Chapter 113 – The Day Before

  “Look, if I thought it would be fun, I put it on the agenda. That’s all the thought I put into what we are doing.” – Val telling Penny how she planned the day.

  Kurt liked to think he was very skilled with his hands. He was pretty handy around the house and decent at fixing things. His dexterity in combat was incredibly good. He was a skilled enchanter which encompassed a wide range of skills needing fine motor control. But god forbid he needed to do anything with wrapping paper and tape.

  He was standing in the vault at his workbench, hands on his hips and a frown on his face as he looked at the small pile of presents before him. None of them were what he would call pretty but they were at least covered.

  He had separated them out into piles of two. There were two boxes for Val, two for Kristi, two for Anna and just one for Penny. They had decided that since she was coming, they should include their manager in the festivities. The reason there was only one gift was because they had decided on a group gift for her as a thank you while using the holiday as an excuse.

  “This had better be enough.” He sighed.

  It was enough but also not enough in his mind. He wanted to give the girls a whole slew of things, getting them everything they ever wanted. But at that point it became less meaningful, and it was just him throwing money around.

  With one last look at his poorly wrapped gifts, Kurt stored them all in his ring and left the vault. He passed the lower living area, looking at all the string lights and décor that Val had put up, appreciating the effect. It was compounded by the faint music and smells that were coming from above. He also saw that Kristi was out of the spare room down there which she had claimed for her wrapping spot. He was fine with that since it would become her gaming room sooner than later.

  When he climbed the stairs, the faint music and smells became much more potent, and he opened the door to see Kristi curled up on the couch with her Switch. She wasn’t even looking at the screen and had a bemused smile on her face as she looked over to the kitchen. Kurt followed her gaze as he reached the top of the stairs and couldn’t help but smile too.

  Val was at the kitchen island, wearing a long-tailed flannel shirt that hung over her leggings, tails swaying back and forth beneath it. She had a Santa hat sitting atop her head, slightly tilted to the back to allow the tail of the cap to drape onto her shoulder with her fox ears framing the rest. She was dancing around as she worked on what appeared to be Christmas cookies of various types.

  “How long has she been at this?” Kurt asked as he came to stand near Kristi.

  She looked up at him with a smile. “The dancing, the cookies or the general holiday spirit?”

  “Let’s start with the dancing.”

  “Oh, probably half an hour. She really got into it after putting the trees in the oven and found a playlist on one of the streaming services.” Kristi answered while using the opportunity to stretch and stand up.

  “And the rest of… this?” He waved his hand at what he imagined a baker’s shop looked like. There was frosting, sprinkles, flour and various cooking accessories everywhere.

  “Since she got dressed.” Kristi answered. He looked over and noted that the dragoness was wearing a holiday sweater with a Deadpool motif. “When you weren’t around, she just assumed that you were working and that she needed to do something to quote ‘Burn off all this energy’ or something.”

  “You didn’t tell her I was downstairs wrapping gifts?” Kurt wondered why she hadn’t tried to sneak in.

  Kristi snorted. “Oh, I did. She didn’t seem interested in trying to spy on you though. Apparently, she wants it to be a surprise.” She gestured to the tree where Kurt saw a couple piles of gifts already.

  Kurt went to place his gifts around the tree, careful to keep them from brushing the low hanging ornaments that Val had painstakingly placed. He was beginning to wonder if the holiday meant more to her than it did to him when the sound of voices in the breezeway alerted him to the presence of their guests.

  A moment later, Penny and Anna walked through the door, both bundled up in puffy jackets, hats and tall boots. The small fey turned and held the door while making a ‘come on’ gesture. After a few seconds of what appeared to be a one-sided silent argument, Bont came through the door, barely tucking his tail out of the way before his summoner closed it behind him. Kurt thought the big cat looked grumpy and was proven right when Anna caught them all looking.

  “He wants to go play outside.” She said by way of explanation. “He hasn’t seen fresh snow in a long time, and I think he missed it.”

  Kurt blinked at that. He was still coming to terms with the tiger no longer being green and tan. Rather than the woodsy pattern to his stripes, Bont was now covered in varying shades of grey and black over his white fur.

  “He, uh… he changes color?” Kurt asked dumbly.

  Anna looked from her familiar to Kurt, then the girls, while Penny tried not to laugh. “Um yeah? That’s kinda part of their whole hunting thing. Because they range in altitude so much, they can change fur color and patterns at will.”

  “If you think this is shocking, just imagine getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and only seeing a pair of floating blue eyes in the darkness. He changed his fur to be nearly all black the other night and scared the hell out of me.” Penny said while eying the cookies cooling on racks.

  Suddenly, Anna began to laugh. “More like it scared the scales out of you.”

  Penny looked indignant. “Well yeah. I got scared and shifted. Not like I expected him to be able to open doors either. And you never said what he was doing lurking around in the living room at two in the morning.”

  The tiger in question padded silently around the living room and kitchen. He sniffed at the tree and the gifts under it before moving to the kitchen. There he used his height to rest his chin on the counter and watch Val for a moment before sniffing at a plate of cookies. After getting a little taste of powdered sugar he retreated, while licking the white spot on his pink nose, headed over to the area in front of the fireplace where he sprawled on the floor.

  “I always thought fur rugs were tacky, but I might make an exception for this one.” Val said, looking at the massive cat as it basked in the warmth of the stove.

  Bont cracked open one bright blue eye and leveled a glare at her before chuffing and curling in a ball. He wrapped his tail around and draped it over his face after turning his back on the kitsune.

  “So, what is on the agenda for today?” Penny asked as she took off her coat and hung it near the door. She had apparently gotten the message to dress comfy since she was in yoga pants and a sweater.

  “Yeah, I did a little more reading on the internet about this holiday, but it seems that traditions vary?” Anna added while taking off her own coat and boots to reveal a light dress in a shade of blue that matched her eyes. Kurt would have thought it was a little light for the season but then saw her fuzz along with her slightly more furry and significantly more feline feet.

  Val answered after pulling out a tray from the oven, this time not replacing it. “First, we clean the kitchen. Then Kurt makes brunch. After that, when the cookies are cool, we can decorate them. Then I was thinking of sledding on the hill, then some coco and cookies while we watch movies. Then Kurt makes dinner. Then more movies before bed. Then we wake up and it’s Christmas. Then presents. Then hang out and have more brunch. Then more hanging out. Then dinner. Then goodbyes.”

  Rattling off the things she wanted from the holiday, Val counted each item on a finger. When she ran out of fingers, illusionary ones joined the real ones to extend the visual count. Kurt was just surprised she didn’t do something silly like using her tails or toes to keep counting.

  “Ooookaaaay.” Kurt said as she panted a little breathless, either from excitement or actual exertion, it was hard to tell. “Well, I guess, make yourselves at home while I start cooking.”

  “French toast casserole is in the oven already.” Val said while starting to clean off the counters.

  Anna just followed Penny along to the living room while Kristi got up to help in the kitchen. “What is brunch?” She asked after sitting at the far end of the couch, leaving the spot near the fire for Penny.

  “Brunch is a late breakfast or early lunch with the excuse that its late enough in the day to start drinking.” Kurt answered.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  POP. All eyes turned to Kristi as she held a bottle of champagne. “Mimosa anyone?”

  *****

  While Kristi and Val kept their guests entertained, Kurt got to work on breakfast. Or in this case, brunch. Thankfully the French toast casserole was already baking and nearly ready so all he had to do was the sides. Given it was winter, he wasn’t afraid to go a little heavy on the extras under the excuse of needing extra calories in cold weather.

  He fried a small mountain of bacon while also plating an equally sized pile of hash browns, freshly grated of course. Then, while those had been cooking, there was the fruit bowl that he was working on. It was filled with a large variety of fruits, mostly what was available in the grocery store and took up the majority of a punch bowl.

  A simple enough meal that everyone sat down to enjoy. Everyone got to fill their plates a couple times and even Bont got up to sample some bacon though didn’t seem to care for the salty cured meat. Naturally the meal also included some debate as to what was better for topping the French toast, powdered sugar or maple syrup. Kurt decided to stay out of it since he liked both and that was apparently ‘not the opinion they wanted’ when he voiced that. After the sugar-syrup debate came clean up along with a new topic.

  “Alright, toppings here and here. Cookies are sugar cookies, almond cookies and gingerbread.” Val was pointing with a rubber spatula at the assortment of bowls, trays, cooling racks and utensils. “There is plenty for everyone so go nuts.”

  Everyone set in with a will. That is to say Val and Kurt got rolling while everyone else watched what they were doing to get an idea of what was going on. Kurt had gone with a Christmas tree sugar cookie while Val had done a gingerbread. He was spreading a green frosting all over, making a mess until he could put on some sprinkles. Val, on the other hand, was carefully piping frosting out onto the little cookie man, creating little designs with the fine bead of white frosting.

  The onlookers saw both ends of the spectrum in this. They had an expert designer and a genuine frosting artist in Val. Then there was Kurt who took a more carefree approach. Kurt was able to finish his tree and move on to a star shape before Val was even done with half of hers.

  “Come on, grab a cookie and get going.” Kurt said, looking up into the confused faces around him. “It doesn’t really matter what they look like. The toppings are pretty much all the same and the goal is just to have fun.”

  With that, the three onlookers piled in. Each of them grabbed a cookie and a variety of toppings. Anna went with a sugar cookie and frosting, just like Kurt while Penny went with gingerbread. Kristi was the outlier, picking an almond cookie and getting creative with some water and the finer sprinkles.

  They spent nearly an hour on the craft, laughing and having fun with their decorating. Each of them ate at least one of their creations that ‘didn’t quite turn out’, using the excuse to have a little treat. Even with the early snacking, they ended up with more than enough to fill two plates stacked high with the colorful treats.

  “What’s next?” Anna asked, bouncing on her feet. Kurt was pretty sure he saw her short tail flicking back and forth under her dress but she was moving too much for him to confirm. And he didn’t think it appropriate to stare at her butt for too long.

  “Sledding!” Kristi cheered. She had been the one to pick that after seeing the bins full of them at the store. They had picked a few of the toboggan style and a couple saucers to ride down the hill behind the house. She had been itching to break them out but had patiently waited for their guests.

  Penny frowned. “But we don’t have any clothes for that.”

  Kirsti grinned. “Got you covered. Come on, to the breezeway!”

  They followed after her and found that she had prepared winter gear for all of them. Stacked in neat piles were hats, gloves, coats and snow pants for each of them. Kurt already had his own but didn’t say anything since he didn’t mind having spares. Apparently the sixth member of the party also was excited to go out and play in the fluffy white snow.

  Bont bounded around the door, hopping up and down with a grace that only a cat could manage. They all pulled on the winter clothes before headed outside. It was cold and overcast but that was fine since they were likely only going to be out for a couple hours.

  Kristi had lined up the various sleds along the porch railing and everyone got to pick what they wanted as they walked to the hill around the back of the house. Bont on the other hand looked to Anna who in turn looked to Kurt. “Can he go run?”

  “Go on, just stay away from the road over there and don’t eat anything that looks like livestock or people.” Kurt said and watched the six-legged cat go bounding off, plowing through a snow drift as he made his way to the trees.

  After watching Bont disappear into the trees, Kurt turned to Anna. “You know you can bring him over any time if he wants to run around. Plenty of room out here and he is smart enough to not get in trouble.”

  “Really? That would be great!” She said and gave him a quick hug, trying not to fumble her toboggan. “I feel so bad because he wants to be around me, but I can’t exactly take him anywhere public.”

  “Yeah, happy to have him. Just give me a call and let me know when.” Kurt confirmed as they approached the top of the hill that had been levelled off for the house. Below was a relatively gentle slope that eventually leveled out after a hundred yards. There was another hundred or so before the tree line which left them with plenty of buffer room to slow down.

  They arrived at the top of the hill where Kristi had stopped, and Kurt decided to weigh in with a suggestion since he had done this before. “We might have some trouble making a track. Normally we need to flatten the snow a little but since this is so deep it will just bog us down until we establish one.”

  Kristi looked over at him and cocked her eyebrow. She looked like she was grinning but he couldn’t tell under her scarf. “Just pack the snow down and make it smooth?”

  “Yeah, that’s the general idea.”

  “Like this?” She waved her hand and made a gesture.

  From right in front of them, a nearly invisible wall appeared and seemed to flop down, landing on the snow and compressing it like an invisible, flat-bottom boat was sitting on it. Then she made a gesture that looked like she was pushing a rolling pin and the invisible boat started moving forward down the hill.

  The snow started getting compressed and making a ten-foot-wide track that ran all the way to the bottom of the hill. It was perfectly smooth, and perfectly straight like it was a groomed ski hill rather than a grassy field in his back yard.

  Penny was looking skeptically at the hill while holding her saucer. “So, we just sit on the sled and ride down?” Her words were muffled by her scarf, making her have to shout a little.

  “Based on my research, yes.” Kristi confirmed. Then she took Penny’s saucer and placed it on the ground. “Sit here, cross legs. Ok, now I think you hold these handles, and I give you a little…” She coaxed their manager into position before sliding her forward and off the edge.

  “Ok. Wait, hang on. I think I neEEEEeeeeee.” They didn’t find out what Penny needed as she suddenly went rocketing down the slope, spinning and turning on the plastic sled.

  Kurt was impressed at how well she stayed on the sled… until she reached the bottom. There appeared to be a slight shift in the gradient and her slow rotation turned into a dipping of the side of her sled. That little dip caused her to suddenly flip and slide into the landing area in a heap.

  “Ohshit.” Kristi said and grabbed her sled. Before Kurt could tell her to wait, she was already off. She took a much more streamlined approach and laid belly down on the longer, more narrow sled which let her reach the bottom surprisingly fast.

  Unfortunately, that let her reach the bottom at roughly the same time as Penny was dusting herself off and standing up directly in her path. Kurt watched in silent fascination as Kristi realized she was about to take Penny out at the knees and made a split-second decision to bail out. She rolled to her left, ending up in the deep snow on the side of the track while her sled continued forward to gently bump against Penny’s leg.

  Brushing herself off, Penny looked around after seeing the empty sled. Eventually her eyes landed on some movement to her right and she saw Kristi stand up out of the thigh deep snow. “Penny! Are you ok?” The dragoness said as she ran over in a high stepping run and tried to straighten her clothes at the same time.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. What happened to you?”

  Kristi ignored the question and looked up to the top of the hill where the other three were waiting. “She’s OK!”

  Kurt just shrugged and put his saucer down. “I guess that means it’s our turn.” He said and started his own run down the hill. He was a little more experienced in the art of sledding and knew that it was best to lay belly down on the saucer if possible.

  Soon he was joining Kristi and Penny at the bottom of the hill. He went noticeably further than either of them since he stayed on the sled, but he figured they would get the hang of it eventually. A moment after he moved aside, Val went rocketing by and would have ended up in the trees if not for hitting the deep snow after the runoff. Anna flowed shortly after, the much smaller girl barely passing where Penny had landed.

  The five of them kept taking runs down the hill for another couple hours until they eventually got tired of having to walk back up every time. They would have called it quits earlier if not for Bont returning and having fun chasing them down the hill like a yeti in a very old computer skiing game. He eventually caught everyone once and was surprisingly gentle as he tackled them off the sleds, wrapping them in his furry limbs and making sure to land in the deeper snow.

  They trooped back inside as the sun was setting below the trees, and the already overcast skies were growing even darker. The first thing that happened was Val started making coco, heating up some milk on the stove while everyone else tried to hang up their snow gear to dry out.

  As soon as people managed to get out of the coats and boots, a line was formed for the shower. Surprisingly it wasn’t Val or Kristi itching to get in but Penny, who claimed that just because she was half changeling, didn’t mean she liked the cold and was still half naga.

  Unfortunately for Penny, Kurt ended up going first. He had to get dinner going and it would be easier for him to just get his shower done with before starting to cook. When he got into the bathroom, he saw another little surprise.

  Sitting on the counter was a pair of holiday pajamas with his name on the tag sticking from the ribbon. Flannel pants and shirt along with some fuzzy socks were waiting for him after he finished drying off. He smirked after doing a quick count and seeing four other matching pairs also sitting on the counter. Apparently, Val was going heavy into the ‘family Christmas’ part of the holiday.

  Not long after, just as the half twilight had turned to full dark, all five of them and a tiger were sitting on the couch in the basement. National Lampoons Christmas Vacation was playing and everyone had either cookies or a cocktail as they snuggled in to watch the antics of Chevy Chase.

  Kurt himself was being smushed between Kristi and Val while Anna sat in the middle, eyes wide as she watched the movie and idly scratched at Bont’s ears. The big cat had decided that he wanted to watch the show too and had flopped down in a way that he could rest his head on her lap. Penny was wrapped up in a blanket on the opposite side of the sofa, occasionally sneaking a hand from under the blanket to grab a few more pieces of caramel covered popcorn that had appeared from somewhere.

  The five of them spent the rest of the evening with a couple more classic movies before eventually calling it a night and going to bed. They barely said a word as they parted ways at the bedrooms, Anna and Penny sharing the guest room for the night. All of them were tired and they were looking forward to the next day when they could stay in pajamas all day and be lazy while opening gifts.