Storytime Before Bed

"Storytime Before Bed" is an Extended Universe oneshot series written on December 9, 2015. 
== Summary ==
== Full Text ==
=== Part 1 ===
(Takes place on December 28, 1059–Kari’s 4th birthday. Sven is 6 years old and Dagny is 5 years old)
“Okay, kids, time for–” Grey tried to say before three little voices cut her off.
“NOOOOOO!!!!” 
“Oh boy…here we go again…” Brandt said rolling his eyes. “Kids, party time is over. You had your fun for Kari’s birthday. Now it’s time for bed.”
“But Daddy we’re not sleepy yet!” Sven whined. 
“Yeah, we want to stay up!” Dagny chimed in. 
“No sleep for us, Daddy!” Kari said crossing her arms. “It’s my birthday!”
“Well, Kari, sweetie, even birthday girls need their rest,” the Chief said as she knelt down to speak to her children. “Sleep is very important.”
“Sleep is boring, Mommy!” Sven protested giving his mother the puppy-dog pout. 
“Oh, really?” Brandt asked his son playfully. He then turned to his young daughters. “Do you two think that as well?”
“Yeah!” Dagny and Kari responded in unison. 
“Hmm, well, gee, Grey, there’s got to be a way to make sleep fun for our little ones,” Brandt said smirking at his wife. 
Thankfully, after a few years of experience, Grey was able to pick up on what he was implying. It was a method that had proven to be quite handy in getting their three children to close their eyes and fall asleep.
“I think I know,” Grey said turning back to Sven, Dagny, and Kari. “How about we tell you kids a story?”
All three of the Chief’s children widened their eyes and beamed from ear to ear. So far, the word “story” was always the magic word for them, especially if they refused to go to sleep.
“A story?” Dagny asked excitedly. “Really?”
“Really,” Grey said nodding confidently. “BUT I will tell you one if you all get into your pajamas, understood?”
“Okay, Mommy!” they all said in unison. With lightning speed, the three children ran up the stairs to do as their mother told them. 
Within minutes, the kids were downstairs in their pajamas in their parents’ bed ready to hear another one of their mother’s amazing bedtime stories. Grey and Brandt sat on either side of them on the bed mostly to prevent them from trying to escape when it would be time for them to go to bed.
“Now, remember, guys,” Brandt began, “as soon as Mommy is finished with the story, it’s time for bed, okay?”
“Okay, Daddy,” Kari said for her brother and sister.
“Tell us the story, Mommy, please?” Sven asked Grey. 
“Please?” Dagny added. 
Grey could only laugh and smile at her children’s pleas as they begged for her to tell the story. It was so cute watching them get so excited over the little things in life. “Alright, then,” she began deciding at the last minute not to egg them on any further. They needed to sleep soon. “What story would you like to hear?”
“I want to hear a Ground Dungeon story!” Sven shouted excited. 
“Me too!” Dagny said. “Those are the best, and Kari’s never heard one before!”
“What’s the Ground Dungeon?” Kari asked innocently. 
“Uh…actually, baby girl, it’s Ground-ED Dungeon,” Brandt chimed in trying not to laugh. “And it’s a place where your mommy joined something called a rebellion and fought bad guys.”
Kari widened her eyes and dropped her jaw at her father’s words. “Really, Mommy?” Kari asked. “You fought mean bad guys?”
“Yes, I did, sweetie,” she said. “Now, which story would you three like to hear?”
Sven thought for moment.
=== Part 2 ===
The little Heir of Haligan Island was about to answer his mother’s question with an idea for a story. Unfortunately, Dagny beat him to it.
“I want to hear when the whispering death fell on Aunt Warren!” Dagny shouted cheerfully. 
“Aw come on, Dags, I want to hear the one where Mommy sings to Uncle King Haddock and fights Frosty!” Sven retorted as Kari watched her two older siblings clearly confused. 
“Okay, you two, calm down,” Grey said holding her hands up chuckling at Sven and Dagny’s eagerness. “Now, there can only be one story tonight, and since Kari is the birthday girl, I think it would be best if she decided what I should tell tonight.”
“Aw, but, Mommy, that’s not fair!” Sven protested. “She never heard any of them!”
“He’s got a point, Grey,” Brandt said stroking Kari’s little hand. “How can she know what she’s deciding between?”
“Watch and learn,” Grey replied playfully. She then held up two hands in front of her and Brandt’s youngest daughter as the little girl stared at her not sure what to do. “Okay, Kari, all you have to do is touch my hand, and that will be the story I tell. This,” she gestured her left hand, “is Aunt Warren’s story and this,” she turned to the right hand, “is Uncle King Haddock’s story.”
Kari smiled. She loved this game! Then she stared at her mother’s large and slender hands for one moment as her siblings watched eagerly silently rooting for their respective favorite Grounded Dungeon Rebellion story. After what seemed like forever, the Chief’s youngest daughter giggled and touched….her mother’s left hand.
“Aunt Warren’s story, it is then!” Grey said happily. 
“YES!” Dagny shouted. 
“Aw, Kari…” Sven groaned. 
Kari looked at her big brother and then at her father worried. Brandt couldn’t help but chuckle. “Don’t worry, baby girl,” he said gently. “Your brother will get over it. He likes this one anyway.”
“Okay,” Kari said. Then she turned to her mother with a huge smile on her face. “Tell the story, Mommy!”
“Please, Mommy!” Dagny pleaded. 
“PLEEEAASSSEE!” Sven pleaded even louder. 
“OKAY!” Grey said loudly over the begging children. “I’ll tell the story, but only if you three stop yelling.”
Sven, Dagny, and Kari sat still and waited for their mother to begin speaking. When Grey saw that everyone was calm, she took a deep breath and began speaking.
“Okay, now, once upon a time, in the Wilderwest region, there was a HUGE dungeon known as…the Grounded Dungeon,” she began. “Now this dungeon was guarded by the evil…Warden, a demon from the North, and the Warden was very mean to all the prisoners in this dungeon. Soon, the prisoners grew very angry at how the Warden was treating them so horribly. So, your uncle King Haddock finally stood up and led the prisoners in a massive rebellion against the Warden–”
“What does rrrrrebeeelliiion mean, Mommy?” Kari finally asked innocently interrupting her mother. 
“Well, Kari, sweetie,” Grey said gently stroking her cheek, “rebellion means that you are angry at how the boss is treating you and you fight them for freedom.”
“Ohhhh,” Kari replied. 
“Keep going, Mommy!” Sven urged.
“Anyway, after the rebellion began, the rebels and their King moved to an ice fortress the Alpha dragon made for them,” Grey continued. “After the Warden was captured, a stranger appeared and released the Warden allowing the demon to escape. That…is where your Aunt Warren, Uncle Greg, Aunt Asha, and I come in. We set off to find the evil demon, but while we were tracking her down, we noticed something very weird.”
“What?” all three children asked in unison. 
“We saw that most of the rebellion’s weapons were stolen,” Grey said dramatically causing her three children to gasp. “So, we decided to leave the Warden alone for now, and then went after the mean bad guys who stole the Rebellion’s weapons. When we started to follow the notorious thieves, both your Aunt Asha and I noticed that Aunt Warren kept looking at us with our dragons. It didn’t take us very long to figure out that she wanted her own dragon to fly, and almost as soon as we realized that, something…SHOT…out of the dirt in front of us!”
“What was it?!” Kari asked excitedly. 
“Tell us!” Dagny added. 
“It was….” she hushed her voice as the three children leaned over in suspense, “a whispering….death!”
Sven, Dagny, and Kari all gasped in unison at the sudden appearance of a wild dragon. Brandt couldn’t help but chuckle watching their three children be so enthralled in their mother’s story. Even though Sven and Dagny had heard it before, they still shared the suspense and the excitement with their little sister Kari.
“Now, the whispering death roared loudly looking at us,” Grey said. “It was pretty clear that we were trespassing in his territory that night, and he wanted to scare us off.”
“Were you scared, Mommy?” Sven asked. It was very hard for a boy at his age to imagine his mother…the Chief of the Haligan Tribe being scared of a wild dragon. 
“At first,” Grey replied, “but I had Shadow and our new friends with me. So, I wasn’t too scared, and I noticed that your Aunt Asha wasn’t afraid of the dragon either. In fact,” she paused for effect, “she wanted to train the dragon.”
The Chief and her husband watched as their children’s eyes widened in wonder and awe. They couldn’t believe that someone in their family actually wanted to train a wild dragon, especially a Whispering Death. 
“Did she?” Kari asked in anticipation. 
“Well, she almost did,” Grey replied, “but then your mommy had the idea that maybe…Aunt Warren should train the wild dragon!”
“OOOOHH!” all three of the Chief’s children said in unison. 
Grey and Brandt both chuckled before the former continued with the story.
“Now, Aunt Warren was sort of scared of training a Whispering Death,” she added slightly cringing at the memory at how hesitant her adoptive sister looked when she and Asha started pushing her to train a dragon that was feared by her species. 
“Why was she scared?” Sven asked. 
“Well, you see, kids,” Grey began to explain, “Aunt Warren and the Pookas have a bad history with the Whispering Death species. Whispering Deaths have caused a lot of trouble for the Pookas in the past. However, Aunt Asha and I didn’t know this. We thought that since both the Whispering Death and Aunt Warren both loved creating tunnels underground then they would get along just fine and eventually become best friends like me and Shadow. It took a while, but we finally convinced Aunt Warren to try to train this dragon.”
“Did it work?” Dagny asked. 
“Well…” Grey tried to answer as she thought back on the memory. 
=== Part 3 ===
“Well…not exactly, sweetie,” Grey said as she shifted positions so that she was kneeling on the bed. “You see your Aunt Warren didn’t know how to train a wild dragon, so Aunt Asha and I suggested that she should try to brush it in it’s favorite spot to get on its good side. So…when she did, she accidentally brushed it under its chin, and the dragon suddenly got very….VERY sleepy…and” she gently fell on top of her three children, “fell on top of Aunt Warren!”
Sven, Dagny, and Kari laughed in perfect unison along with their parents as Grey laid out on top of them. So far, this was their favorite part of the story! After a few more seconds of their laughing fit, Grey slowly sat up before she could crush her own children smiling at them.
“So, then what happened, Mommy?” Sven asked as he and his sisters started to settle under the covers. 
“Aunt Asha and I tried to get her out from under the sleeping dragon,” Grey replied, “but nothing worked. The dragon was too heavy. It wouldn’t move at all.”
“So Aunt Warren was stuck under the Whispering Death forever?” Kari asked fearfully. 
Grey chuckled. “No, of course not, sweetie,” she said as she gently poked her daughter’s nose eliciting a small giggle. 
The Chief and her husband gave each other sidelong glances. The kids were starting to get sleepy. Everything was going all according to plan! So, the Chief of Haligan Island continued telling the story. 
“After trying to get Aunt Warren out from under the dragon, Aunt Asha quickly went to find help while I stayed behind with Aunt Warren,” she said. “Soon enough your aunt reappeared with…Uncle Greg!”
All three children happily and sleepily gasped at the mention of their uncle.
“What did he do, Mommy?” Dagny asked trying to fight the sleepiness that was slowly coming over her. 
“He helped us get Aunt Warren out from under the Whispering Death,” she said. “Thanks to him, Barry Manilow, Shadow, and Moonbeam, we saved Aunt Warren and got her out from under the wild dragon. However, as soon as we did that, the dragon woke up and was about to attack us again, BUT…it didn’t…because Aunt Warren gathered up as much courage as she possibly could and held out her hand like this to the dragon,” she mimicked her adoptive sister’s gesture from so many years ago by looking away and holding out her hand. 
“She trained it!” Sven said happily. 
“Sort of, my son,” Grey said running a hand through Sven’s brown hair. “Instead, as soon as the dragon stopped in front of Aunt Warren…it left.”
“Aw, why? Aunt Warren doesn’t have a dragon,” Kari asked sadly. 
“Even to this day, we don’t know why that dragon left,” Grey said smiling at the memory from her rebellion days. To think, her deepest friendships all started because of that mission, and now here they were…living together on Haligan Island with their own kids, still the same happy loving family they were in that Rebellion. “But that didn’t matter to your aunt Warren. All she could think about was the fact that she faced her fears and tried to train a Whispering Death, and with that, Aunt Warren took her newfound bravery with her. And with your Uncle Greg joining us, we continued on with our mission to find those missing weapons.”
Grey and Brandt watched as the children slowly fell into a deep sleep. Both adults couldn’t help but smile at how peaceful they looked sleeping soundly. 
“The end,” she said. Grey then slowly bent down to kiss them each on their foreheads. “Good night, my sweet babies.”
Brandt sighed happily. “They really are cute when they’re sleeping,” he said watching their chests rise and fall in rhythm. 
“They sure are,” Grey said gently stroking Dagny’s cheek. “What do you think? Should we chance moving them upstairs?”
Both the Chief and her husband cringed at the memory of the last time they tried moving the three children from their bed to the children’s beds upstairs. “Nah,” they finally said in unison.
“Besides, I’m too tired from all the birthday festivities,” Brandt said as they got under the covers with their children in between them.
“Me too,” Grey replied. “Next time, let’s get them into their beds if they want to hear a story.”
“Agreed.” Brandt turned around and blew out the candle and turned to his wife making her figure out in the dark room and holding her hand above the children’s heads. “Good night, Grey. I love you…you and our beautiful children.”
Even though it was dark, he could feel her smiling at him as she held his hand. “And I love you all too,” she said. “Good night, Brandt.”
Category:Grey Bergman
Category:Events
Category:Brandt Felman
Category:Sven Felman
Category:Dagny Felman
Category:Kari Felman
Category:EU