25/12- Family- Together At Last

Fantasy

Year: 2978

“Woop woop!” Sapphire does an air pump with her human hand, jumping up. “It’s MAASS!” She taps on everyone’s doors with her bionic hand, causing an echo throughout each of their rooms.

“Is that another crazy acronym for something?” Amethyst pushes the door open, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

"Yes, and no." Sapphire appears before her, some of the others gathering behind her. "No, because it's the official name for this holy day, but also I made up an acronym for it."

"And what's that?" Emerald asks curiously.

"Magic Acting As Some Son!" Sapphire announces proudly, making everyone else in the room groan or roll their eyes.

There are nine of them celebrating Christmas together this year. Well, some of them are celebrating. Pearl and Emerald aren't Christian, so they're taking a back seat and mainly watching.

Well, that's what they said they'd do. Pearl isn't anywhere to be found, and Emerald is actively trying to understand, yet rip apart their celebrations. It wasn't consciously, exactly, but her distaste for showering a baby with devotion was clear. And she doesn't believe he even did anything special.

Amethyst was learning what Christmas should be like, because this was her first time 'properly' celebrating it, because with her mum, there was only a cake with candles. She learned that's not even part of Christmas celebrations!

Max was an 'expert', but trying to adapt to the futuristic approach, with mechanical trees and simpler traditions, which confused him more. Instead of a full dinner, they'd have a 'MAASS day' where they sit and celebrate. Why is this simpler? You don't have to decide what time it starts. It's always at 10:00.

And the menu is pre-prepared. You get one issued by the government each year, and it's usually the same, but the desert often varies. The stores stock more of what they need, and deliver to your door. No problem!

Gary took Ruby by the arm, and the pair followed up the rear end of the long queue, which was waiting for church to start. Max was quite sure that MAASS came from the word 'mass', but you can never be sure with these crazy people.

The celebrations were so foreign to Max that Amethyst was doing a better job at keeping it together. The people in church would do most of the speaking, and the Priest would be the one doing short 'Amen's. Everyone entered and left at a different time, so everyone would get a different part of the readings and prayers.

'Dinner' wasn't as bad, though. Church had been at 6:56 for them, but all the worldwide services ended at 8:32 on the dot. Everyone had up to eight minutes to get home and do any last-minute preparations. The church service was mandatory for all, but because none of them were recognised citizens, Emerald and Pearl were able to skip the 'boring stuff'.

At afore mentioned 'dinner', Max didn't know what most of the foods were. Well, most of them didn't. They each knew about one or two (except Sapphire, of course. She knew them all) and tried to gather up their knowledge together to keep up the facade that they were enjoying the festivities.

"Pass me the grape leaves." Emerald winked far too obviously at Amethyst.

"Don't you mean the water lilies?" she replied, twisting her face into the most prominent grimace.

"Are we talking about those flat frogs?" Amber looked curiously.

"You mean... cabbage?" Sapphire gazed around at them all, unfortunately for everyone else, very unimpressed or falling for their whole act.

"That's not the smell of cabbage!" Max exclaimed. "That has to be strawberry."

Half the table laughed.

"If you don't like it..." Sapphire started, "You don't have to eat it. Just... pretend to. It's also the law to 'eat and be merry'."

"The law? How wonderful!" Emerald clasped her hands in delight.

"And what if you're having a bad day?" Ruby asked cynically.

"You put off the bad day for tomorrow!" Sapphire exclaimed, eating a fistful of rabbit fluff. (Yes. It's fur.)

"That's not possible!"

"It sure is!"

"Ok, ok." Amber put her hands up to stop the fight. "Let's make merry and have a good time."

As long as they weren't talking about politics, they were merry as can be! They had taken part in the country-wide gift-switch, where everyone had gone up to give a gift and take a gift at the Mighty Pillar.

Max got a painting, Amethyst got a bag of stress balls, Amber got a foldable tyre, Pearl got glasses, Ruby got a lamp, Emerald got a bag full of bags, Gary got a voucher for coffee (he was allergic!), and Sapphire got the best gift of all: a laptop.

"At least no one got a key. Last year, my friend got one, and she had no clue where to use it! It was tiny, and when she took it to a specialist, they said it would be more expensive to melt it than what it was actually worth!" Another round of laughter for Sapphire's story.

"Well, where I'm from, people always give socks to each other," Max said. "That is, if you don't know the person well. I think I have 25 pairs of Christmas socks by now; one for every day of Advent!"

"I once got the funniest little thing! It was big and spiky, coloured in yellow and a hideous green. They called it a... pinpel." Amber exclaimed joviously. "Pimple or pineapple?" Max's question was asked with so much laughter behind it, he could have fulfilled the criteria for the whole day! "A who what?" As she called for the next meal to be served before them, Sapphire scratched her head.

"Oo! I believe it was a pineapple! But it looked nothing like the gorgeous red apples in my orchard... Or even like Mr Harrington's pathetically small and greenish ones. Actually, maybe they were distant cousins..."

"Amber!" Amethyst moaned. "Pass me that weird sauce, will ya? I'm hungry because I was far too afraid to try anything from that course."

"Meal," interrupted Max.

"Fine, meal. It was all green." "So you prefer bright blue sauce that smells like a burnt photograph machine?" Amber's question was genuine.

"It's not green." Amethyst pointed out, waving the little jug in the air. "To tomorrow!" "To tomorrow!" Cheers, cheers, and more cheers.

"And our crazy mission." Sarcasm dripped from Ruby's tongue like the blue sauce of Amethyst's maybe-bread.

"Cheers!"

Thank you for reading. I hope you got a little Christmas joy from this story. Here, for anyone who wants it, is the maintenance.

If you enjoyed this story, please, please, please (I can add a cherry if necessary) like, comment, rate and share. It really helps me out and allows others to see these (hopefully decent) stories. Thank you, and Merry Christmas.