Twelve Days of a Nevermoorian Christmas

𝒪𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝐹𝒾𝒻𝓉𝒽 𝒟𝒶𝓎 𝑜𝒻 𝒞𝒽𝓇𝒾𝓈𝓉𝓂𝒶𝓈...

...the Deucalion gave to me, five balls of yarn, four figure-skating snowmen, three confetti canons, two festive boater hats, and a very large Christmas tree.

Fen was, to say the least, sick of all the holiday bologna the Hotel had come up with in the past few days. Seriously, who was going to use huge confetti cannons on the roof? Silly people, apparently. After the fourth long day of whispering things to the walls with threatening undertones, Fen made herself comfortable in her room.

As the night drew on, the warm fireplace dwindled down to just a few embers as Fen slept. Something brushed one of her hind paws, and suddenly she was awake and alert. She went to stand up, only to find that one of her paws was wrapped in yarn.

Fen yowled, struggling with the string to be freed. Only then did she see that there was a very large ball of yarn behind her. She groaned, approaching and surveying the deep green wool with flecks of silver throughout it. Fen dragged the ball towards her, nothing that it was almost as big as her head. She began pushing it out of her door, into the hallway before something came over her, something she had never felt before. Instead of continuing on her way to the lobby, she quickly changed direction and headed to the smoking parlour.

To her dismay, she found two more balls of yarn waiting for outside of the doors to the smoking parlour, one a deep velvety red threaded with gold, the other a dark navy blue. She pushed the two other balls of yarn to the side, opened the doors to the parlour and pushed the three balls in, and shut the door behind her.

The sweet scent of peppermint greeted her nostrils as she scampered around the room, searching for any leftover food that she could eat while she waited for the wool to soak up the scent of the smoke. After about half an hour she lost all patience, and began manoeuvring the three balls out of the double doors and back towards the lobby.

Something was seriously amiss in her, because as she traipsed the hallway, she felt something inside of her. There was a devil on her shoulder that was wearing a bright green elf costume. "The walls seem bland," it told her, drawing her attention to the cream walls with candle-holding sconces every few metres. "And you have all this colourful yarn..." it whispered, and suddenly Fen found herself attempting to tie the ends to the nearest sconce, measuring and using her claws to cut it to the right length, and tying the new end to the next sconce.

It was like she was having an out of body experience. She could only watch in horror as her paws continued working, both sides of the hall now lined with coloured yarn garlands, the three balls of yarn small enough now for her to carry in her teeth.

Picking up the yarn, she continued making her way to the lobby and questioned her mere existence. Why was she now suddenly overcome with the urge to decorate everything? She had never felt this festive before. As she reached the landing that looked over the lobby, she concludes that it must have been the strong, peppermint smoke that had induced her fit of cheery madness.

She turned to descend the spiral staircase, she was nearly appalled to find another ball of yarn, this one bright pink with smaller pieces of white threaded through it blocking her way. When she normally would have howled with frustration and just jumped down, instead she carefully made her way down, pushing the large pink ball in such a way that it wouldn't unravel.

She finally reached the checkered floor of the lobby, and much to her vdisappointment, found yet another large ball of yarn waiting for her under the tree, this one pure metallic silver. She spat out the three smaller balls of yarn from her mouth, and set to work on weaving them all together into one festive garland.

By the time she was done, the tiniest bit of watery sunlight had begun to show itself through the large windows. Hurrying to make sure no one would see her, she bounded back up the stairs and threw the garland forward as best as she could, and tugged and twisted it as best as she could so that it wound itself around the tree.

She hurried back to her room, sighing in relief as no one saw her. But little did she know, Jupiter had slunk out of his office and had been astounded to find Fenestra, the grumpy housekeeping cat, frolicking around the large tree and weaving a garland that now hung itself proudly on the branches.

~ Written by totally_not_amelie