Logs:Make the Season Bright

Make the Season Bright
Dramatis Personae Jax, Spencer
In Absentia	2020-12-20 holiday spirit
Location <XAV> Back Patio, <NYC> BoM Safehouse, <NYC> Chimaera Arts, <NYC> Black House
The weather has not been able to commit, frigid one day and mild the next, but even if the balmy Sunday afternoon does not feel like midwinter is coming on Jax is, evidently, determined to leave no doubt about this. The fir that lights up the back patio is a tall and healthy one, still rooted in the adjacent garden. In between the very carefully laid strands of white lights, Jax's own handiwork is a careful confectionary of silver and gold and splashes of red, a wealth of lovingly wrought hand-blown glass ornaments, some of which may even survive the season to grace the tree next year. In and among his meticulously planned ornamentation there is plenty of evidence that there has not, for all the planning, been any kind of tree dictatorship -- much more clumsily wrought glass baubles knocking up against handmade clay or wood ones bumping up against trinkets here and there that tell strongly that someone has brought Their Favorites from home -- a glittery logo from a favorite sports team, a hideous grinning monkey in a Santa hat, Oscar the Grouch with a holiday bow on his trash can. Up near the top, Jax -- has no ladder, just a floating near-invisible segment of forcefield that he's been sitting cross-legged on, carefully wire-wrapping the attachment of an opalescent-swirled glass candy cane to one sturdy bough, the glass ornament set just so in order to catch the light from a bulb right behind it. He's slow to move again after checking his handiwork, slow to reach down into the carefully padded box beside him that had held glass ornaments and find it -- empty. A very small frown as he looks down, gauging the distance between his high perch and the rest of the boxes of ornaments still on the ground. In contrast to his father's slow, steady, and meticulous decorating, Spencer has been a frenetic blur of Helpful Teenager, though significantly less frenetic and less blurry than either his usual or preferred state. For all his fast-moving impatience, though, he has been fussing over the placement of one small and somewhat orblike plush of a northern flicker. He blinks back several steps to squint at the ornament, finally satisfied, and catches Jax looking down from on high. An instant later he's back by the ornaments at the base of the tree, and. Cradling a box of fanciful glass bulbs carefully in both hands, vanishes -- -- and reappears up on the shimmering translucent platform, swapping it for the one Jax recently emptied. And then he's off again. --- The safehouse is in a holiday transitional period of sorts. Most of the Hanukkah decorations have been replaced with Christmas ones, but -- not quite all of them. So there are green garlands with red bows alongside strings of blue and white lights. The menorah is still out on the mantlepiece even while the (old) (artificial) (surprisingly sturdy) Christmas tree has gone up in the corner. No one seems particularly fussed about any of this; probably the Kwanzaa paraphernalia will be sprouting up while the Christmas decorations linger, too. The furniture in the living room has been shuffled aside as much as is practical to facilitate Operation Wrap Speed (someone has been trying a little too hard to make that name stick). There are many rolls of wrapping paper lined up against one wall, with a preponderance of colorful, glittery, and metallic motifs, though there are a couple of simple, elegant designs, as well. Spence is actually taking his time with this task, and steadily turning out neat packages for their own community Santa(s) to deliver. The gift in front of him, however, has been the work of several minutes without success. It is a somewhat irregular open prism of a cardboard box containing a Baby Yoda doll, and no matter which way he turns it the paper just won't seem to lie right. He darts a surreptitious glance at the other stack of wrapped toys, as if for hints or inspiration. Nearby, Jax is just finishing up tucking a neat bow onto the end of a long cylindrical present wrapped in white with glittering silver snowflakes. He sets this neatly into the pile, picking out a new roll of paper and a brightly colored remote control bird and carrying this box over to settle down nearer Spence. His teeth wiggle at his lip, and he looks down at the holly-dotted roll in his hand. Looks over at the baby Yoda. Looks at their very-neat stack of carefully decorated presents. One finger touches to his lips in brief thought and he gets back to his feet, returning a moment later with a crooked grin and a large reindeer-decorated bag together with several sheafs of colourful tissue paper. His smile brightens triumphantly as he presents this solution to Spence. --- If Chimaera ever was decorated for One Single Holiday it's been hard to tell among its usual chaotic jumble of half-finished projects and ever-changing graffiti. There's an abstract metal sculpture over in one corner that might, if you squint, look something like a tree. Various detritus from the workshops teachers have been running through the holidays -- warped lopsided clay dreidels, lumpy off-color glassblown ornaments, knotted-up yarn projects of questionable intent -- are collecting into some kind of odd and growing New Year Golem in the courtyard. In the kitchen Jax is boxing up a feast of cookies and biscuits, brownies, fresh bread; it's on the tail end of a much longer stint of cooking that is still waiting to get carefully packaged. The boxes of presents on their own dolly nearby are all neatly labeled for the underground denizens they're meant for. Somewhere in the middle of transferring a large pot of squash soup into tupperwares he's kind of flagging, slumped against the counter and wiping a hand against his forehead. Spence's initial burst of assistance with the food prep has long since petered out, and at some point along the way he'd ended up napping on the couch. He's rousing himself now, though, struggling out from under the soft but unwieldy t-shirt quilt and draping it over the back of the couch. And then he's gone -- -- no, just back in the kitchen, blinking his eyes blearily as he orients himself. It's on slow, heavy, physical steps that he goes to his father. Thumps his head sideways against Jax's shoulder. Then takes up the pot himself -- careful with its unwieldy bulk even if it is not so terribly heavy now -- tipping it aside so that the remaining soup can be more easily ladled out into the sewer-bound containers. --- Black House has been livelier with Ryan returned from his tour, but perhaps not as appreciably as some might expect. There is light visible through the curtains of the master bedroom window, but the rest of the house is dark in the greater darkness of the second-to-longest night of the year. Spencer had weathered much of the trip quiescent -- by choice and not necessity -- but couldn't wait for his father to unlock the door. He'd blipped on ahead and by the time Jax gets inside the water in the bathroom is running. The boy is several shades paler when he emerges than he had been outside, his legs wobbly beneath him, one hand braced against the wall for balance. Jax is at least upright, more or less, slumped against the wall just inside the door where he's removed both boots. The petting Obie is getting is extremely haphazard, one arm dropped low and his other hand slowly rubbing at his temple. He only moves when the water stops running, dragging himself away from the wall to trudge further in and start some ginger tea. Without any lights turned on in his own kitchen, the only illumination provided from a nearby apartment's flickering Christmas display serves to cast an eerie fickle light across his sluggish proceedings.