The teams: Skylar and John vs John's parents Anna and Cameron. The stakes: losers cleaned the kitchen. The game: pictionary. The score: tied. Sudden death. Winner take all.
It was Skylar's turn to draw. They slowly turned the card towards them, hoping it was a word that had a short definition in case they had to listen to their translator. A smile broke across their face when they looked at the word, because they knew exactly what to draw.
As soon as Anna flipped the timer Skylar was drawing on the whiteboard. She started with a roughly circular shape, adding their favorite number of appendages, six.
"Alien!" John shouted. Skylar shook their head and continued to draw. They drew one eye and decided to ignore the other organs.
"Cyclops!" Cameron shouted. Skylar shook their head again and drew an arrow pointing to the right of the primitive self portrait.
"Transformation!" John spoke again, leaning closer. Another shake. "Shape shifting!" Skylar sighed and resumed their drawing. Remembering John's comics Skylar used a similar technique on the whiteboard. A circle with many points, and bits of body scattered on that side if the whiteboard.
"Explosion?" Anna spoke tentatively. Skylar shook their head, blowing a stray strand of hair away from their eyes. They fiddled with the cap in their left hand, tapping the edge of the whiteboard with the bottom of the marker in the other.
"Mind blown?" John tried again, tapping his fingers on the table in the same rhythm as Skylar.
"And time!" Cameron clapped his hands. "Was John correct?"
"No."
"Parents win!" Cameron and Anna high fived. "You two are on kitchen duty!"
Skylar sighed and flipped the card for everyone else to see. "It was gassy."
"Gassy?" The family echoed.
"Told you Skylar wasn't an artist." John grumbled and started erasing the board before his father could study it further.
"Good game." Anna pat the two teens on the shoulders. "Now, make sure everything is cleaned up before Mrs. Pines gets here to pick up Emily."
"Yes Mom." John tossed the stuff back into their home made pictionary set and tugged on Skylar's shirt. "Better hurry. Emily's mom is usually early."
John washed the dishes while Skylar cleaned the countertops. When the two of them were alone in the kitchen, the living room TV blaring some action movie, John paused and looked over his shoulder at Skylar.
"Why did you draw yourself exploding for gassy?"
"Because when too much gas builds up in my natural state I would explode."
“Will you explode now if you become gassy?”
“No. My internal structure works the same as yours.”
“Unless you tweak it with your... thing.” John pointed to his throat.
“Correct.” Skylar grinned. “Which is a good thing since I'm pretty sure Humans and Qwortarians have at least one thing in common.”
“What?”
“Exploding leads to death.”
John's lips quirked, but he quickly covered his mouth in order not to burst out laughing.\
Word Count: 499
