Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 16:42:12 PST From: Lori Dehn Subject: Christmas Passed(1/1) To: FKFIC-L@LISTS.PSU.EDU I wrote this last night while I was packing to go home to Pennsylvania for Christmas, one day late. I was drinking eggnog (non-alcoholic) and listening to John Denver's Christmas album, and thinking of all the Christmases that are gone, and all the people gone with them. I was missing my cat Pasha, who we lost this summer, and thinking how every Christmas after this will be tied up in my child. I was bittersweetly maudlin. Thus, so is this. There is barely a plot, and thus, no spoilers. I don't own these characters, nor do I intend to profit from them. But Christmas is for sharing, with them, and with you. Merry Christmas to my extended net family. Happy Hannukah, Happy Holidays, and warmest wishes for the season. Christmas Passed by Lori Dehn He sipped slowly, letting the flavor coat his tongue. He was slowly adding more wine to the mixture, and finding it tolerable. It was dark in the loft, and dark in the city, but the blinds were open, and outside he could see hundreds of lights in the distance, the decorations of the season covering the homes of the mortals who celebrated joyously. There was a loneliness at Christmas so unlike any other, for although he had Natalie, he had his work, he had eternity, there were so many who were gone. So many he had lost. Fleur had adored the holiday season, paying special attention to St. Nicholas' Day. His bright young sister never forgot his saint's day, always finding some small, special thing to bring him joy. She had kept his gifts together while he served in Britain, and then in the Crusades, and presented them when he'd arrived home with LaCroix and Janette. She remembered still until the year she died. The passing of December had left him so hollow for so long afterwards. Andre always seemed so mournful at Christmas. Nick imagined that his nephew, like himself, was painfully reminded of his mother's joy of the season. Erica had reveled in the drama of the affair like no vampire Nicholas had ever known. She declared that they needed holidays more than anyone else to mark the passage of time. What is eternity without Christmas? she had asked him once. What, indeed? But Alyssa, there was the harshest blow, and the one he could never share with Natalie. He had married Alyssa on Christmas Eve, and his gift was to have been eternity. But before the midnight Mass bells had rung, announcing the birth of the Christ child, Alyssa was as cold and still as the snow outside, her lips icy blue, her skin as white as her gown. "Merry Christmas, my friends, my loves," he whispered, finishing his glass. He rose from his seat to find a bottle of LaCroix's stock. *** She carefully unfolded the square of silk from the small box in her lap. It was yellowed white, and the threads of the embroidery fine as a child's hair. They formed a design of blood-red blossoms and holly leaves, bound and twined with gold and silver ribbons. The gold and silver were impossibly thin wires of the precious metals, many of which had broken over the years, making the design dangerously sharp in places. Her mother had given it to her for Christmas before her marriage, more than one thousand years ago. For the thousandth time, Janette thought of her mother. It was an indulgence she allowed herself only at Christmas. Lisette du Charme had been as fair as her daughter was dark, but they shared the same shockingly beautiful face. However, while Janette's beauty would be sought by men for coin, Lisette's had disappeared into the convent of St. Etienne after her husband's death. Her devotion to her God had been strong enough to allow her to leave young Janette in her uncle's household. That last Christmas together, Lisette had shone with an inner light Janette could not place. The darkness that would enter her own life with her marriage made it more puzzling and more painful to consider, and so the raven-haired young girl had never seen her mother again. Christmases with her husband, whose name she never claimed, had been dark days no different than any other. In the brothel, they merely meant a more drunken variety of patron. One Twelfth Night, though, she was given a bittersweet gift. Two gifts, truth be told. The first was immortality. The second was revenge. And after that, no Christmas was ever the same. "Joyeux Noel, Maman. Bon soir." She refolded the square, kissed it, and put it away for another year. *** He fingered the rose, its white petals silky beneath his fingers. He brought it to his lips, letting the smoothness brush his skin, inhaling the fragrance. He had no warm childhood memories of this season. He was hundreds of years old before the first open celebration of Christmas. It had never been his holiday. And yet, he had his sweet recollections. Janette's rebirth, the first holiday revels he spent with Nicholas, who had embraced the holidays in those early years with zest and vigor. And every Christmas for a precious period of time, there was a letter from Fleur, and in it, a pressed white rose. He inhaled the perfume of the fresh blossom once more, then returned it to the heavy crystal vase. They were never as sweet as the Fleur's Christmas roses. fin Lori Dehn Dark Knightie 'n Nat Packer with definite Ravenette and Vaquera tendencies and just a smackerel of Cousin for "flavor" Proud Member of the Forever Knight Writers List ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com