Two turned and smiled when he saw Persephone descending the stairs while carrying a half awake One in her arms. She stopped once to tell a maid something, and then continued to walk forward and up to Two. Before placing One down, she softly kissed his forehead.
"So, did you finally get up?" Two asked One.
One only gave Two a hard stare before yawning.
"Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed."
One sighed at his brother's words before turning his attention to what was happening around him.
"What's all of this stuff?" One pointed at the boxes.
"It's for decorating the chateau for Christmas!"
"What's Christmas?" One, again, yawned.
"It's something you celebrate. See?" Two reached down into a box near him and dragged out the shiny gold tinsel. "Mummy's going to 'splain it all to us in a few minutes."
One reached out to feel of the tinsel. "What is this?"
"It's tinsel." Two replied. "You put it on trees."
One gave Two a weird look before slowly taking the shiny strands in his hands, thinking that Two was the one who woke up on the wrong side of the bed instead of him.
"You're crazy." One replied.
"No I'm not." Two scowled. "Mummy told me all about it. She says that all of us are going to help decorate."
"Even Daddy?"
Two shrugged his small shoulders. "Yeah, I guess. He's got to be in on it or Mummy wouldn't be doing it."
One peered around at all the boxes.
"How do you decorate for," One paused a moment to remember the name. "Christmas?"
"Like I said before, you put this on trees," Two pointed to the tinsel in One's hands. "And, I dunno what the rest is for yet."
"What do you mean by 'trees'?"
"You put a tree inside your house and decorate it with lights and tinsel and these…"
Two ran and picked up the box of shaped ornaments he had been admiring moments before, and handed them to One. One reached and picked up a shiny silver star and let it twirl in the air before placing it back.
"And the point is?"
Two shrugged his shoulders. "It's just one of the Christmas traditions."
"What's the rest of this stuff?"
"Dunno. Mummy hasn't 'splained the rest yet."
"Well, let's go find out." Said One, before placing the box of ornaments down on the floor.
Like two energetic curious puppies, the Twins ran to each box and began to rummage through them, opening the ones that were closed. It was a wonderful play thing for the both of them and their curiosity was on overload. Two picked up one of the small boxes on the floor and held it upside down, spilling the contents all over the Great Hall floor. Fortunately, it was filled with a dozen plastic balls so nothing was broken. But the clattering noise alerted Persephone, who was on the other side of the room. She turned and looked in the Twins' direction while putting her hands on her hips and giving Two a sharp look. The young twin grinned sheepishly and bent down to pick up all of the many colored balls to place back in the box. One picked up a shiny blue ball that had rolled next to his foot and handed it to his brother, all the time keeping his eyes on Perse.
"Watch it next time." One whispered.
"How was I to know it was going to spill out?" Two closed the box and placed it back on the floor where it had been.
"Don't be stupid. You don't have to be a genius to know that once you turn a box upside down, everything inside is naturally going to come out."
"But I thought it was taped up like some of these others. I was just going to shake it to see if it would rattle."
Without another word, Two turned to another box while One took hold of a box setting in front of him and opened it. It was full of shiny tinsel garlands, all of which were of many different colors from silver and gold to red and blue. The tinsel looked similar to the long tinsel One held in his hands except it was shorter and was strung together in a long piece. Out of curiosity, One reached down into the box and grabbed hold of a green one and pulled it up. After looking it over, One dropped it quickly and screamed.
"Snake!" he shouted before jumping back.
Two jumped back too, not really realizing what he was jumping back for.
"What's wrong with you?" Two asked.
"Snake! I picked up a snake!" One scrambled to get as far away from the box as he could.
"Where!" Two still didn't understand what was going on.
One pointed toward the box. "In there!"
"What happened?" came another voice. Both Twins turned to see Persephone over them, who had rushed to the Twins the moment she heard One's scream.
"There's a snake in there." Two pointed to the box. "One picked it up."
"Yeah, it's long and green and icky." One hid behind Two. "And it hissed at me."
"There's no snake in there." Perse walked over to the box of garlands and picked up a blue one. "See? It's not a snake. It's only a tinsel garland."
The Twins watched as Perse shook the lifeless limp decoration. The light from the chandelier above made it twinkle and glisten. One hid behind Two even more at seeing it.
"One, it's not going to hurt you." Perse chuckled. She proceeded in dragging the garland out of the box and held the whole thing in her hands. "See? It's not a snake. It's not even alive. It's a garland that you wrap around a tree or down a banister."
One slowly stepped out from behind his brother and timidly walked up to Perse. Reaching out his hand, he ran his fingers down the fuzzy garland to assure himself that it wasn't a snake. He smiled and rubbed his cheek with the shiny tinsel that he held in his hand.
"Come on, you two, I'm going to explain Christmas to you while we put up the tree." Persephone laughed at the Twins' curiosity.
Picking up a box of ornaments and a book, and placing them under her arm, Perse took both twins by the hand and led them through a door and into the living room. A few minutes afterwards, two of the maidservants came in while carrying a huge long box that had several branches of a fake Christmas tree sticking out of the top. They roughly set it down on the floor where Perse had instructed and left the room.
"I think we'll put it here, by the fireplace." Persephone pointed to a corner that was on the left.
A warm fire blazed in the fireplace, making for a wonderful Christmas setting once the tree was erected and decorated.
"What do you think?"
The Twins glanced at the boxed tree and then at the empty corner before smiling.
"Sounds ok to us." they both replied in unison.
Persephone walked over to the box and opened it. The Twins hurriedly ran over to watch her, for they didn't want to miss a minute of everything that was going on.
"A tree in a box?" the Twins exclaimed.
"When you said tree I thought you meant a real one." Two looked up at Perse.
"Some people do use live trees, Two, but we're going to use a fake one."
"And you hang the ornaments and tinsel on it?" One asked.
"Yes." Perse chuckled. "See?"
Persephone picked up the book she had been carrying and opened it up to reveal a beautiful colored picture of a decorated Christmas tree. It was trimmed from top to bottom with brightly colored balls and ornaments of various shapes and sizes, and strings of lights and tinsel. On top was a golden star that shimmered and sparkled. It was also decorated with holly and bows, baubles, and candy canes. Elaborately wrapped packages adorned the base of the tree, as did a curled up sleeping cat.
The Twins' eyes grew big at the sight of the beautiful object in the photo and reached to take the book from Perse's hands for a closer look.
"Do you mean that we can decorate our tree to look like this?" asked One.
"Sure! If you'd like."
"Does a star normally go on top?" Two pointed at the top of the tree as he spoke.
"Yes. Although you can have an angel or a bow or some other kind of topper, if you don't like the star."
"We like the star." The Twins said together.
While the Twins studied the tree in the photo, Persephone began to assemble their tree over in the corner. Piece by piece she snapped it into place and spread the branches out to where they looked just right. It appeared rather skimpy at first, but as the branches were spread it began to take shape and was soon full and bushy. Perse stepped back to admire it and to see if there were anymore branches that needed to be bent in the right shape.
"How's this look, boys?" Perse called to the Twins. The Twins put down the book they had been so intrigued over, got up and walked to Perse's side.
"Wow!" they both exclaimed together upon first seeing the enormous fir. "It looks great."
"We put the ornaments on it now?" One grinned hopefully.
"No, we have to put the lights on first; otherwise you'll knock the ornaments off trying to wrap the lights around."
The Twins sighed in disappointment.
"Don't worry, you'll get to decorate it in a little while. We've got to find the lights and then get the Merovingian to help us."
"You honestly think Daddy is going to help us?"
"He will. If he doesn't, he'll be hearing from me later."
After walking out into the Great Hall again, Perse reached for a box that was labeled 'lights', stripped it of its tape, and opened it.
"Now, what color of lights do you two wish to have on this tree? There are clear white lights and multi-colored lights."
"Colored!" Two shouted in excitement.
"White!" One added.
"No! Colored!"
"White!" One scowled.
"Colored!"
"White"
"Colored!"
"WHITE!"
"Hey! That's quite enough. We'll be decorating more trees throughout the chateau so we'll have white on some and colored on the others. No need to get into a big argument over it."
"Colored on this one!" said Two, before sticking his tongue out at One.
"Colored it is."
Persephone handed several strings of colored lights to each of the twins and told them to take them into the living room while she went to get the Merovingian to help decorate the tree. The Twins did as they were told. Once in the living room, they dumped the lights onto the floor, and then turned to admire the tree. They reached out and touched the branches they could reach and giggled at the feel of it.
"It kinda feels like a toilet brush." Two wrinkled his nose.
"Yeah, it does." One reached out to stroke several of the branches again. "Maybe it's really a bunch of toilet brushes fixed to look like a tree and dyed green."
"So does that mean we're really decorating a giant toilet brush?" Two's eyebrows rose.
"Nah. If it's really a toilet brush, Mummy would have told us."
"Maybe she was too embarrassed. I mean, hanging lights and ornaments on a giant toilet brush to celebrate Christmas isn't something you would want to mention or talk about."
"True." One grabbed a handful of branches and stuck his face into them.
At that moment, Persephone came into the room and smiled when she saw the Twins. Both of them smiled back and continued to rub and pet the tree's branches.
"Mummy, is this really a giant toilet brush shaped to look like a tree?" Two blurted out, much to One's embarrassment.
"What?" Perse stopped and looked puzzled at the child's question, and at the same time tried to keep herself from laughing. Personally, it would be rather disturbing to know that the Twins knew what a toilet brush felt like and it would be curious to know if they washed their hands after and when they did touch it, however this thought apparently didn't cross Perse's mind.
"It feels kinda like a toilet brush so we were wondering if it was really a giant toilet brush."
"No, of course not." Perse chuckled.
"Is Daddy coming?" One said, changing the subject.
"He'll be right in here in a few minutes. While we're waiting, we can help things to go faster by untangling these lights."