AN~ Sabrina's religious affiliation has nothing to do with mine. Just in case you thought it might.
Naya Lopez: Thanks very much! :D
ANannyMouse: Filler means I needed to get a move on to another part of the story, respite means I need a break from action scenes. :) Thanks 'bout the mom-time thing. Wait wait wait, SABRINA takes pranks well? She tried to beat Puck to a pulp after he stuck a spider on her bed! I like Bella, personally. She's girlier than Sabrina, but when she has to, she can kick butt.
squrriel: Of course Farrah's backstory isn't true! I completely made it up 'cause it sounded legit, and neither MB or whoever wrote Pinocchio ever gave us a history of the blue fairy. She's just... there. Thanks, though!
"So what do you want to do today?" Daphne asked, leaning over the side of the couch, arms trailing onto the rug.
"Homework." Sabrina said. She was sitting on the floor, with a pencil in between her teeth as she looked at a sheet of math work.
"That's a lie." Bella said, flipping channels on the TV. "You do not want to do homework."
"All right, I don't." Sabrina admitted. "But I don't want it hanging over my head on Christmas, either. And since Christmas is tomorrow..."
"This would go a lot faster if you asked Puck for help." Daphne said in a sing-song voice.
"No." Sabrina said. "I still haven't forgiven him."
"So you're punishing yourself?" Bella raised her eyebrows, still looking at the TV. "Hey! Charlie Brown Christmas is on!"
Daphne sat up quickly. "Cool! Red! Come here!"
"I'm not punishing myself." Sabrina said defensively. "I'm perfectly capable of doing my own math homework. I'm not stupid."
"No, but Puck's better." Red said, walking in and sitting down next to Daphne on the couch.
Sabrina sighed, then gathered her stuff and walked upstairs. She wouldn't be able to concentrate in the living room.
Unfortunately, on the way up, she bumped into Puck. Literally.
"Sorry." Puck said. "'Course, if you weren't such a bumbling oaf, this wouldn't have happened."
Sabrina stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm an oaf? You're like, two feet taller than I am!"
"Yeah, well..." Puck said, fumbling for a comeback. "Umm... at least I'm not... butt-ugly."
Sabrina's face grew hot. She couldn't help it. No matter how many times she promised herself Puck's opinion didn't matter to her, it did, and she'd gotten out of the habit of dealing with his insults. It hurt when he called her ugly. She glared at him and stalked to her bedroom.
"What, no comeback?" Puck asked, following her, wide-eyed.
Sabrina simply slammed the door behind him and dropped her homework on the bed.
Puck knocked on the door. Sabrina ignored it, opening her math book and sitting down on the bed. He knocked again. She pulled her pencil out from behind her ear. Puck was still knocking. Sabrina tried to concentrate for a minute, but the knocking was digging its way into her brain. She sighed, walked over to the door, and opened it.
"What?" She asked, leaning on the door, her hand almost at the top of it- she wasn't tall enough to reach the top of the door, even with her arm stretched all the way up.
"What's up with you?" Puck asked. "I get that you're still mad at me, but no comeback?"
"I've decided that the best thing to do with you is ignore you and hope you go away." Sabrina said. "Now will you? I have homework to do. Come to that, so do you."
"I did all the fun stuff." Puck said. "I was kind of hoping you'd help with the other stuff."
Sabrina rolled her eyes. "After you just called me butt-ugly? What kind of person do you think I am?"
Puck shrugged. "Well, it worked in that movie Daphne showed me... some musical on the computer or something... The chick with the big hair was called ugly all the time and she still did people's homework."
Sabrina rolled her eyes. "I'm not a nerd, Puck, and I have my pride. Go away and let me do my math."
Puck's eyes perked up. "Math?" He asked.
Sabrina rolled her eyes. "Yes, math. Go away, for the last time."
"But-" Puck said, and he gave her a puppy face.
Sabrina scrunched up her nose at him. "Really?" She asked, still leaning on the doorframe. "Really? You're no good at that, by the way. Stop pouting at me."
"Let me do your math homework, then." Puck said.
Sabrina rolled her eyes. "That's just not normal." She said. "Nobody should like doing homework, least of all math."
"But if I help you with homework, you'll have to help me." Puck pointed out.
Sabrina raised her eyebrows. "This is supposed to convince me how?" She asked, but she walked back to her bed anyway, leaving the door open.
Puck, correctly interpreting that as an invitation, followed her and also sat down on her bed. "You're only that far?" He asked, looking at her worksheet in surprise. "But this stuff is easy!"
"Well, I've been getting a lot of distractions." Sabrina snapped.
But she let him help anyway, and after that, she helped him back, of course. She told him that it was because she felt obligated, and not that she'd forgiven him, but it was maybe a little of both. The beginnings of forgiveness, at least.
By dinnertime, Sabrina was almost a quarter of the way through her makeup work for school. She didn't have a due date for most of it- the teachers understood, and told her to get it done when she could- but she didn't want it hanging over her head forever, and she didn't want to be behind, either. She'd promised Granny she wouldn't do anything work related on Christmas, so she wanted to get as much as possible done the night before.
"Dinner time!" Henry called up the stairs.
Sabrina closed her book and rolled off her bed, followed shortly afterwards by Puck, joining the rest of the family in the dining room.
It wasn't often that the whole family ate together anymore, they were just too big. Usually Uncle Jake, Briar, and Red would eat in the Chicken House, and the others would eat inside. Granny had adjusted her chore list accordingly, and it worked out well, but when the three visited, it was still entirely too crowded.
Sabrina squeezed in between Bella and her dad, wondering how exactly this would work out if they ever found the baby. There just wasn't any more room at the table!
"How are we supposed to have guests?" Daphne asked, voicing a similar thought. "We'll all spunkate!"
"Spunkate?" Veronica asked, as Daphne obviously wanted someone to.
"My new word." Daphne said. "It means get squeezed to death. Like when someone gives you a really tight hug and it's way too long and you feel like you can't breathe."
"Ah." Uncle Jake said with a smile. "Well, never fear, peanut! I have a solution!" He went to pull something out of one of his pockets with a flourish, but he couldn't find it, so he said, "It's in here someplace. I'll find it later. Anyway, it's this powder that makes the inside of things smaller than the outside. I got it off the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe."
Sabrina and several other people at the table snickered at Uncle Jake, but Henry frowned. "Isn't that dangerous?" He asked.
"Not as long as we keep the windows closed." Uncle Jake said. "And probably the door, too, actually. As long as the inside stays the inside, we should be good. But if it becomes the outside either we'll get squished or the outside will get huge. Which means the whole universe. Which means the sun would probably be too far away from the planet for us to get its light, which means, yeah. It's a bit dangerous, I guess."
Puck would have been rolling on the floor with laughter by this point, if there had been room, so he settled for banging his fist on the table- which, being so crowded, meant that he shook several drinks, four plates, and a platter full of chicken. Most other people were laughing, too, but Sabrina had sobered up. She hoped Uncle jake never had to use that stuff. It did sound dangerous. Her dad was right.
"All right, all right, settle down." Granny said loudly. "It's Christmas eve, and I'd like to have a nice, peaceful meal with the family, if you please."
Sabrina snorted. "With this family?" She asked Granny. "It's a nice dream, but I doubt it'll happen."
"Aunt Veronica and Bella have been taking bets on how long it takes the meal to get dis-disrupted, and who does it first." Red said, her voice a bit louder than usual, which meant the entire table could hear her.
"Well, let's hope they're both wrong, and start eating." Granny said firmly, effectively ending that conversation.
For several minutes, the majority of the conversation at the table consisted of 'pass the something or other' and 'this is good' or, in Sabrina's case, 'hey, Granny, this is normal colored!'
After everyone had enough food in their stomachs to slow down enough to talk between bites, Granny said, "Well, I thought we might go down to Friar Tuck's church this evening. He's having a candlelight service, and he's expressly invited us."
Sabrina's brow furrowed. They'd never done that before. She could count on her hands the times she'd been in a church, and her family wasn't particularly religious. She guessed it had something to do with the everafter thing- they didn't really mix too well. So what was up with this?
"Since when do we go to church?" Uncle Jake asked, swallowing a bit of food.
Sabrina blinked. That was the second time that night someone else had voiced her thoughts. Either she was getting another superpower, or she was just unoriginal.
"We don't, very often." Granny said. "But Friar Tuck did send an invitation, and I thought, why not? I always liked candlelight services when I was a girl. It was almost magical, all the people singing the same songs, with the candels..."
"Why not?" Veronica asked. "It should be fun."
Sabrina shrugged. "Sure. It'll be almost like we're normal."
Daphne grinned. "I'm game."
Bella shrugged, too. "It'll be a new experience."
The rest of the family agreed, too, and after a dinner that was only mildly catastrophic, the family all piled into their two cars and headed down to Friar Tuck's church. Sabrina noticed just how quiet it was- even the everafters seemed to be in the Christmas spirit. They had put up lights of sorts on their houses, and though they were much more magical and less store bought, they were beautiful. The Snow Queen had actual glowing icicles on her house, and Sacred Grounds had lights that spelled out different cliche Christmasy messages in red and green dancing across the front of the building, and that was just two of the examples.
They arrived at the church, and, surprisingly, had trouble finding a parking spot. It wasn't that big a lot, granted, but it wasn't tiny, either, and not a lot of the everafters had cars. But they did park eventually, and trekked in through the frigid darkness.
"Welcome, welcome." Friar Tuck smiled at them as they walked in, handing each of them a candle. "We're almost ready to start. I'm so glad you could make it. This is the biggest crowd I've had since the humans got run out. Find a seat!"
They squeezed into a pew towards the back, one of the only empty rows left, but they didn't all fit, so Sabrina, Puck, and Daphne had to find other places to fit. Daphne fit in with Snow, Charming, and the reunited seven dwarves, but Sabrina and Puck were still seatless. They finally found space with Goldilocks and the three bears, but Sabrina wasn't even really upset about being squeezed between a less-than-clean Puck and a musty Poppa Bear.
Friar Tuck began speaking soon after they sat, and Sabrina listened to the service, surprising herself with her fascination. She'd heard the story before, in movies, but it seemed more real, now. She leaned forward in her seat, resting her chin in her hands, a small smile on her face.
Puck, noticing that, grinned to himself, getting over his surprise. He'd never seen Sabrina look that... content, before.
Finally, it was time to light the candles, and the flame passed from person to person as the church lights went out. Everyone was singing a carol. Sabrina didn't know the words, and she didn't want to ruin the beauty by trying to sing along, so she just stood there, holding her candle and listening. She didn't think she'd ever experienced something so beautiful before. She wasn't going to convert or anything, but there was something about this... Granny was right. It was magical.
She stayed peaceful the whole way home, even when Puck and Bella got into an argument in the backseat. She went up to bed in a cloud of sorts, and woke up in the morning strangely happy, even for Christmas. Not excited, exactly, but happy.
"Good morning, lieblings." Granny said as most of them clattered down the stairs. "We're heading up to Fort Charming today, to celebrate. After you open your presents, of course."
Puck wrinkled his nose. "What for?" He asked.
"Well, it's only fair." Granny said. "They came here last year. And we can't exactly fit them all here."
"So when are we going?" Bella asked.
Daphne wasn't paying attention. She was wavering between the kitchen and the living room, torn between breakfast and presents.
"After presents." Granny said. "Let's go eat breakfast before that, shall we?"
Daphne, decision made for her, raced to the kitchen with Puck on her heels. The rest of the family followed more slowly, but they all headed back to the living room once they'd gotten platefuls of food, and spent the entire time they were eating eyeing the presents, even the adults. Then they dug in, and in the frenzy of unwrapping, Sabrina somehow ended up back to back with Puck, covered in scraps of multicolored paper.
"Hey." Puck said, looking at her over his shoulder.
Sabrina didn't answer. She pulled a piece of wrapping paper out of her hair and tossed it over her shoulder at him.
She'd have just moved, but all her presents were in front of her, and everyone else's presents, as well as clumps of wrapping paper, were blocking all exits. The feeling of peace from last night had left her. She sighed, wishing she could go back upstairs. Maybe... maybe she should forgive Puck. Make the morning a bit better.
Except he still deserved the cold shoulder, didn't he? She'd made an agreement with herself, three weeks he'd let her think he'd betrayed her, so she'd punish him for three weeks. Fair was fair.
Except he had had their best interests at heart...
She sighed. Fine. Just for today, she'd be nice. Ignoring him was hard to do and getting a bit boring, anyway. She'd go back to normal angry responses tomorrow.
Once all the presents had been unwrapped and the paper had been cleaned up, Sabrina took all her presents to her bedroom to make sure they weren't commandeered by Puck or Daphne, then went to take a shower. She came downstairs wearing a new sweater that her mom had given her and sat down on the couch to wait for everyone else to be ready to leave.
Puck was already sitting on the couch, and he looked at her, surprised. "You're sitting next to me?" He asked. "Does this mean we're back to normal?"
"No." Sabrina said. "Normal would mean I'd sit on the other side of the room 'cause you smell. But it's Christmas. I'll be nice to you."
Puck snickered. "Thanks. You're such a tactful person."
"It's why you love me." Sabrina said, leaning back against the couch.
"Hey!" Puck snapped. "That's my line!"
"Children." Granny said, coming in. "It's time to go, so please stop arguing."
"Yes, ma'am." Sabrina said, trooping out to the car with the rest of the family.
Sabrina shivered for about three seconds before turning the heat in the car up magically. She'd been tempted to let it heat itself up, but it was just too cold! She sat back once the temperature had climbed to seventy-five, a small smile on her face. The ride up to the fort was a lot more comfortable and less angry because of her heat.
They made it up to Fort Charming with no mishaps, and spent a beautiful day with all the everafters. Sabrina was a bit surprised at how wonderful it was. They were all cold, tired, and beaten down, but everyone was happy. It was kind of wonderful.
When they made it home, Sabrina sat in the living room for a while, simply enjoying the beauty of the lighted tree in the dark room, with the snowy window as a backdrop. She might have had something to do with the snow, but when Daphne had asked, she hadn't told.
When she went up to bed that night, she was utterly happy for the first time in a long time.