected all across the world for different, but similar, purposes."
 
"Hmm, pyramids?" Sally guessed.

"Wait, you forgot to start the timer," Peter pointed out. He flipped the cheap, plastic hourglass over. "Now go."

"Ah, yes, timer. Now, pyramid? Or church?" Sally questioned.
 
"Pyramid is similar, they have a similar purpose. Think more broadly, the shape of these is not always identical." Dark replied, calmly, completely certain she would get it, "The Pyramids of Giza are only an example of this."
 
"Memorial is the most similar, but they can also be built for important dates," Dark replied. He had a more specific clue he might give, but they still had enough time, he didn't want to immediately give the game away, "and not only for tragic events, they can be built to commemorate battles, people, anything significant to a place or group of people."
 
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Dark cracked a small smile, "It is monument. You got it." He looked down at Daizi, who was resting her head on his shoulder, "See? My mind is not so convoluted. If the timer became too low I would have said, 'There is a famous one in Washington D.C.'"

Daizi rubbed her cheek him and teased, "You did well, Goose. But I'm not happy about it, because we're competing against each other."
 
"You hardly look like you're competing against each other," Xander pointed out dryly.

"That's one point to us!" Sally said happily. "Alright, let's keep going and see how sleep-deprived you two really are."

It was a quick game thanks to the timer. If someone couldn't guess the word before time ran out, then the card was "lost" to the discard pile. Jack and Xander made terrible teammates, as it turned out, and they lost more cards to accidentally saying a word they weren't supposed to than running out of time. Alec faithfully read all the cards to Daizi, keeping his voice low so no one else could overhear, and Peter turned out to be pretty decent at guessing the right words. He did get flustered during the "lightning round," a random event triggered by a draw of one of the cards where the lucky - or unlucky - pair got to try to guess as many words as they could before the timer ran out.
 
"Of course we're competing," Daizi replied, laughing while not pulling even slightly away from her husband.

It turned out to be very beneficial they were on opposite teams, because almost every time Sally or Peter failed to guess a word one of them had tried to describe, the other one clearly knew it. Not always, but often. But, although they both did fairly well, the sleep deprivation did get to them. Often, they couldn't figure out the simplest words, or worse, couldn't remember the English word. One particular painful example was when Dark failed to remember the word "chicken." But, for the most part, they did pretty well. The lightning round was also an issue for Daizi, since it was hard for her to switch from hearing the word to describing it quickly enough.

Near the end, though, as it approached Daizi's last turn, Dark glanced down at her, chuckled, and then looked at Alec and asked, "Would you mind taking Ivy and putting her in her cradle? I think she has fallen asleep, and I cannot get the baby from her at this angle."
 
"Sure," Alec agreed. He gently scooped up Ivy from her mother's arms and carried her to her crib with the utmost caution. He was still utterly terrified he was going to trip and drop her or something equally horrid, but he was willing to try. As long as Dark and Daizi trusted him to carry her, he figured he couldn't be that bad.

"Oh, that's so sweet," Sally said with a little smile.
 
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