Small flakes of snow flurried down from the sky, settling on the ground for only a moment before turning into a small puddle of water on the hard-stone ground. Next to me I could hear Niska's deep breathing, the cold weather creating an icy mist every time we breathed out. We were dragons being forced into a PE lesson against our will. Despite the snow, or the lack of, we were still being forced to run laps on the field, in shorts. It was a PE teacher's variation of torture and none of us were particularly happy about it. Rather than put any sort of effort into the running, we ran as a pack, trying to shield ourselves from the icy wind that whipped around us in a frenzy.

Every now and then, someone would grumble about being too cold, but no matter how many times we mentioned being cold it didn't stop us from being cold. Not even the running was enough to distract us from the Winter air, it felt as though I was being stabbed by a thousand tiny pins. Honestly, it was the most annoying sensation in the world and I couldn't wait until the hour was up, so I could retreat to the warmth of a classroom and not turn into a human icicle. I have seen pictures of human icicles and they didn't look particularly pretty and I didn't intend on turning into one, not if I could help it anyway.

"Running laps in November should be a crime, I think my legs are frozen," Niska huffed, a cloud of white vapour escaping her lips.

"Agreed," I mumbled. My lips were too cold to move any more than a small amount. This cold was unlike anything I have ever felt, it was like tiny pin pricks all over my body, completely different to the cold I experienced back home.

"If she doesn't hurry up and blow that whistle to call time, I will go over there and do it for her," Alya said, glancing back at Miss Ryan who stood at the top of the field in a warm coat and tracksuit bottoms. I would have loved to watch her run laps around a wet and muddy field in a pair of shorts, it would be the highlight of my school life.

"Please do, if we were doing javelin, I would throw one at her," Niska said.

It's funny how the weirdest set of circumstances can bond a group of people, especially if it's over their mutual hatred of a certain PE teacher. PE was not something I enjoyed, especially running laps. Never had I had to run for so long, in fact, never had I had to do sport for so long. Of course, I did the usual snow stuff with my brother, ice skating, skiing, snowboarding, the usual, but running was a whole other story. Even in snow boots, running across a snowy landscape isn't a very good idea, it's easy to trip and fall face first onto the powder. So, laps weren't exactly my favourite thing in the world. Netball, now that was fun. Great way to get some aggression out with a classic bounce pass.

After half an hour of freezing our snowballs off on the field, Miss Ryan finally called time with a short blow from her whistle. She tried to give us some sort of pep talk about how the cold air was good for our lungs and that we'd thank her for it, but we wouldn't. Instead, we grumbled our way back to the changing room to replace our cold running gear with something much, much warmer. For me, I was able to change out of my shorts (I wasn't allowed to wear leggings) into a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved top, my body warmer and my snowboarding jacket. I was back to the Eskimo look I had started off with when I first walked the halls of Ashbury. I was back to what I knew best, and it was fabulous.

"I remember your first day at Ashbury when you turned up in that exact outfit. You looked like you'd just come out of an igloo," Niska said, laughing. She threw her bag onto her back as we walked to the coach, the two of us still feeling the cold air despite the layers of clothing we both changed into. Not that the uniform was particularly warm, I mean a skirt, thin tights, shirt and tie aren't exactly the warmest clothes in the world, at least not in my estimation.

"At least it's warm, which is better than the flimsy uniform you've got on. I'll take Eskimo over freezing cold any day of the week," I said, shrugging slightly.

"Yeah, but you get to wear your own clothes, we don't. You already have one up on us. If you stay full time you'll have to wear the uniform like the rest of us, and suffer like the rest of us," Alya said from the seat behind us.

"Well, that's one reason to go back home," I said, laughing.

Since the school year was slowly starting to come to an end, people began to wonder whether or not I was going to be sticking around come the new year, but it was a question I still didn't an answer to. Time was quickly starting to slip away, and a decision was necessary, yet I couldn't seem to make my mind up. Although I may not have said it to anyone, not even Granny and Grandpa, my mind was telling me that staying behind might end up being the best solution in the long run, at least for me. Returning home might have pleased Mama, but even with a month to go, I knew it wasn't going to please me. It would be like returning to prison, only the warden was Papa and the gates were the baron nothingness.

Despite that, it was Mama's reaction that kept me from making a permanent decision. I didn't want to leave her behind, feeling as though she had done something wrong. The decision might have been mine to make, but there were so many other factors that came into play and most of them were family related. When I say most of them, I mean all of them. Family was a difficult thing to deal with, especially when your family is a little odd compared to most. That added extra pressure to the entire situation, especially when gender is concerned. I mean, I'm the daughter of Santa Claus! There really isn't much out there for me to look forward to, at least from that angle. That was one piece of a gigantic puzzle, a puzzle where not all the pieces fit together correctly.

Returning to school, we were pleased to know that the boys also had to do PE in the cold, only they embraced and enjoyed it, which was completely different to us. Well, most of them enjoyed it. Joel did not. When Niska and met up with him for English, he was grumbling and groaning and generally being like Rudolph on a Monday. "What happened, exactly?" Niska asked the moment we were allowed to talk.

"We had to play football. Bearin' in mind the ground is so muddy after the rainstorm the other day. I don't like playin' football on the best of days, but today was a nightmare. I'm tellin' you, the guys that treat PE like the Olympics get worse when it's been raining," Joel said.

"That's better than running laps, it doesn't exactly warm you up like haring around a football field for forty-five minutes. I would give anything to do some kind of violent sport that involves bumping into people and knocking them over. Girls PE is always so feminine. I hate it." Ah, yes, Niska and her need to complain about how sexists the school system can be. I would have loved to introduce her to the world of the North Pole and see how she reacted to that messed up ideology.

"Can we stop talking about PE, please? I think I'm going to have nightmares about running in circles," I said, shaking my head and tapping my pen on the notebook in front of me.

"I don't think that's possible, Kenz, but sure. How's the set piece coming along?" Niska said, trying to distract herself from the work we were supposed to be doing in favour of a conversation about anything and everything.

"Grandpa's cut the frame for me so all I need to do is paint it. It'll be done in time for the showcase, I promise."

"That stupid showcase is the worst idea Jason has ever had, and he's had a string of bad ideas in the past. I mean, we've spent weeks complaining about the performances pieces to our parents why would they want to come and see it? It doesn't make any sense."

"Jason doesn't make any sense. He never has."

In our last Drama lesson, Jason had had the genius idea of turning our competition performances into an actual showcase and the chance to perform what we'd been working on to our parents. The ticket prices would go towards the Summer show, something Jason was rather looking forward to working on when the time came to it. Not only had our parents been invited, but most of the teachers had asked to come along, mainly so they could see what was keeping all of us as distracted as we were in our other lessons. He had even roped in the other Drama teachers to help him judge the competition since he didn't think he could do it by himself after watching all the rehearsals. Personally, I didn't mind it since it gave us the opportunity to freak everyone else out as well, but not everyone was pleased.

To be honest, I think most people just wanted it out of the way before they suffered from the boredom. We would have wanted to do anything but work on our performances pieces, but Jason had other ideas, much to our annoyance. We wondered whether the other years were being subjected to the same kind of Christmas related torture as we were, though we doubted it very much. They were just there to have fun, unlike us who were there for a grade so why not get us used to the repetitive nature of a GCSE Drama class? Maybe everyone else should've been subjected to the repetition whilst I got to spend time with the younger years playing games and having fun.

Though that might be a little unfair to everyone else.

"Any chance we can see the set piece? I'm curious," Leo said when I gave him the latest update.

"I'm not bringing into school if that's what you're referring to. It's way too heavy, at least for me since I'm weak."

"You don't have to bring it in, at least not until we need it. Take some photos or something, duh. It's like you've come from a different century or something."

"Rude much?" Niska butted in, shutting Leo up before he had the opportunity to say something he would live to regret. Leo tended to speak quicker than he could think and more often than not it got him in serious trouble with just about everyone, but Niska was the worst. At least when it came to him.

"Forget it, he's just annoyed that Joel and I beat him in the cooking contest the other day, how many is that now, Leo? Three? I thought you were the reigning champion until I showed up," I said, raising an eyebrow and, with my best Papa stare, glaring at him across the room.

"You're cheating. No one has ever won it three times, not even by accident. You paying her off or something?"

"Yes, Leo. Kenzie and I are paying Miss Davies money, so we can beat you every time we have a Bake-Off challenge. Do you know how stupid you sound?"

"Erm, what's going on over there? I've heard you working on your piece, and that doesn't sound anything like it. Don't make me have to give you a detention. In Drama. Even I'm pretty sure that's impossible and I'm the one who gives out the detentions!" Jason said, trying to act like the tough teacher he wasn't. Behind the thin line of his mouth was a smile itching to show.

He just couldn't be serious for the life of him.

"Sorry, Jason," Leo mumbled, though it wasn't loud enough for Jason to actually hear him. No one really knew what was going on with Leo, but I sure as snowballs didn't want to find out.

The rest of the lesson passed without any more problems with Leo, though it was obvious he wanted to say something but didn't want to deal with Niska or Joel. Whatever his problem with me was, it came from our Bake-Off sessions in Food Tech and that was a really lame thing for him to get upset over. I mean, it was a class that after a few years, no one would think anything of. That and they are supposed to be for fun. I might have only known him for a few weeks, but Leo had a short fuse, but you couldn't knock his dedication, even if it did become a pain after a while. The guy was a mystery, but I suppose I still had a lot to learn when it came to the actions of others. People were complicated.

By the time I returned home, I couldn't wait to start painting on the wooden board Grandpa had carved for me to use as our set piece. At the time, it looked bare. A simple piece of flat board with a sketch drawn on it with pencil, so thin it was almost impossible to see, both close up and at a distance. A simple coat of paint and some tinsel stapled to the top and it would have looked identical to my drawing, but that was going to take a lot of work, and time was starting to run out. So, once again I shut myself in Granny's sewing room, pushed all the furniture back against the wall and placed the old dust sheets on top of the fading green carpet. With pots of paint piled high around the room, I set to work finishing the piece as it was supposed to be finished.

I started with the wallpaper that surrounded the fireplace. Rather than paint around the pencil sketches, I coated the 'wall' surrounding the fireplace with a cream coloured paint, using a thinner brush around the fireplace itself. I would pencil sketch the flowers onto the paint once it had dried completely. As the cream paint started to dry, faster then I thought it would, I started on the fireplace itself. Using an old paint mixer, I began to mix a light brown paint with a black in order to create a darker brown for the fireplace. Using a ruler to mark the straight lines, I used a small paintbrush for the outline, using a thicker brush the further into the frame I got. Most of the time, I'd use painters tap to stop the colours bleeding, but I couldn't find any tape in the house, so the ruler was all I had. If it failed, well, it would be a bridge to be crossed later on.

As I finished the last stroke of the frame, a knock at the door startled me and I almost painted right across the board with the brown paint. "Yeah?" I asked, resting the paintbrush over the tin of paint.

"It's me," Granny said, opening the door.

"How may I help you, Granny?" I asked.

"First, what have you done to my sewing room? It's a mess!" Granny said, folding her arms across her chest and looking at me with a cocked eyebrow, her lips pressed into a thin line.

"I needed the floor space. I'll put it all back when I'm finished, I promise," I replied, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. I didn't know how long it was going to take for me to finish the backdrop, but I was going to put her room back when I was done. I mean, when the backdrop was finished. Whenever that may be.

"You better."

"And the second thing?" Granny was known for forgetting things remarkably quickly, especially when there was more than one thing to talk about.

"Your mother is on the Bubble in the kitchen if you want to say hello. I'm sure she'd love to see you, she pretty much said so."

The Bubble was our form of telephone. A way to communicate with people from within the North Pole to those outside of it, since phones don't exactly work in a snow-covered landscape. I had often used it with Mama to talk to Granny and Grandpa, but I hadn't use it since I'd left. It felt weird to use it to communicate with those back home. To see everything from the outside looking in. It was almost like being a stranger. Like looking through a window and watching everything unfold and not be a part of it. It was strange, to say the least, but I couldn't change it.

"Sure, give me two seconds to put the lid on the paint so it doesn't go all weird," I said.

"Okay, I'll let her know you're coming." Granny left the door partial opened and I heard her footsteps echo away the from the door as she walked downstairs.

Moving the paint brush, I placed the lid back on the paint tin, though I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the brush itself seeing as it was covered in paint and, to be honest, I was too lazy to wash it. It wasn't as though I was going to be gone too long anyway so the chances of the brush turning to stone was increasingly unlikely. With the paint tins protected and the paint no longer at risk of turning into goo, a mistake I had made in the past, I escaped my room and threw myself down the stairs. Bad decision seeing as I almost tumbled head first into the kitchen. Skidding into the kitchen, I saw Granny sat at the table talking to Mama through the Bubble.

"Oh! She's here. You know what to do, right?" Granny asked, standing up and allowing me access to the chair she was just sat on.

"Yup, I've used one of these before, remember?" I said.

"Okay, okay. Don't stay on too long, I need to cook dinner."

"I won't." With that, Granny left the kitchen. Knowing her, she had gone to rearrange her study so that everything looked as it had before. She hated when I touched her things, especially when I moved them around and left everything in one big mess which is what I had done.

Pushing my hair out of my eyes, I took Granny's spot on the chair and prepared myself to see Mama for the first time in over a month. I had no idea what was happening back home, so being thrown into that world was going to be one of the craziest moments of my entire life, and most of my life was crazy. I took a breath, and looked into the Bubble, watching as the murky mist cleared and revealed the static image of my mother staring back at me. She looked just as she always had, her long blonde hair pinned up in a bun and the half-moon glasses perched on her nose. It was as if nothing had changed.

"Kenzie! How lovely to see you again! How are you getting on? Are you behaving yourself? Have you made any friends?" Mama said, the barrage of questions continuing until I was forced to silence her myself.

"Woah! Hold up and breathe for a second. I can answer all your questions," I said, laughing.

"Sorry, I got a little carried away," Mama said, looking sheepish. I knew she was excited to see me, but there was a line when it came to that excitement and I was sure she had crossed it.

"For the record, I'm doing fine here, behaviour I suppose it hasn't been too bad, though my Maths teacher has a weird grudge against me. As for friends, well, I'm sure Granny told you about Niska and Joel seeing as they're the only two people I spend any time with outside of school," I said, shrugging my shoulders as though it was no big deal. To me, it wasn't.

"Your Grandmother told me about the Maths teacher, doesn't she think you're a witch or something?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what she thinks, I don't think anyone believes her though. To everyone else, she sounds insane, Alya even asked if she had taken her crazy pills. I dunno, I heard she was just off with new kids, but there isn't anything I can do about her, not yet anyway."

"Weird. So, you're getting on there? Are you liking it?"

Mama asking so many questions felt like an interrogation. I get that she wanted to know every possible thing about my life, but I was sure Granny had told her everything so there was no need for her to hear everything from me. Maybe it was because I wasn't used to having so many questions sent my way. At least not since my first day of Drama where I was interrogated by everyone about my life before I went to a mainstream school.

"It's been good, yeah. It's definitely a new experience, but I've been enjoying it, especially our Drama lessons. Well, for the most part anyway."

"Granny mentioned that you're putting on a showcase for Drama. Nick and I are going to tag along to see you in action, your father wishes he could come but he has work. You know how it gets around December."

"Yeah, I get it. It's fine. He probably wouldn't like it much anyway, not his sort of thing," I said. I didn't mean any of it, but it wasn't as though I could change his mind. We didn't part on good terms, so I didn't expect anything less from him.

"He said he would have liked to come along if he wasn't so busy. Seriously Kenzie," Mama said, trying to reassure me.

"Don't worry about it, honestly. How's everything there? With Nick?" I asked. I never normally cared about what was going on with my annoying little brother, but I needed something to turn the topic of conversation away from Papa and towards someone else.

"Nick's, well, Nick. He's been spending a lot of time with your father, but I think he's starting to calm down a little, thank the elves."

"That's good, I'd hate to see him at the showcase and have him bouncing off the walls, ruining my reputation. I've gotta protect myself and I can't have him ruining it."

"Don't worry, I'll talk to him, so he knows not to misbehave. He'll be so angelic we could put him on top of a tree," Mama said, laughing.

"That would be a sight."

"Yeah.... I would.... See that." As Mama tried to speak, the Bubble jolted and waved, cutting out as she tried to get her sentence out.

Seeing as the Bubble ran predominately on Magical energy, it was weird for it to cut out like it did, especially when someone was in the middle of speaking. It was like a mobile phone when there was a bad signal, cutting out and having difficulties connecting. It was rare, but it happened, though it usually meant something was interfering with the Magical signal. Blocking it from connecting to the other Bubble. Magical interference was a strange occurrence and an annoying one.

"I think something's interfering with our signal, you're cutting out!" I said, though whether or not she heard me was a different story.

"What... Y-"

The Bubble cut out. Just like that the conversation ended abruptly, and it was an end I didn't see coming and I'm more than certain Mama saw coming if she was having the same problems I was. It was weird, seeing something I was so used to working perfectly suddenly cutting out as though someone pulled out the plug and the power had just been turned off. Despite all the times I had used the Bubble in the past, it had cut out at me like that. I have to admit, it had me a little worried, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. Once again, it was a wait and hope situation. It seemed I was running into a few of those.

~~~

A/N - And we are back with the last chapter until Christmas! I'm so excited you have no idea!! I know this isn't exactly a very Christmassy chapter, but we'll get to the festivities soon enough, you just have to wait and see. 

In other news, Last Christmas was added to the Wattfest profile! You can find it in their Christmas reading list and I cannot tell you how excited I am that it finally happened!

To the chapter! What do you guys think is up with Leo? And the Bubble cutting out? That's such a strange occurrence, don't ya think?

Dedication - This chapter is dedicated to tifftheawesome because there is a FANTASTIC book on their account called Revealing Lennon and it is AMAZING!!! Go read it!

First Published - Decemeber 22nd, 2017