Every Christmas, my family comes together to attend my Aunt's evening mass in her home. Before an exquisite nativity scene of some ceramic with great detail. Where we sing softly of Jesus Christ and the fish in a river where a beautiful woman was brushing her hair, and at the end, we kiss the baby Jesus.

And when I'd been little at midnight I huddled around with my cousins-- the very best friends I still hold to my heart-- as we excitedly waited for midnight. As the time set by the adults that we could tear open our presents from a wide array of shiny wrapped packages under a grand tree.

It really looks like a toystore under my Aunt's tree. Since the whole family pitches in to trade gifts for cousins and aunts and sisters and their parents and the older kids to the younger kids.

What I want this Christmas is what I want every Christmas.

The warm light and steady, soothing hum of united prayer. Lilting singing voices as we celebrate Christ.

I want the burn of tamales on my tongue and the fill of posole and meatballs in my belly.

I don't even care all too much what I get under the tree. But I do especially love, when family members remember that I love wrapped ones the most since I get to tear into it.

I just want a singular night where our family is happy and talking, us kids holed up in a room with snacks talking about high school and college and romance, and the adults commandeering the downstairs with their gossip and "carcajeadas."

Melanie Warren was the odd contender for gloomiest girl in their year, strawberry blond curls, dainty freckles across her nose, it was almost gaudy costume wear-- to have the rattiest sweaters of the most displeasing dull colors a person could think of. Nor was her pretty hair ever clean either, always full of dandruff.

And her eyes, Melanie had one picture of the color they were supposed to be. A moony grey, but had washed out to a stormy, dark glower that glimmered with scorching lightning.

That picture lay at her chest in a cheap plastic gold locket. Only seen by one person.

Her friend Sierra Gallegos.

**15 yrs. later**

It was technically cheating, Officer Oaks knew that-- except the strawberry blond grand larcenist had simply vanished.

And he cared about her more than the law or his job allowed.

Not simply for being a useful demon half the time, but in part for the fondness she would speak about... 'the one woman she loved.'

A past he used against her now as he dug up the time capsule for the class of Westover Hall 2000.

**Corvallis Oregon**

Sierra spun around the grand empty space.

Her newly bought, simple home.

This text is from Sword Art Online Abridged by Something Witty Entertainment. Watch Episode 18 on YouTube.

So all credit for this idea really goes to them. It was way too cool not to think on it and say, "that's an awesome spell to use in some story."

So let's see what you all can do with it.

**********************************************

A toll for the living

A toll for the lost

A toll for the wise ones who tally the cost!

Greg pulled ahead, finding not only her completely unharmed but also Coulter and Wayne.

Of course the latter down a hand and with a sheen of sweat and unhealthy paleness.

Coulter hadn’t fared much better with his creepy cricket limbs splintered in clean smooth halves of meat. Blood pooling from multiple bite wounds, his bare leg washed in red.

And of course growls began to approach.

“The cars?”

“Nah magic based,” Mario reported. “Can’t pick or force.”

“Shit,” Coulter hissed.

“Well over the fence now!” Wayne insisted. “We can figure out transport and stuff later.”

Their resources were essential. Thus Greg tossed his bag over first, before cupping his hands to support Mario.

Beside him Coulter handled Wayne and Talia and undoubtedly had room for him too.

The sight of the gleaming leg intact and stretching him to nearly eight feet tall was in a way infuriating. An ever present itch at his eyelids he could never explain and had to shove aside NOW.

He rolled his eyes at the professed hand.

Still he said nothing.

On their ascent Coulter began to quake.

Not only was he off balance but he’d summoned three more legs, tearing out of his back to kick out at the goons snarling their frothed mouths.

Three whimpered at the savage whips they received.

Greg clasped the fence, face set in grim resolve.

He climbed the links, scuttling with all his speed and skill.

The tangles caught his sock tight, twisting and turning but refusing to yield.

Coulter grunted. “Greg! Oh good God,” he said looking so pale as if he weren’t being set upon by literal wild animals. “I should have let you go first.”

“Whatever it’s fine!”

“Just be quiet,” argued Wayne.

“No,” he argued just as heatedly, chest heaving in the blinding heat of righteous mania.

Long as some survived, long as their map survived and they escaped they had won today.

Only Wayne wouldn’t have it. He had promised after all.

With a terrible jerk and almost crack his now red, bleeding foot was left bare and free.

He flipped over the chain link, helped along by a thrust.

Until he realized what that meant.

The wolves knew it too, Wayne knew it as he smiled.

Now shielded in a hexagonal barrier they were massacred.

Someone, Talia, realized he had had the sense to cover his eyes. Bone parted from flesh and something rolled.

Coulter was flat on his side, all his limbs torn. Pain exuding from his expression, gritting his teeth against the awful claws digging about on his spine.

Not even his finger moved. He was completely paralyzed.

“Run,” said a voice. A voice much stronger and richer than his own.

Red hot coals stroked at his insides.

“Run unless you’re such a sadist.”

“You’re a sadist!”

“Sick freak.”

“Sadist!”

Greg ran. Oh he ran alright.

He ran hard and tirelessly screaming to the blue sky and air smelling of wet earth, honey, and lavender.

One and one,

One hand to another.

The hands who hold on tight as one entity, falls from the sky.

As only one can escape to see the sunlight again.

One smile.

That leaves you wanting and hurting for all your days.

One.

Only that one love, is whose hands you desire to hold.

From one singular point of the universe.

To that one place...

Called The End.

From snow to stone, from joggers to carpet floors Lydia came to the location on her ramshackle tracker.

Throwing open the door she found splatters of paint everywhere, chairs overturned with broken off legs, and the balcony door wide open.

Lava cascaded down her veins, slow and ominous.

Walking into the apartment she nearly walked into the one tired witness to this whole mess.

The friend she'd desperately tried to find.

Cradling him in her arms she made note of the blue punctures.

He hissed something, his eyes switching from his own blue to a lava color with slit pupils.

Torbin, one of the most Wanted men across the region. Had he been more ambitious-- possibly had a better more malleable power-- he'd perhaps be among the most sought after men in the nation.

Yet as it stood, he currently crawled about in the grimy filth of human excrement and the vile dirt off their bodies.

A debasing fate.

And the best part?

Heroes always went on and on about how their power lay in their relationships, their love for others-- of a too large and too selfish humanity-- in empathy and in trust.

Friendship. Family.

Well he had trusted only one man in his life.

A second time, Torbin had even permitted himself to develop affections for one young man.

But that young man, for all his bluster-- one that reminded him of himself-- turned out to be so truly weak and soft-hearted, that it had been easy for the devil at his shoulder to make him a toy. No, more like the weapon he'd so delicately pruned and groomed to his own designs.

Torbin, had meant to produce a viable heir. A person in his own right, carrying on chaos on his terms but by Torbin's own grace.

But his brother, smarter and snobbish Frederick who'd never deign to get his hands dirty, Frederick had wanted an object. A destructive object whom he could control and violate their memory however necessary to point them and allow themselves to be shot at the target of his desire.

For his brother had had no anger, no envy nor greed. He had no love or joy inside him either. Frederick from the very start had had nothing inside him at all. Simply the wanton need to dominate and to hold power.

For which Torbin (who now tsked at thinking back) had been quite the useful object. The accessory to achieve the destruction and rebuild that Frederick so took cold contentment from.

He had trusted his brother, he had wished to preserve his heir despite his wavering heart-- who had dared to look upon him with fear!-- and his reward had been his manor crumbling to the ground in front of him. Forced to his knees in sheer despair.

Powers remanded inside himself to near destruction his only option then had been retreat.

Torbin lifted his hand from his chest.

Where the bits left of the device once strapped and interweaved into his flesh crackled and spurted blue-white lightning.

If he didn't find someone, anyone to fix it, he would leave this life in a blazing pillar of lightning and release who knew what, razing the world with him.

But he would never see the look of agony on Frederick's face.

Should he die, it would be when he and Frederick killed each other.

19 Yrs. Old.

Raid Walker

Power: Four Clover, a weak little power for a weak spindly armed gofer.

Or so said the only doctor Mama could take him to, whom had no reason for pretense or "bedside manner." Given that the man served criminals and any person too poor to pay the fees, blackmailing the second sort until they were just as dirty as the border patrol men who commandeered the bars and the women at night, their uniforms caked in sandstorm dirt and body odor, committing all kinds of acts from thievery to bootlegging to dealing. To killing and to demeaning, to threatening and to burning.

What Mama burned on Friday nights in a long silk gown and her own Mama's old wedding veil in the almost satanic ritual fashion, was absolutely none of his business. No matter how it stank.

With a shuddering breath, tears running down her face, Patricia prayed.

She silently asked that whatever God existed here-- if he or she or it had not abandoned this place altogether-- that white haired, pale red eyed [___] Walker forgave her.

With quick and now very accustomed hands did she strike a match and set it to a tiny candle wick.

And with her hand let the flame caress the corners of the page, of all the loose papers until they burned into ash on the writing desk he'd fished out for her so many months ago.

When he had finally smiled at her with the corners of his eyes crinkled.

___________________________________________

Raid knew this 'New West' fad the Others called it. Those rich folks outside the country.

While Raid knew it the way all the young people knew it. Not that he'd exactly be welcome among the "little maggots" anymore.

Anyone who survived to age out knew to run whenever you felt the slightest brush of an adult's shadow.

Because to actually live you had to be evil.

This country which was Baron's Coffer. What the mob man who had first struck bloody, iron colored order into the roasting sands and the screaming corpses fancied himself.

The Baron. Rich and opulent. Greedy and obnoxious in voice and of the size of his flintlock.

And no, no man knew the size of that. And besides, it was more of a glock. Very different guns.

Adults in Coffer were evil. A hideous, rotted bushel of fruit. Fruit.

Never seen what they actually looked like.

It was a rare photo that wasn't penciled over or written with crude sex-talking or threats of a mind that's snapped.

At the moment, Raid kept a stool on the bar counter warm. For an adult, Mama's coworker Hick Saw Hort was a steady presence who glanced past Raid as if he were an oddly large speck of dust but nothing more.

And let him nurse-- never drink-- an amber swig of the foul water from the faucet while he waited for Mama on her shift.

She had the tough job of actually manning the distillery and making repairs where necessary at a given moment.

Raid put his head down, eyes roving lazy toward a bushel of overweight, overindulging men in their blue work shirts acid washed and faded in filth.

His face contorted into a disgusted growl, the corners of his vision from his slanted view-- they steadily darkened.

Sly little wafts of vaguely violet shadows... pulsing.

And he let them.

One of the men had warts on his face, shocking white blond hair that didn't match his head's prune color on the backs of his hands and laughed like a pig.

Another had a complexion like wax and as he held his hand, his palms slowly, muddily began to drip.

A couple he could recognize by their freckles and jutting rabbit's teeth respectively.

Palomonio who lived on the loft below himself and Mama, who for every odd blue moon a month dragged bags of pilfered guard clothes and confiscated rifles and drugs, from the time Raid had been just seven years old. And Palomonio had always favored a finger gun to blow his little brains out than a bribe to keep him quiet.

He had once found a note in the eggs.

About Mama's big, curly hair.

How he'd run his hands through it, savor the feeling, almost sorry-- that he'd have to kill her.

And the rabbit teeth, once one of the "maggots," not too long ago. But turned just as brusque and cold as any pair of hands once he turned sixteen and began working with a "backdoor," charity doctor. The one who was so kind as to see clients without coin or collateral besides their own kids.

And the doctor didn't accept that.

Pig's stool broke, three out of three weak legs snapped clean in two making him land in a porking heap.

His "friends" rushed-- probably to see which sleaze could ingratiate himself by taking him to the hospital.

White hair moaned as his back quite suddenly gave out. And at the same time a small frame fell upon that same spot.

A waitress had passed by, only to jostle Raid's stool as she blundered and ultimately crashed.

Half a dozen glasses of mead and beer with a cockroach in one glass soaked into her uniform and the tile.

Ripping Raid out of his reverie and snapping reality back to what it should be.

Save... eight separate incidents and at least five injuries that could lead to demanding a free this or that or stoning the building.

There was fire in Hort's eyes as he helped the girl whose pearly tears shone in her eyes. Even against the truly grimy dins of light in the bar.

Raid simply tried not to gaze at her too long.

Until the cockroach in the glass turned out to be alive and crawled across her face.

Prompting a scream to cut down the ugly laughter at all sides of the building. The waitress running in a panic out the door. The slam making Raid flinch.

**************************************

Raid was kicked out. Quite literally kicked out once Hack Saw put him down, kicking him and shouting expletives as he rained and extra one or two thwacks with his oddly polished shoe.

Well, that was probably a concern wasn't it?

Raid would be likely to be finding more little notes within his shoes or with his Mama on her way back.

Should the new proprietors be so merciful to allow her back to him safely. Not-- without recompense and restitution for the newly respectful establishment worthy of The Baron and his other fellows.

Raid continued down the winding paths and down, down a hellish looking chasm by a rickety stairwell.

Into a commune of just eight disparate little cottages and a relatively-- desolate-- almost gated neighborhood. At least, it's what the Baron's closest boasted and is what patrol guards would often throw in their faces during shifts.

Getting back to their blond and chubby cheeked little kids and their little wives who made snickerdoodles or something.

Raid watched as Ms. Hodden's little toddler-- toddled-- into the corner of the boulevard by its butt.

Whether that was sweet or something sexual, Raid had to admit he was vaguely curious.

Hands smacking on the hard ground and slight protruding stones on the ground. Raid called it-- he called it Toddy-- better than just "you" or thing-- even if it smelled like a swamp ooze on most days.

Around here that sort of thing was 'pleasant heat.' Dirty and sweaty as heat still is but at least the throbbing wasn't just from sun.

Or maybe, per usual, the adults were lying again. The 'teachers' or "priests," who deigned to impart wisdom on the maggots often had this...

<Look>

Some greedy, voracious, and hungry bug-out of their eyes when casing their powers, their freakish features--

Which Raid knew now was the cruel, blade's edged wonderment of what they could produce when paired off and the like. What manner of powers and hybrids could they weaponize and how to violate them to doing so.

Some little girls dared prance about and make noise.

The one most behind with cheetah spots-- stretched skin and jaundiced eyes too large and too-- too round like marbles, pushed her friends forward. And so did her friend in third place.

He wished them well.

So much like they snared kids in to listen in the first place.

Sometimes there are polls.

Needed to have something to do after all--

And in one, of all the adults and-- all the older adults who get a vote half do agree: the ones who snap and do themselves in might have the right idea. Surely anything, even the supposed condemnation for "weakness," had to be better than being some blowhard with compensation issues' bitch.

Coming to the hostel where his Mama did also have a paying job allowing them to live in the place, Raid peered in-- the little old lady was out.

And he didn't feel like having a sharply carved cane sharply smack him to the floor and pointed to his vulnerable throat.

Even as the door lazed open under his weak touch-- another little bit of "luck."

Raid booked it and went the side way.

Where high boxes were stacked in an adjacent building.

In his pouch he always had a scrap of fabric to serve as a blindfold.

Having tried so many times Raid could safely say there was a degree of-- trust, involved.

Just the notion made him cringe.

Then again, Raid wasn't sure yet-- whether he wanted to live out and eventually shrivel up into a son baked raisin and be ashed.

Unless he possibly had a chance to find out just in what building in this minute country they did that in. When every singular building here was ramshackle, uneven, and even cute for their small size.

Hiking laboriously over he could feel out when the air got that certain degree of sting at his face to make the jump, fingers <luckily> clinging onto the flat roof.

Of which he ripped the blindfold off and carefully lowered a foot first to unhook his window latch and then climbed in once he had gotten it open.

The old lady, for all her threats to kill either dead weight (him) or the girls who pocket extra currency for themselves treated them good, having given Mama with a newly born baby the only room with a window and therefore ventilation.

Raid slowly closed the window, but uneasy pins and needles rand across his shoulders and back when he heard a clatter.

He paused his breath-- waiting--

CAWW CAW CAWW.

Raid winced at the choked out sound.

And then--

SSCRITCH SSCRAATCH

Moji's complaining pitter patter on the door.

Raid made for the added bathroom which was just a broken ceramic toilet with rusted pipes and what was either neon green tequilas thrown up or some type of chemical across its surface and a bathtub equally inoperable. But at least inhabitable for a dog, a cat, and occasionally an oppossum.

Swinging open the door all of fifteen animals scampered out, nearly bringing him to the floor and made ownership of the rest of the little house.

He wondered how much of a tease he'd have to give the old woman to make her forget why she was mad.

We need to talk about a lot of things, starting with the afterlife and what philosophical concept-- if any-- decides Heaven or Hell. Is it a Heaven or Hell system at all? Is there reincarnation on the table, how do you judge the actions of the world at large or of individuals? How have you not been tempted to repeat Noah's Arc? Do angels come down to Earth? Do angels evolve and do you evolve with them if they ever experience human life?

______________________________

Keep in mind, I don't think I'd get time to ask even all those questions.

Basically another Give and Take from @Ferryman.

______________________________

Winterset sounded like it would be an idyllic Christmas retreat. That one small town, where everyone was perfectly perky and the adults as crazy about Christmas as the children and believed in that holiday magic. And it was.

Not to mention, the town could make a block party of decorating town square. Because the snow hadn't hit them in two years now.

Violet had made plans-- with Mom's approval-- to spend Christmas with her "club," being something of a clique.

To trade Secret Santa gifts and to swap stories.

Of when that city boy had lived among them for a year.

And that party was tomorrow night. And it was exactly seven minutes on foot from her house to this one where he used to live.

Where it currently sat empty in an unsettling respect, for all that had gone on.

Violet nuzzled into her pink and white plaid coat, starting the trek home.

Being welcome with hot chocolate by her sisters and girl talk. A very sympathetic kind. Somehow they still convinced themselves she and Abel back then had had actual feelings.

No matter how many times she'd explained it was a lie of convenience that made sneaking around, their voices in whispers all too easy.

Because what had settled inside her wasn't heartache. But the grief of the one friend who'd somehow understood her when she spoke in thorns or wound someone around-- because her own mouth couldn't control itself.

_______________________________

Okay not counting this section. But it was basically born because I decided on an epilogue for Winterset in my story The Winterset Conspiracy. Feel free to check it out.