Alexander the Caracal's Christmas

Winter

Winter had come and with it a blanket of snow and for Alexander and Roxana, the two one-year-old caracals living at Quebec Castle, they were absolutely unsure of what to make of it. With Alexander having been born in Egypt and Roxana in India, neither had ever seen snow before.

As caracals, Alexander and Roxana were medium-sized cats with robust builds, long legs, a short face, long, black, tufted ears and long canine teeth with the former's fur being uniformly reddish-tan and colour and the latter's uniformly sandy, while the ventral parts were lighter with reddish markings. As a male, Alexander was twenty inches tall at the shoulder, forty-three inches in length and had a thirteen-inch-long bushy tail while Roxana was sixteen inches at the shoulder, forty inches long and her tail was twelve inches long.

The Northern caracal and the Asiatic caracal both watched as the children, students and children living on the estate alike, played in the snow, some of them even making balls of the stuff and throwing them at each other. It was insanity!

With wide eyes, Alexander and Roxana both stared. Standing below a windowsill, the two wondered what all of this meant. What God of the North had brought this down?

Alas, such questions soon ceased when snow came sprinkling down upon the two caracals. Looking up in alarm, the felines saw Alan Carter, nephew to their master Captain Smith, and Gemma Cook, daughter of Quebec Castle's head gardener Robert Cook.

They were both sixteen years of age. Alan's skin was ruddy while Gemma's was light. His eyes looked small and triangular due to close fitting lids as well as being mismatched with the left being blue and the right green, while hers were large and reddish-brown in colour. His red hair was short and curly while hers was long and straight. Alan's jaw was square, his nose large and hooked, sharp cheekbones, his build lean and hungry and was, by human standards, not particularly good-looking, being quite common in appearance while Gemma was a lean girl with an honest face, a cute mouth and a good pair of legs, being considered fairly attractive by human standards. In height, Alan was five feet and five inches tall with Gemma being an inch taller than he. Alan's attire consisted of a white shirt, black trousers and shoes and a red blazer while Gemma's consisted of a pink turban, a blue kimono and blue shoes.

Staring up at the two redheaded adolescents, Roxana looking unsure of what to make of the snow, Alexander stared in completely shock and surprise... The exact same way he had looked when Mrs. Helene Neuwirth, one of the two cooks and thus co-heads of the kitchen staff, had accidentally dropped lettuce on top of him.

The shock and surprise soon vanished and soon Alexander jumped up onto the windowsill, after which he was followed by Roxana. The two caracals both sniffed the snow before finally taking a seat upon the windowsill and watched as the children played, Alan and Gemma watching along with them.

The two caracals would have been perfectly content watching the children play until something new came, something that they found completely baffling. Wherefore was a pine tree being brought to Quebec Castle? What purpose would Captain Smith, an Egyptologist and owner of a boarding school, possibly have for one?