The countdown to the road trip had begun. Skylar had agreed to help John prep bags of trail mix. He was taking things out of the cabinets and setting them on the counter. Skylar slumped on a stool at the island watching him.
A box of plastic bags, a couple boxes of Chex cereal, tubes of mini m&m’s, a tin of cashews, and a few boxes of raisins were spread out over the counter. Skylar had eaten almost everything before. Picking up the one unfamiliar box, they asked John, “What is this?”
“Try one.” He barely glanced over his shoulder as he closed up the cabinets.
The raisins were in a red box, with a picture of a lady on it, carrying grapes in a big basket. Peeling back the tab Skylar looked into the box. Inside there were tiny, wrinkly, dark purple ovals. Clearly they weren’t grapes.
Skylar reached in and tried to pull out a raisin. The box stretched around their fingers. A few of them were stuck together when Skylar pulled them out. They were squishier and stickier than they looked. They plucked one raisin from the clump and bit into it.
Biting into the raisin reminded Skylar of the gummy snacks Emily had. It was sweet, chewy, and sticky. They popped the rest of the clump into their mouth and kept chewing.
“You like?” Skylar nodded. “Don’t eat them all though, they are an important component to our trail mix.”
“Okay.” They looked at the picture on the box again. “Why are there grapes on the raisin box?”
“Raisins are dried grapes.” John started pulling out gallon sized bags and laying them out across the counter.
“John!” He looked up, blue eyes wide. “Why didn’t you tell me about raisins!”
“Uh-”
“These would be much easier to transport back to Qwortar! Why don’t we get a bunch of these!” Skylar counted the boxes and started recalculating how many raisin boxes they would need to supplement Qwortar while they tried to regrow their food supply.
“You’re right that it would be easier to transport.” John rubbed his chin.
“How come we didn’t see any in the grocery store?”
“We spent most of our time in the produce section, and raisins are in a different section.”
“Well, when we locate the other ship, we should stock up on raisins for my trip.”
“And maybe other dried fruit?”
“Yes!” John chuckled when Skylar jumped to their feet.
“Settle down. You promised to help me make this trail mix.”
“Right.” Skylar sat back down. They watched John parcel out a ratio of cereal, candy, raisins, and nuts into a bag and zip it shut. Skylar copied John and soon they had filled the entire box of bags with food. Just in time, as the doorbell went off right as Skylar set the final bag on top of their pile.
Skylar took a handful of the extra raisins to eat while John went to answer the door.
Word count: 496
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