This one date from 2016, and feature my beloved AU characters.
For a few days, the whole village had been boiling with activity, the human residents apparently taking particular care in adorning every house's facade with garlands made of pine branches, and stacking heaps of cookies in great bowls next to nuts and apples and other stuff.
The tall wraith observed, circumspect, the piles of packages of every form and colour, that Rosanna and Milena hilled up on each side of the fireplace.
"Why are you so obsessed with presents?", asked Markus, for whom it was the first real winter festivities, the last ones being those he spent either being captive on Atlantis, or tracked down by his own kind as a traitor.
"Because presents are awesome!", replied Tom, Milena's adoptive son who, since his sixteenth birthday, begun feeding upon vital energy, without losing any of his interest in human food.
"A present is enjoyable, indeed, but still! Birthdays, that... Christmas thing, a new year, the pettiest of nascencies, an absence too long endured... Everything seems an excuse to give away gifts!", the wraith renegade grunted.
"And if, instead of grumbling, you could hang this pine cone chaplet from the ceiling? For once that your giant's height could be of some use!", interrupted Rosanna, the Earthling artist which was his companion since their first meeting, years ago.
With a cantankerous grunt, he took the chaplet from her hands, hanging it easily from the beams sustaining the ceiling.
"Can I at least argue about the relevance of all of those vegetal trinkets dangling around inside?", rapped he out while hanging a second set of decorations.
"No Markus, you can't, it's tradition!", returned Milena, both arms loaded with half a dozen more packages.
"Well... I don't want to be the party-crusher here, but if I still can count, with the four of us, plus Jin'shi, Selk'ym and Drysse, it should be seven... Yet I figure no less than about forty presents. Didn't you two get a bit carried away?", Tom meddled.
"No. Each of us made one gift per person. The blue ones here, for instance, are for father Killips and his twelve children, and the big, heavy one over there is a Lanthian transformer which Leonard should quite fancy", Rosanna explained.
"And what's that?", asked the teenager, designating a flashy golden box.
"Bath salts, for Delleb", replied the artist while carefully arranging a branches-and-candles composition on the mantelpiece.
"You're offering a wraith queen bath salts?!", sniggered Milena.
"Yeah, she's always complaining on how she misses her royal bathing. I can't give her worshippers to polish her claws, but bath salts I sure can.
"And... which one is mine?", pragmatically asked Tom.
"I gathered'em right here, but don't you dare touch'em before tonight!", Milena warned him.
With a frustrated hiss, the young wraith got out of the house to sulk, while his senior ogled the piles without the slightest hint of discretion.
"Yours are on that side, Markus!", Rosanna ribbed, perfectly understanding what he was about.
The wraith kneeled besides the packages to check them better.
"There's eight of them? Who would give me presents, except you?", he asked, puzzled.
"You cave bear! You are not alone anymore, you have friends and people who care about you now!"
"But I have nothing to offer back to them!"
"You still have all your afternoon to find out...", she replied quietly while trying to find the best spot for the little bunch of mistletoe she went especially in the woods to find.