They sat around the room, as the tree pricked through their senses, the smell, the vision, the joy they had received by just gazing at it, and they had decorated it with candy canes. Many different colors, blue raspberry candy canes, chocolate candy canes, cinnamon candy canes, they had hung around the tree like bloodied hooks, and Sonic had delicately hung one on his hand, taunting his friend with it, pretending that he was an Old Man Winter. An arthritic Santa Claus.
Shadow could usher a laugh, as he clamped onto a cigarette, the red embers dying away as he blew a cloud of smoke over the tree, ashes falling on the bare floor, ashtray absent.
Sonic had taken the candy cane, unwrapped the plastic casing, and suckled it, the reds beginning to become white. Christ's blood becoming his own.
"They taught me a long time ago that some humans believe the candy canes are the blood of this guy named Christ (but yet you're not allowed to say his name when you're angry, isn't that strange?). And they turn white when you eat it. I guess it's his wine or somethin'. Or whatever Pickle had taught me. And Christmas is an entirely Pagan holiday. Yet they don't like Halloween. Pagan too."
Maria had taught him these things a long time ago. A single god. With split personalities, like an egg yolk waiting to bleed and crack. The blood of all the gods that were inside one.
They celebrated Christmas too, and the sight of the tree had just made him miss her more. He cried often, thinking of her.
He dipped the cigarette in the ashtray, embers dying away. That was a long time ago. It had to pass.
Sonic broke off the candy cane he was sucking, chewing on it. He thought he was breaking the soul of Christ in many pieces, devouring it.
Yet as time went on, every Christmas, he was breaking apart. His soul was white and pale and fragile.
Shadow, can you put the star on top?
The hook of the cane was poking through his mouth like a fine holiday cigar, and he gave him a plastic angel, the star and and halo adorned with LED lights.
Shadow, you're family here…
He laughed, as he gave him a candy cane too, and told him to chew on that instead of a cigarette.
Let's open presents, Shadow…
He held his hand, as the blood of the god they barely knew began to dissolve on their tongues.
Do you see it? It's my heart. Keep it safe, Shadow.
He had stood close to him, the smile emanating, his kisses so sweet to his skin…
The blood of his past friend, it had slept safely in his own, the cane a pale white, absolved of all his miseries.
He stuck it in the blue hedgehog's mouth, opening presents, and he chewed it on, mulling it over with his own sweet, red and white thoughts. Passion and innocence.
Shadow placed the angel on top of the tree, glowing so bright that he had to shield his eyes.