Keeper of the Forbidden Cities {rewriting}

Prologue

Sophie sighed lightly, looking through her photo album. As she turned a page, she suddenly stopped and gasped. She stared at the picture, where she was about to throw a snowball at her sister Amy. Sophie knew that it was winter in the Forbidden Cities, as she had recently taken a trip there with her Agriculture mentor, who was showing her how to purify the polluted soil. Until now, though, it hadn't come to mind that her family would be celebrating the winter holidays. Sophie bit her lip, wanting to cry at the thought of her family celebrating Christmas without her. She wouldn't even be celebrating at all.

She sat there, staring at the picture gloomily. At that moment the door opened.

"Hey Foster-- wait, are you okay?" Keefe asked, frowning at her facial expression.

"I'm fine."

"You sure don't look fine," Keefe scoffed. He softened his voice and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I was looking through my photo album from the Forbidden Cities and I got kinda homesick," Sophie said, trying to straighten herself out.

Keefe walked over and plopped down next to Sophie, furrowing his brow as he stared at the picture. "Is that... snow?"

"Yep," Sophie replied. "Snowball fights were a Christmas tradition at my house."

"Cool."

"I wonder if the Freemans do them now..."

Sophie stared off into space. Would their dog join in? Would Amy-- no, Natalie-- team up with her dad and build a snowball fort? Did her mom eventually get too cold and force everyone to go inside for hot chocolate? Sophie remembered that her family loved the Starbucks salted caramel flavor. "Mmm, Starbucks."

Keefe wrinkled his nose. "Where did that come from? And what's Starbucks?"

"It's a coffee chain," Sophie answered.

"And coffee is..." Keefe said expectantly.

"A drink that makes you really hyper. I don't know how to describe it, but it tastes really good," Sophie said. "There's a lot of it in Seattle. That's where Starbucks originated."

"Well, I want to try coffee. You should leap us to Seattle," Keefe said. "Hey, that should be my gift to you! Didn't you say earlier that people gave each other gifts during winter?"

"Yeah, it's called Christmas. People say that this guy named Santa comes to every house on one night each year and brings them gifts if the children were good. Of course, Santa's really the parents, but it's a cute tradition. And if you're Jewish, you celebrate Hanukkah, which goes on for eight days. It's kind of a different thing, and it's less commercialized, but a lot of American Jewish families give gifts too. For most families, winter's all about giving. Unless you decide to go the more Grinchy path," Sophie explained.

"Grinchy?" Keefe asked, wrinkling his nose at the strange word.

"It's a human thing," Sophie said.

"Anyways, we should take you on a winter road trip! You could do all of your human wintery stuff, and we could see the Forbidden Cities! The last time we got to go was to find the Black Swan, and that was no fun at all!" Keefe said excitedly. It was kind of cute. Wait, what? "Except for the gelato, of course. That was good. Hey, do you think we could get some gelato in the Cities?"

"Yeees, we can get some gelato," Sophie said, grinning slightly.

"Kay, cool," Keefe said. "We can probably get Alden to talk to the Council so we can go legally. I mean, we saved the Elvin world. They have to like us! Anyways, if this happens, you owe me big time!"

Sophie frowned. "Wait, to go to the Forbidden Cities we'd all have to speak English. Fitz and I are the only ones who know any, and Fitz isn't even fluent."

"Didn't you, like, implant all of the stars in Fitz's brain? You could implant the English language in all of our brains," Keefe suggested.

"That... might actually work!" Sophie said excitedly. "Anyways, if it doesn't, we can just get Dex to make some sort of translation gadget."

"You seriously owe me. Not only did I actually remember about all of your human holidays, but I'm actually helping you celebrate them," Keefe said cockily. "Can any of your other boyfriends say that?"

"Get out of my room."

A/N Ugh, this is so bad, but I had a really fun "winter special" idea thing, and I kind of just needed to word vomit. I'll probably edit this later.