Christmas Interlude -SPOILER-

Christmas Interlude

“Elizabeth,” Cariad called to her daughter, “you’re the last one up!  You know we don’t start opening gifts until everybody is down here, and your siblings are getting impatient.”

“They can deal with it,” she replied mentally to her mother.  If Elizabeth was anything, it wasn’t a morning person.

“Maybe I can get her up,” Bier suggested.  

“And how do you plan on doing that?” Darren asked.  “She’s not a morning person, you know.  If you touch her she’ll just punch you.”

Bier’s eyes sparkled, flitting around the room and landing on Peridot.  “Peridot, will you tell them what you told me?  You know, about the humans on that other magic-less planet called earth?”

She knew exactly which story he wanted to be told.  She smiled, “yes, of course I will.  You go get Elizabeth.”

“Thanks Peridot.”  Bier went upstairs.

“Okay,” Peridot said, “as you all know, I am a star.  Well, before I fell to this planet, I saw many things.  Two planets in particular captivated my interest; this one, and a magic-less planet called Earth.”

“How do the people survive without magic,” asked one of the girls, “how do they heal themselves?”

“What this planet has in magic, Earth has in technology,” Peridot responded.  

“Anyway, these two planets caught my interest because both planets had humans.”  She smiled at the stunned faces.  “Now the humans of earth are very similar to the humans here; the only difference is that Earth-humans can’t use magic.  In order to make up for this, the humans there have used technology to do the same things we do with magic.  They have medicines that heal the sick, and machines that keep the nearly dead alive indefinitely.”

Peridot, get to the good part please, Bier mentally requested of her.  He knew that she could talk forever about the magic-less humans.

“But that’s not what I’m going to tell you about,” she said after hearing Bier.  “I’m going to tell you about a custom observed by nearly every human on Earth.”  She paused, confirming with the stars that today was indeed that day most of Earth celebrated.  “Today, on Earth, is a day known as Christmas.  This day holds special meaning for a certain religion, but people everywhere, regardless of religion, celebrate it.  On Christmas morning, children come downstairs and gather around a tree decorated with lights and colorful spheres called ornaments; but it’s what’s under the tree that they come for.  Under the tree are presents, much like ours.”

“Sounds a lot like our Wintersday,” Darren observed.

“It is.  But there is something about Christmas Day that makes men want to get married.”  

Darren had pieced it together by now, but held his tongue.

“This asking a woman to marry is also very special to the humans of Earth.  Here, when a man asks a woman to marry him, he gives her something special.  On Earth, nothing is more special than the gem known as the Diamond; most likely due to its extreme rarity, difficulty to mine, and above all its beauty.  But the Earth-man does not just give her the diamond, he has it put into a ring.  Then, when he is ready to propose, as it is called when a man asks a woman to marry him, he gets down on one knee and slowly opens a small covered box and says four simple words.”  Now she gave them images from her memory of a man asking a woman to marry him.  “He says, ‘Will you marry me?’ and the joy on the woman’s face is very contagious.”

Suddenly there was a loud squeal of happiness coming from upstairs, followed by a thud as Elizabeth tackled Bier.

A very awake Elizabeth followed Bier downstairs, emanating a mental vibe of pure joy and happiness to match the look on her face.