And We Bring You A Christmas Interruption

Theo woke up inside of a room that looked rather like her room, except that outside, it was snowing. She had to rub her eyes and clean her glasses to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. The last thing she remembered was that she was in a helicopter…in the middle of summer. She flopped down on her bed, and sighed. “Hey author, or authors…you dragged me out of the story again, didn’t you?” she asked out loud to whoever was in control. No otherworldly voice spoke, but a knock did sound at her door.

She got up and opened the door, where she saw a familiar face. “Hi there…Theo, was it?” asked a boy with shockingly grey eyes. It was those eyes that helped Theo identify the mystery person.

“And you’re Dennis,” affirmed Theo. “You look slightly different.”

“Really?” he cocked his head to the side in thought. “I guess I do. My author never really defined my appearance the first few times he or she wrote the story. Now they started anew, so I guess I have a slightly different look.” He combed his black hair with his fingers absentmindedly and fixed the large magnifying glasses on his face. “It appears we’ve been whisked off to an alternate universe again. I wonder what for this time.”

“Do you know the date?” asked Theo. “I was in the middle of summer, and I don’t think it snows in the middle of 20-plus degrees weather.”

Dennis shook his head. “No idea.”

“Well, I guess we’ll have to go find out for ourselves,” she replied, after a brief search around the room for a calendar. She and Dennis walked down the stairs where they found themselves in a large living room that didn’t belong to either of them.

“Hey, it’s you again!” said a voice, and they turned around to see a familiar girl with glasses and a boy accompanying her. “Do you remember me?”

“Ah, it’s Kaya, correct?” asked Dennis, and she nodded in reply. “Who’s that with you?”

Theo wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or not, but she thought she saw Kaya blush. “Uh, this is Marc…he’s that ally/friend I was talking about the other time we saw each other. Marc, this is Theo and Dennis…I met them the other time I got taken away from the main story.” Marc waved and smiled, but his indigo eyes seemed to have darkened briefly.

“Nice to meet you guys,” he said.

“So do either of you have any idea what day it is today?” asked Theo. “We’ve been wondering since we arrived here.”

“Oh, um, let me check,” said Kaya, and she rummaged in her purse for her tablet. A bunch of things fell out of her bag, including a wallet, a phone and a package tied with a ribbon. Flustered, she bent down and starting picking up everything frantically while holding onto her tablet in one hand. Marc reached down and picked up the package just as Kaya was about to get it. She blushed and stood back up straight. She turned on her tablet, and her eyes widened at the date displayed there. “Well,” she said, “it appears to be Christmas Day today.”

“Christmas?” asked Dennis. “That passed three months ago for me.”

“That’s half a year away for me!” exclaimed Theo. “Why on Earth would our authors want to throw us together on Christmas?”

“Authors?” asked Marc, confusion etched on his face.

“Long story,” whispered Kaya. “I’ll explain later.”

“I’m not sure,” said Dennis. “Christmas wasn’t really a big deal at the orphanage to me…they’d put up a sickly looking tree every year and hand out donated toys.” He paused for a moment and thought. “Maybe it’s Christmas for the authors?”

“That would make sense,” said Theo. “And would explain why they pulled us out to do this extra chapter.”

“Chapter? Author? What?” asked Marc again.

“Here, sit down and we’ll explain,” said Theo, slightly exasperated at Marc’s incessant questions interrupting her train of thought. Kaya and Marc sat down on a couch while Theo and Dennis sat themselves in some rather large armchairs. “So you see…” she went off on a long, detailed explanation that left Marc rather bamboozled. It even left Kaya and Dennis slightly confused.

“Uh, so what I got from that was that we’re in an universe where these people…these authors are the creators,” said Marc. “And so everything we do is defined by them.”

“Correct,” said Theo.

“So right now, this is happening in some sort of alternate universe where it won’t have any effect on our normal world, right?”

“Yep.”

“So you can do whatever you want,” he smiled wickedly. “And it won’t do anything to alter the plotline.”

“Hypothetically, yes. Why?”

Marc looked up, smiled, and pointed towards the ceiling. “Mistletoe.” Kaya looked up as well, and saw that indeed, there was the familiar sprig with white berries and dark green leaves hanging from the ceiling. When she looked down again, she saw that Marc’s face was slightly too close for comfort.

Kaya grabbed the package that fell out of her bag earlier and put it in front of her face. Marc stopped and took the package out of her hands.

“What is this anyways?” asked Marc, shaking the package a bit. Kaya blushed a bit.

“I was planning on giving it to you on Christmas in our universe, but I guess I can give it to you early.” Marc looked down at the package in his hands and smiled.

“Can I open it?” he asked. She nodded and Marc carefully unwrapped the present, trying not to tear the paper. The package revealed a very long, dark green knitted scarf. There were some irregular stitches along the sides, and holes where there were dropped stitches. He smiled brightly. “Did you make this?”

“Yeah…my knitting skills are a little lacking,” she said, and fidgeted nervously. “If you don’t like it…”

“No, I don’t like it. I love it,” he said, and wrapped the scarf around his neck. “Thank you.”

“Well, that was touching,” said Theo, and she coughed a bit in embarrassment. Marc and Kaya jumped apart and were flushed in identical shades of red. Theo chuckled a bit at how cute they looked. “I’m glad that Heathcliff didn’t get any funny ideas.” She paused a moment as if waiting for something to happen, but nothing did.

There was a loud noise, as if several things dropped at once. The four of them jumped, and searched around the room for where the sound could’ve possibly come from. Spotting nothing, they relaxed a bit. Then a knock came from the front door, and Dennis stood up to get it.

When he got there, he was surprised to see that there was a note on the doorstep and no footprints in sight. He picked up the note, closed the door and made his way back to the living room. “According to this, it says we should look in the chimney.” He waved around the note with its slanting, carefully done cursive.

“The chimney?” asked Theo. Dennis shrugged, and made his way to the fireplace. There, sitting in the ashes, were three presents and a letter in an envelope.

Kaya had to laugh a bit. “The authors have quite the interesting sense of humour,” she remarked. “An interesting way to deliver presents considering it’s Christmas and we don’t exactly believe in Santa anymore.”

“Hey, this one is addressed to you, Dennis,” said Theo, picking up a package wrapped in snowflake-patterned paper.

“And this one is for you,” said Dennis, handing a red and green striped one to Kaya.

“And I’m guessing the last one is for you,” said Kaya, and she gave the last one that was covered in reindeer stickers to Theo. They sat down at their chairs and started opening them.

Theo was the first one to get hers open. “Oh cool, a Swiss Army knife!” She admired the workmanship of the knife, and then slipped it into her pocket. She found a small piece of folded paper taped to the wrapping paper. She unfolded it, and in the same handwriting as the note that lead them to their presents, was a personalized note. “Hey, I got a note that says, ‘Here’s something you made need for your journey.’ It’s signed by someone named K.”

Kaya had just finished unwrapping hers, which happened to be a new tablet case in a pretty shade of indigo. “It’s the same colour as your eyes, Marc,” remarked Kaya. Marc smiled at her, and his eyes glittered. “I got a note too. It says, ‘You might need this if you’re going to continue using your tablet…it’ll be crucial soon enough. P.S. Marc, you already got a present from Kaya so there’s nothing here for you.’” She giggled. “It’s also signed by K.”

Dennis had finally finished carefully picking his present apart, and in there sat a leather-bound notebook with a pen. He read his note aloud: “I wasn’t sure what you would like, as you’re not mine, but I thought a notebook to write your ideas and observations in would be nice since you spend a lot of time alone. Hope you find your family soon—K.”

“Who is K?” asked Marc, wondering out loud.

“We don’t know,” replied Dennis. “Though I have an idea that the envelope there will tell us.”

Kaya jumped to her feet and picked it up. She opened it and started reading the letter that was inside.

“Dear lovely characters,

I hope you enjoyed your gifts. This is from one of the authors (yes, there is more than one), and I wasn’t exactly sure what you would want. Hopefully it worked out. My name is K, and I’m the author to Kaya’s story and Theo’s story. Right now, G isn’t here to say anything, but I’m sure he would’ve said hi to you, Dennis, and picked out a more suitable gift for you. Now you guys have been through a lot, and I want to give you a well-deserved break. I’m hoping G doesn’t mind that I pulled you four out of your busy and exciting stories, but it’s Christmas and it’s day to spend with your friends and family. So after Kaya finishes reading the letter here, you’ll hear a knock on the door where all your friends (even Gerad, Kaya and Marc) will be waiting outside. Have fun, eat cookies, go throw snowballs, and Merry Christmas. Sincerely, K.

P.S. I’m missing you G, and I hope you read this chapter soon. When you get back, I have something to give you! xoxo, K.”

Just as the letter said, as soon as the last word left Kaya’s mouth, a knock on the door resounded. Kaya dropped the letter and ran to open the door, and the others quickly followed. There was chaos as people ran to others and hugged, and came inside to the house. Dennis stayed behind, watching Kaya and Marc hugging a boy tightly as if they hadn’t seen him in ages. Theo looked like she was trying to run away from a blond haired guy who he recognized as Heathcliff, while Charlie and an unknown man besides him talked.

“Hey Dennis,” said someone behind him, and he turned. There, stood a guy with an impish grin, as well as a girl in a wheelchair. “I know you haven’t seen us in the latest version of the story yet, but we’re family. I think,” said the boy.

“We’re family in the future,” said the girl, except it was through a walky-talky.  that was on her lap. “It gets rather complicated, at least that’s what it was like the first two editions in the story.”

“So in the meantime, how about we go get some cookies and hot chocolate?” asked the boy. “Then maybe I can go and steal a kiss from a girl under the mistletoe.”

“I don’t think that’ll ever happen, Raymond,” said the girl, and smiled. “Now come, everyone is waiting for us to get inside.”

And so they did, joining the others inside the living room. Charlie held up a mug and proclaimed, “Merry Christmas!” The others echoed his cheer, and the rest of the day was merry indeed.