It was December 12th, and Akko and her running crew were warm and snug in their dorm room. Lotte made hot chocolate with the help of a will o' wisp that dozed in the all-purpose bucket. The three witches gathered around the bucket and sipped fancy scratch-made hot chocolate while snow piled up on the windowsill.

"Who wants to talk about their dreams first?" Lotte said.

Sucy recoiled as if she'd waved a live wire at her.

"We're talkin' about dreams?" Akko said. "Like, dream-dreams, or great-witch-like-Chariot dreams?"

"Yeah, of course!" Lotte said. "It's the first day of Christmas! Atlach-Nacha's day! So we get nice and cozy and talk about our dreams."

"Who?"

"Atlach-Nacha," Sucy said, "the witch-god of dreams and poison and spiders. Because she's a giant spider who weaves webs across the Dreamlands." She jittered her fingers like a spider scuttling around. "That's witch Sunday school stuff."

"Well, my family's not a witch family, and I guess I didn't read anything about the religious part," Akko said, plucking a marshmallow from her cocoa and resting it on her tongue. "But you have thirteen days of Christmas? And you still call it Christmas?"

"It's a long story," Lotte said.

"Every other suggestion for Witch Christmas sounded stupid," Sucy said. "So it's Christmas so we can get in on Christmas sales and trees and elves and all that." She waited a moment. "The end."

"Huh! That would explain the spider decorations in the cafeteria," Akko said.

"The real fun starts tomorrow," Sucy said. "Attles Day is basically a warm-up. So let's enjoy our drinks and ignore the rest of it because nobody likes talking about dreams."

"I like dreams!" Lotte said.

"Hell yeah!" Akko said. "Just last night I had a really weird dream!"

"Oh, dammit," Sucy said, shrinking into herself.

"I was on the beach," Akko said, "and I was jogging, and I had this really catchy song in my head, and I saw Diana jogging the other way, except she had like this sword across her back? She said 'Watch out, there's a crab!' and there was this crab that was like missing its back half? 'I had a pet hermit crab and it escaped and mom wants me to eat it,' she says. I got this big plastic container and put a lot of sand in it and made like a little moat in the container and tricked the hermit crab into going in there-I mean, it was actually like a lobster but just the front parts, not the tail or legs, now that I think about it-and I tricked the lobbo so it was trapped in there. I show it to Diana, she's like, 'Oh thank goodness, wanna go get some curry? I'm tired of eating canned spiders.' I was all whaaaaaat and you see I found out the other day that, like, canned spiders are a thing people will eat? And I guess it spooked me out enough that I had a dream about it. And what do you know, it's like, Spider Day! So maybe my dream was telling me to be ready about spiders! And maybe hermit crabs! That are the front half of lobsters!"

"Wow," Lotte said, eyes misty.

"What an amazing dream that you probably had," Sucy said, a little too loud. She'd plugged her ears with marshmallows and was toasting more over the napping will o' wisp.

"I don't have dreams a lot," Lotte said, inching closer to the fire, "but when I do they're so detailed and they last for hours or days... I had a dream that went on for months once. Lemme get my viewing globe, actually, I wrote it all down!"

"Yes!" Akko said, pumping her fist as Lotte fetched her magitech computer and fired up a word processor. "Super dream adventure go!"

Sucy closed her eyes and daydreamed about terribly filthy things while gulping down well-toasted marshmallows.