Mandarin Spells and LUkewarm Turkey

Fantasy/Humor. Modern Day.

SUMMARY: ONESHOT. It’s a normal Thanksgiving at Riley’s house. Well, it would be normal if Riley’s family didn’t consist of wizards and witches. And even though Riley’s a witch, she’s forced to save the Lu + Extended Family Thanksgiving without magic, and she’s dragged her poor cousin Vincent along to help out. Oh, and she has an hour to save said Thanksgiving. Fun.

DISCLAIMER: I don't Thanksgiving or Raley's or Wii, but I do own this story and Riley, Vincent, and the rest of her family, so no stealing.

-

“Ai ya! Ni pzai pzou she me!!”

Omigawd! What are you doing?!?!!!

“Relax, Ama. I’m just making the turkey taste better.”

“Ai ya!! Bu ke yi yong pzi shi wu shang mien!”

No! You can’t use it on food!

“Trust me, Ama, juicier turkeys taste so much better.”

“Ni bu ting wo! Ai ya, ni pzi dao yie bang yie mang-ah!”

You don’t listen to me! Argh, you know “the more you help, the more work we have to do!”

“Really, Ama, it’s only going to make the turkey---”

BOOM.

Riley found herself and the floor covered in the remains of their turkey, and her grandma, or Ama, looking at her with an I-told-you-so look.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You were right; I shouldn’t be abusing my magic. Can I at least use it to clean up?”

Her Ama laughed shortly and handed her a mop.

“Guess not,” Riley sighed.

She slowly pushed the mop back and forth over the mess of guts and meat and bones and fat, listening to her Ama rant to her mother in the not-so-distant distance.

Shortly after, Riley heard her mother enter the kitchen, but Riley merely sighed and continued to stare at the floor, still mopping.

“Riley,” her mother stated tiredly.

Riley sighed again. “Yes?”

“Please don’t get Ama worked up.”

“Are you going to give me the magic-is-the-gift-we’re-blessed-with-don’t-abuse-it lecture? Because that would make this the… seventh time you’ve given it to me. Ooh, look at that, lucky number!”

“Riley…”

“What?”

“Do not use that sarcastic tone with me.”

“You could tell it was sarcasm?”

“Riley…” her mother growled threateningly.

“What? Dad can never tell when I’m using sarcasm, and neither can Lila Ah-Yi. This surprise is totally justified.”

Riley’s mother threw her hands in the air and muttered darkly before looking at Riley sternly. “Riley. I expect a new turkey in an hour.”

“What? I haven’t learned the making-things-come-out-of-nowhere spell yet!”

“Exactly,” her mother smirked.

“This is my punishment, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re evil, Mom.”

“It better be in the oven in an hour… and no magic tricks. Love ya, Riley, bye!” And with that, Riley’s mom skedaddled out of the kitchen.

Riley had been mopping this whole time, and she was surprised to find the turkey guts were actually gone. Perhaps non-magic cleaning wasn’t so bad after all.

Riley glanced down at her shirt and jeans, however, and she really couldn’t say the same for them. She groaned because she knew she was going to be forced to wash this by hand later and went upstairs into her room. Riley threw her dirty clothes into her laundry hamper and put on another pair of jeans and one of her favorite (Harry Potter! Gotta love Scarhead.) shirts, her “I see THESTRALS” shirt.

She then went back downstairs, looking for a relative to drag along to help her out with her punishment. She grinned wickedly as she spotted her older brother Kevin and approached him stealthily, about to tackle him when she heard him mutter before saying to her:

“Riles, don’t bother. I just put a protective force field around me. So unless you want to be thrown back twenty feet, don’t even dare ask me to help you with your punishment.”

Riley glared at Kevin as he turned around and smirked at her. Her glare faded as she spotted her younger brother Jason.

“Oh Jayyy-soonnnn,” she sing-songed as she power walked over to her brother.

Jason, spotting Riley, gave a high-pitched “Meep!” before running out of the room.

“Jason! You get back here! Jason!” Riley yelled as she chased after the ten-year-old.

“Riley, what are you doing?” a sickly sweet, heavily-accented female voice asked, stepping in front of Riley and effectively blocking her way.

Riley glared from her stature of 5 feet (shortness comes with Asian-ness, and no one would let her learn the growth spell) up at her Aunt Nina, her father’s scary older sister, who happened to miss out on the short gene and grow up to be 5 foot 7.

“I was just about to ask Jason for something, but it seems I’ve lost him,” she emphasized forcefully. It was just her luck that Aunt Nina adored her brat of a little brother Jason.

“Well, you better go find him fast, Riley,” Aunt Nina replied coolly. “You now only have fifty minutes to get turkey.”

Riley shot a false smile at Aunt Nina before turning around to look for another helper. Ah… cousin Vincent, Cherry Gu-Gu (her father’s younger sister)’s technology-obsessed son, currently playing on the Lus’ (Riley’s family) Wii.

She snuck up behind him and tapped his shoulder lightly. Riley quickly plugged her fingers in her ears as Vincent let out a shrill shriek of surprise (which was what always happened when someone unexpectedly disturbed him while he was absorbed with whatever tech gadget he was playing with) and whipped around to face Riley.

“RILES!” he moaned. “You made me lose Tennis!”

“Too bad,” she replied smugly. “Now you’re going to help me.”

“Uh…” he started. “Help you do what…” He gulped. He might’ve been too absorbed in the Wii to know what her punishment was, but the whole family knew that Riley tended to cause trouble by abusing her magic.

Riley grinned maniacally. “Get a new turkey.”

Vincent groaned. “Riles!”

“Well - sucks - for - you - Vincent - but - I - gotta - do - this - and - there - is - no - way - I’m - running - to - the - store - in - 30 - degree - weather - so - you’re - driving - me - there - whether - you - like - it - or - not,” Riley demanded in one breath as she dragged her seventeen-year-old cousin out the door.

-

“I hate you, Riley,” Vincent said to his cousin as they stood outside the nearest grocery store, Raley’s (sometimes called by Riley’s family as ‘Riley’s,’ due to some pronunciation problems Riley had when she was younger), shivering in their tee-shirts and jeans.

“It’s so not my fault that I forgot it was Thanksgiving and nobody’s open.”

“Why am I here, anyways?”

“Because I don’t have my driver’s license.”

“Remind me to teach you as soon as you turn fifteen and get your permit so this never happens again.”

“Deal.”

Silence.

“So… how are we going to get in?” Vincent asked.

Riley suddenly smacked her forehead. “Vincent, we are idiots.”

“No, Riles, you’re the idiot.”

“Vincent… think about this one. What kind of people are we?”

“… Er… Chinese people?”

She sighed. “Magic people!”

“Oh.”

“Mei you men!” Riley declared, focusing on the door.

The doors opened easily, and she walked into the dark store. “Let’s fix this,” Riley said, as she uttered another spell. Clapping her hands twice, she yelled, “Levis perago!”

Raley’s was normal again as lights went on all throughout the store. Riley turned around and saw Vincent still standing in the cold, staring at her with wide eyes and mouth hanging open.

“Vincent, get in here.”

“You – you – we’re breaking and entering!”

“I’m not a criminal, Vincent.”

“We’re breaking and entering!”

“No, we’re saving my butt from potential whupping via my mom, Ama, and everybody else in the family. Stop being such a goody-goody.”

“We’re breaking and entering!”

“Vincent, if you don’t come inside in the next thirty seconds, I will not only lock you out of the store in the freezing cold, I will make a daddy-long-legs crawl into your mouth. And stay there.”

Vincent gulped and ran in, locking the doors himself. Despite Riley’s ability to cause accidents via magic, the family knew she could perform certain tricks. Vincent knew from personal experience that Riley was an expert with controlling creepy-crawlies, and thanks to a life-scarring incident (as he called it) when he was five, he couldn’t stand any type of spider.

Riley beamed as she clapped one long clap and two short claps while saying, “Huo hen hao!” effectively warming herself up. Vincent did the same thing.

“Alright… what aisle has the turkeys…”

“Nine, I think.”

Riley and Vincent walked over to the aisle and saw, among the ice cubes, one lone turkey.

“It looks kind of lonely… and cute…”

“Riles, it’s a turkey.”

“I still think it looks cute.”

“Riley, just pick it up and go.”

“Wait…” Riley paused in her grabbing of the turkey. “I know why nobody picked this one,” she said, biting her lip nervously.

“Why?”

Riley pointed out the missing leg to her cousin.

“Oh sh--.”

“Yeah.”

“What are we going to do?”

Riley’s eyes lit up. “I know!”

Vincent, having known Riley since she was born, groaned again. “No, Riley, we are not using the duplicating spell on the turkey.”

“C’mon, Vince…” she asked, staring at him with her deadliest weapon: her big, round, brown eyes.

“Aw dangit,” Vincent growled. Riley’s potent puppy-dog stare was impossible to resist. “Alright, alright. But if you mess up, I’m not defending you.”

“Some cousin you are.”

“You’re the one who’s threatening me.”

Riley rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’m doing the spell now.” Placing one hand on the turkey leg that was there and the other roughly where the other leg should be, Riley breathed deeply and started to speak. Vincent hyperventilated by her side.

“Kao yi bai fen!” she yelled suddenly, waving her hands menacingly in Vincent’s face.

He shrieked again. “Riley! C’mon, now is not the time to joke! We only have twenty minutes! Plus, the get-100-on-your-test is only a fake spell invented by our parents.”

“Really? I swear it worked on my bio test the other day.”

“Riley…”

“Okay, okay.” Riley repeated the movements again, placing her right hand on the remaining turkey leg and her left where the missing one should be. She slowly rolled her eyes and spoke softly.

“Pzai yao yi ge; liang ge bi jiao hao.”

When she finished, she felt something under her left hand, and quickly looked at it. Vincent peeked at it through his fingers.

“It worked!”

Riley continued to stare at it.

“Riley… c’mon, be happy! It worked! It actually worked!”

“It’s kinda deformed.”

“No one’s gonna care.”

“Aunt Nina’s gonna care, and Ama’s definitely gonna care.”

“True…”

“So I’ll just serve the leg to you.”

“Hey!”

“Fine, I’ll give it to myself.”

“Thank you.”

“We should probably get going.”

“Yeah… we have fifteen minutes left.”

“Okay, let’s go!”

Vincent and Riley headed for the door at a run, but Riley soon stopped.

“What?”

“We didn’t pay for this. I thought you, Mister Goody-Goody, would’ve complained.”

“Oh yeah… we haven’t paid.”

“Um. I don’t have money. Vincent…?”

“Riley, you gave me all of five seconds to put on my shoes and get into my car. I don’t have money either.”

“Crap. Um… what do we do?”

“Well, it is a deformed turkey,” Vincent noted.

“So?”

“Don’t they give discounts for damaged products?”

“It’s only like, ten percent. Max.”

“Oh.”

“… We can always come back later…”

“Yeah… I’m not driving, though.”

“There’s that instant transport spell, though. Like Apparation in the Potterverse.”

“Oh yeah… I can’t do that.”

“I can make my dad do it, probably.”

“Okay.”

More silence.

“We should go now.”

“Yeah.”

Riley and Vincent raced out the door and into his car, zooming out of the Raley’s parking lot towards the Lu household.

-

“You know, Riley…” her Aunt Nina said (still heavily, heavily accented) to Riley as she served slices of turkey to all twenty-four of her family members that had attended (Riley made it twenty-five). “This is actually pretty good.”

“Thanks, Aunt Nina,” Riley responded anxiously. If Aunt Nina was complimenting her, something was wrong.

“Better, it could be, if not so… what is word? Not cold. Not warm.” she added.

“Lukewarm?” Riley asked.

“Yes,” her Aunt Nina said. “Luke-ah warm-uh.”

“Jie-ah,” Riley’s father barked. “Bu yao na me xiong.”

Older sister; don’t be so mean.

Riley mouthed “thank you” at her father and quickly cut out the deformed leg for herself and slapped it onto her plate before anyone could see its oddness.

“Riley, that’s an awfully big portion,” her mother said suspiciously.

“What can I say, Mom? I’m really hungry. Getting that turkey here in an hour was quite a workout.”

“More like trying to find someone to do it for you was a workout,” Jason muttered so that only Riley could hear.

Riley smiled at her mother as she kicked Jason under the table. His very visible wince told her that she had aimed correctly (at his shin).

“Jason, you okay?” Aunt Nina asked, jumping out of her seat and over to Jason’s side. “What did Riley do to you?”

Riley rolled her eyes. “Nothing,” she answered. That he didn’t deserve, she thought to herself.

“Riley, can you help me bring out the side dishes?” Riley’s mother asked. Riley knew her mother was only subtly trying to get a private talk with her, but she complied anyways.

“Alright.” Riley followed her mother into the kitchen.

“You know, technically, you put in the turkey sixty-two minutes after I told you to.”

“Mom…”

“But since it tastes so good, even if it’s lukewarm, I’ll let it slide.”

“Thanks Mom.”

“But don’t think I didn’t notice how one leg didn’t quite fit and didn’t look quite right either. Same leg that’s your plate.”

Crap, Riley thought, her eyes widening slightly with fear.

“Mommy… please?”

“Alright, fine. I won’t let you slide next time, though.”

“Oh and be sure to give Vincent some extra money in his Christmas red envelope because he helped me this year.”

“Money that you’re providing.”

Riley huffed. “Fine.”

“Anything else, Riley?”

“Yeah… um… after dinner’s over, can you…” Riley took a deep breath so she could say it quickly, hoping her mom wouldn’t catch everything she said. “…instantly - transport - to - Raley’s - with - your - purse - and - leave - about - twenty - bucks - in - aisle - nine - where - the - meat - is - because - we - kinda - didn’t - pay - for - the - turkey - since - the - store - wasn’t - open - but - trust - me - we - didn’t - break - in - we - just - unlocked - the - door - and - we - did - lock - it - back - up - when - we - left - but - we - had - no - money - and - we - were - in - a - rush - so - I - really - really - really - really - need - you - to - pay - for - it - alright - love - ya - Mom - bye!” Riley rushed back into the dining room with the mashed potatoes so she could escape her mom.

“Ai ya! RILEY!”

-

A/N: This is a present for my friend, and I don't want to fill up my main account with presents, so I've made a new account for my presents-to-friends. (: So if you saw this on Lily Llynn, it's not someone copying, it's the same person and the same story. If you don't believe me, PM/e-mail Lily Llynn (the user).

And for everyone who can read pinyin, I'm sorry if there's errors, but I never claimed to be a Professor of Pinyin.

Constructive criticism appreciated,. Also, any errors you find, I'd like to hear of it! Thanks!

To My Friend Whose Birthday Present This Is: I hope you like this, and don't click the review button because I don't allow anonymous reviews and I doubt you have a FP account. XD Send any of your thoughts via commenting (you know how).