A Complete Christmas

It was Christmas time. A time for  presents and flickering tree lights. A  time for calm. There was a chill in  the air, which Amelia thought might  just mean that it was going to snow.  

She walked through the large canopy  of trees, their tips just begging to be  covered in a white blanket.The night  was cloudy and the air smelt of pine.  The stars shone brightly in the lilac sky and became visible as the clouds  that covered them floated through  the vast expanse. She looked up and marvelled  at the beauty of the night sky. It was  magical, almost surreal. 

Off in the distance she could see the  little cabin that was considered their  neighbour, yet it was so far away from their house that it felt like it  was in another country, nevermind  ther neighbours. By their, she meant  their family. Their small family. This  Christmas it was just  the four of them.

Usually their extended family would  come from all corners of the Earth to  celebrate Christmas with them.  Christmas was a big time of the year  for their family. It always had been. Every year they would go all out. Fake snow, million of lights….the  works.  

This year was different, though. Everything was different. No one  was coming for Christmas this year.  There would be no macarons from  the finest bakery in Paris and no  beautiful, old classics from that  picturesque, little bookstore in Rome, tucked away in a quiet little cobbled street, that she had seen that  Summer when she went on holiday to  Europe. Her aunt in Russia wouldn’t  visit, telling her all about her family history for the hundredth time and Grandma Betsy, from Canada,  wouldn’t be making her famous  apple pie. Things were definitely  going to be different.

Amelia let out a small sigh, as she  trudged along in the snow. Her boots  left faint prints and she heard the  crunch of her feet in the snow. She  looked back at how far she’d walked. She had stormed out of the house  when she heard that another family  member wasn’t coming for Christmas. She had run out of the house, past their dead little garden and out of  the little white gate that was  joined  onto their picture-perfect, white-painted picket fence.   

She carried on running until she  was  out of sight and then, stopped and  caught her breath. Her nose had  been cold and a snowflake landed  faintly on the tip of it, leaving  it wet and cold. Basically, she had done it again. She had overreacted. Again.  

Now that she had had time to  think, she knew that she had  overreacted,but 
it still hurt. Did her family not have  time for her anymore? Did  they not have  time for any of  them? They were all going to  glamorous Christmas parties or getting dinner  with friends. Well at least that’s what she imagined.

They were all social people, she  figured that’s what they had to be  doing, but no matter how upset she  felt, she knew that taking it out on  the only three people who had stood  by her her whole life, was wrong.  They had been there since the very beginning and she knew that they  would never leave.But it still didn’t  feel like it was enough.

Without the lights and tokens from  around the world and the fantastic  stories all her relatives would 
have told her about their 
travels, everything seemed so bleak. Like there was no flavour to that  Christmas. No glitter. No sparkle.  Something was missing. It didn’t feel like Christmas was complete.    An incomplete Christmas. It sounded odd, but it was true. At  least in her opinion then, it was.  

She knew that she had to head back  soon. The sky was almost pitch black  and soon she would not 
be able to see, but being her stubborn  self, she didn’t listen to reason and carried on walking. It became darker and darker  and eventually she could barely see her hand in front of her. She knew she had to get home now.

She started running back, as fast as  she could and suddenly stumbled.  She fell face first in the snow. Getting up, she felt freezing and shivered from the cold. She tried to walk the last few metres and then,  noticed something on the ground,  as she looked down. Small crimson dots. That’s when she  felt the pain. It was quick and sharp  and she realised her knee must have  been slightly numb from the cold,  since she didn’t feel it. She tried to  walk further, but eventually she couldn’t do it anymore. She  collapsed, feeling tired and sore, then she lost consciou-sness

When she woke up, the first thing she saw were the three faces shehad seen every day of her life. These were the faces that she hoped she would see every day for the rest of it. She realised that these three people  were the only people she needed  to make anything complete. Especially Christmas.