Written for Dragon's birthday. We both know which conversation inspired this, so there's no reason to mention it here.

No one could quite tell if what had happened was some sort of severe weather, an act of sorcery, or Mary Lou's leaf machine acting up again, but the church now had a giant hole in the wall, one that couldn't be stuffed with dampish bread and ignored until such an event happened again.

Mary Lou did not want to be bothered with any maintenance that couldn't be fixed with dampish bread, so she called someone in to deal with it. The hole could be fixed, the man told them, his eyes on the leaves littering the room. However, it would take a few days to manage that and a few smaller repairs, so it was in the family's best interests to stay in a hotel until all was repaired.

The Barebone children were immediately sent upstairs to retrieve whatever could fit in a single medium-sized suitcase. They were to bring only essentials, which brought to mind articles of clothing and items for freshening up. But their adoptive mother had a slightly different idea of what was essential.

When they returned downstairs with their suitcase, the vast majority of Mary Lou's leaves and peas were in bags by the door. For a few moments the children watched as she attempted to put Ivan the leaf machine in her suitcase.

"I don't want to be apart from you either, Ivan," she told him. "That's why I'm taking you with me."

It didn't seem that Ivan wanted to go to a hotel, as he spit a few leaves at his wife when she continued trying to close the suitcase over him.

Or perhaps the leaf machine simply couldn't bear to be somewhere he couldn't see Mary Lou, even if she would be carrying him the whole time. After about fifteen minutes of this, she decided this must be the case and hurriedly apologized to Ivan for even considering it.

This spectacle was one Credence, Chastity, and Modesty watched with, respectively, slightly exasperated, curious, and confused expressions. Once again, Mary Lou had proven that Ivan, her leaves, and her peas were the most important things in her life, and the most urgent requirements for a vacation. Even more so than clothing, supplies, and her children.

Once Ivan was set down by the door, alongside the bags of leaves and peas, Mary Lou suddenly decided that she might want to bring something to wear after all. Of course Ivan had to be brought along, as he simply couldn't be left alone for a few minutes or he might get lonely. And a lonely leaf machine was not a good thing at all.

Glancing at the place where the lonely leaf machine had been, the children wondered what exactly they were getting themselves into when they got to the hotel. Was a simple getaway too much to ask for?

X

The simple answer was yes, a simple getaway was indeed unachievable.

As soon as they arrived at their room, Ivan decided he wanted to sunbathe and unleashed a flurry of leaves until his wife told him they could go as soon as she decided on somewhere to put her premature baby peas. Most likely, Mary Lou was the one with such desires and Ivan was just malfunctioning as usual, but her children knew better than to say so.

The pool area wasn't very large, with only two rickety beach chairs and a single sign advising guests to swim at their own risk. Ivan was placed on one of the chairs, and he expressed his gratitude by spitting out more leaves, two of which dropped into the pool. Unsure of what else to do, Credence made to get into the pool. Unfortunately, his adoptive mother immediately stopped him.

"You're going to teach the peas to swim," she said, depositing a bowl of peas in his arms. "I won't have them drowning."

Credence had absolutely no idea how he might go about doing that. Peas simply did not swim or have any need to. But he knew he wouldn't be spared a punishment just because they were away, so he decided he could at least try.

Once Mary Lou was once again occupied with her leaf machine, per usual really, Credence turned to the peas. The smell made him want to begin to nausea, but he knew he wasn't supposed to nausea on his mother's peas. Or her leaves, several of which floated in the pool.

"How do you teach peas to swim?" Credence wondered aloud.

"Like this," Modesty suggested. She took the bowl from her brother and emptied it into the pool.

The trouble with this was that while some of the peas floated, or at least tried, many of them sank to the bottom. The children could feel the peas dropping onto their toes before rolling off onto the floor of the pool. And they could also feel their mother's eyes on them, telling them that they needed to pick up every last pea before they themselves ended up laying on the floor of the pool.

Retrieving the peas took an hour, and quite an unpleasant hour at that. The smell of peas was barely diminished by the water, which did not ease anyone's nausea. Credence volunteered to sweep the deep end so his sisters wouldn't have to, but when he surfaced, a leaf clung to his nose and mouth and quite nearly caused him to drown. Chastity went over to try and help him remove the leaf, but in the process, she dropped her armful of peas and he had to go back down and get them.

At long last, the floating peas were placed on a towel, as they already knew how to swim and did not need lessons. The ones that sank were put back in the bowl and given to Chastity so that she could prove to her mother that they'd recovered all the peas.

But when Chastity returned, she didn't seem half as relieved as Credence and Modesty had hoped.

"We forgot one," she informed them.

And once again they all had to search the entire pool for a singular pea.

Modesty was the one who found it, tucked away next to the pool ladder. She dropped it in the bowl with the others.

Still, this was a reminder that Mary Lou knew exactly how many peas she had entrusted her children with. She probably even knew their names. This meant that Credence's swimming lessons could not involve the loss of a single pea.

He took five peas and tried to place them in the water, but they all tried to sink again. Three additional peas did the same thing. Was it even possible to teach peas to swim?

"Here," Chastity said, handing him a floating leaf and setting a few peas atop it. "Why don't you try this?"

It wasn't exactly the most conventional way of giving peas swimming lessons, but even Mary Lou couldn't argue with it.

X

After their foray into the pool, which all the peas miraculously survived, the Barebones decided to find something to eat. Ordinarily, this would have meant more pea soup, but Mary Lou had fortunately only brought her most special peas with her, and would never consider eating any of them.

Once she was suitably dried off, Chastity was sent to the reception desk to ask about dining options near the hotel. She came back with a hastily-scribbled note mentioning a few restaurants, as well as letting them know that the receptionist had a banana if they wanted to make use of it.

Rather than attempting to split a banana four ways, the family decided to visit the restaurant across the street from the hotel. The children could barely hide their grins. At a restaurant, no one could make them eat peas or dampish bread.

The restaurant, as it turned out, was just a small café with dingy curtains framing the windows and a waitress who looked like she would rather be anywhere else. But Mary Lou decided Ivan was too hungry to wait any longer, so this was where they opted to eat.

Credence, Chastity, and Modesty all made sure to order dishes that had very little chance of containing peas. Even their mother, they noticed, didn't seem particularly interested in consuming peas this evening. (Then again, it seemed peas were the only thing she knew how to prepare, so if someone else did the cooking peas were not required.)

The bored-looking waitress brought the five meals to the table, grunted something about hoping the food tasted decent, and left. Credence was just about to question the appearance of a fifth meal, but that was solved before he even opened his mouth. Mary Lou set Ivan on the table beside her, picked up a fork and began to feed him.

Usually, the children were the only audience when she felt the need to feed her leaf machine, and they were all very much used to it. But the café's other diners did not see such a spectacle every day, and Credence was painfully aware of the eyes drifting over to their table.

He felt Chastity's hand on his wrist. "Eat your dinner," she whispered. "We see Ivan get fed every day. Why is this any different?"

Though both he and Modesty were considerably more embarrassed than their sister, their faces tinged pink, they both eventually did so. But the silence that fell only lasted a few minutes.

When the waitress came back, asking how the food was, Mary Lou wasted no time in complaining that her soup had peas in it.

"It's meant to have peas, ma'am," the waitress responded. "Would you prefer it without them?"

"These peas, are they frozen?"

"No, we always use fresh fruits and vegetables in our-"

It was highly unlikely that the other diners wanted Mary Lou to rant about how fresh peas were still alive and had feelings and didn't want to be cooked into a soup, but that was exactly what she did. She didn't even notice when Ivan ate the fork in her hand and regurgitated six more onto the table. The leaf machine, unused to being ignored, ate a napkin and a strand of Chastity's hair before she sighed and continued his feeding.

The lecture didn't end there. Mary Lou proceeded to demand all the peas in the kitchen, insisting she needed to take them home and save them from a fate most terrible. At this point Chastity was just as embarrassed as her brother and sister, her eyes fixed on her plate as she reluctantly fed her mother's leaf machine. Credence was rooted to his seat, rendered unable to move, and while Modesty tried to focus on her own meal, she couldn't.

The waitress returned seconds later, slamming a small cup of peas on the table. "Now that that's over, I think it's time you leave," she said, voice barely concealing her disdain for those that had forced her into this situation.

Credence carried the newly adopted peas out in a napkin. It was the peas, rather than her outburst over them, that Mary Lou opted to focus on. "I didn't want to spend another moment there anyway," she said. "They have no regard for the rights of peas."

That was all she would say on the matter. After all, the new peas did need to be named before she could introduce them to the others waiting at the hotel.

X

Sleeping arrangements were promptly decided on. Mary Lou and Ivan would share one bed, Chastity and Modesty were given the other, and Credence would be sleeping on a blanket on the floor. The only question was where everything else would sleep.

Usually the premature baby peas were kept in their incubator until they grew bigger. But as no one remained to care for them, they had been brought along. They couldn't keep themselves warm, so that task fell to Chastity.

"They require your warmth," Mary Lou told her as she unceremoniously dumped the peas down her daughter's nightgown.

Chastity went rigid as she tried to balance the rolling peas, and she knew she'd be getting minimal sleep in her effort to avoid squishing them. Modesty quietly offered to take some, but by now their mother was busy with her leaf machine again, and they both knew there was no asking permission for her to accept some of the peas. Not unless they needed to tell her that Ivan was on fire.

With the baby peas comfortably snuggled against Chastity, Ivan softly spitting leaves onto his pillow, and the children as comfortable as they could get, the lights went off. Perhaps they might be able to rest a bit before doing it all again tomorrow.

That is, if Mary Lou didn't decide to canoodle with Ivan in the night.