Fifth Link

[colorbymemory]

Characters: Namine and all visitors to the tea shop
Content: Christmas at the tea shop--Namine has decorated and made cookies.
Location: Traverse Town, Fourth District, Tea shop
Time of Day: Any time during the shop’s opening hours on Christmas Day.
Warnings: High potential for fluff and adorbs?

In the aftermath of the fight with the giant Nightmare, Namine stayed close to home. Given all that had happened, remaining quietly there for a while seemed best. It wasn’t a hardship, either, with so much to do to prepare for Christmas.

First, the shop needed to be decorated. While she wasn’t an expert in Christmas decorations or decorating in general, she managed to make plenty of paper snowflakes to hang from the ceiling, and small snow people to set on the tables. She’d used stencils to help make all the letters for “Merry Christmas” out of colored paper and tape them to the wall behind the counter so they spelled out the greeting properly. While she hadn’t made the small Christmas tree in the corner (and the one upstairs in the apartment), she had made all the ornaments. Finally, she’d taken a can of a white spray to the edges of the windows. It was supposed to give the effect of frost or snow, but she wasn’t quite convinced. Oh, well. One made do with what one had.

Then there were Christmas presents. She’d settled for making cookies for everyone instead of buying things; she wasn’t quite sure of what the others would like as gifts. So she got out the cookie cutters and made sugar cookies in the shapes of trees, Santas, angels, and stars. Once that was done, she made gingerbread men, enough for everyone to have one. Once they were packaged up, instead of writing names on the tags, she drew a picture of the recipient.

Fortunately, she had everything done by Christmas Day when she helped open the shop, presents stacked behind the counter. If some of the others didn’t stop by, she’d have to work out another delivery method.

[OOC: All characters are welcome to come get their Christmas cookies from Namine. Feel free to treat this party style--drop in on conversations/start a new one with someone who’s already arrived.]

Comments

[dork_of_keys]

Sora had stopped by the tea shop expressly because he was running visiting everyone for Christmas and it occurred to him that a few people might be hanging around the tea shop or show up there at some point. He had gifts for anyone whose likes and dislikes he knew and little pouches of munny with cards for everyone else (yay for magically deep pockets). Of course, he'd scrambled a little on last minute gifts for new arrivals, especially when Kairi had showed up. Most of these had also ended up being a nice little card and munny.

He could also agree to the need to just spend some time recovering after that battle not just for the battle itself, which would have been exhausting normally, but also for the magical explosion that ended it. Thankfully, everyone had gotten through it in one piece, if a little battered.

As much as he kind of wanted to ask Riku what he knew, if anything, about the odd form the Nightmare had taken, Sora figured now wasn't a good time. It was Christmas and no one really wanted to think of that battle at the moment. Personally, Sora just wanted to give everyone the gifts he'd gotten them and hang out for a while.

He wasn't sure if he should be surprised or not that the place was decked out for the holiday. Maybe it didn't matter though. It was nice that it was. Now where was...

"Namine?"

[colorbymemory]

Visiting everyone for Christmas and making sure he had some kind of gift was very like Sora. He never seemed to want anybody to feel left out, or unwelcome. It looked like in this case he and Namine had similar ideas regarding the likelihood of running into most everyone at the tea shop. Having some company while she waited for people to stop by would be welcome.

Considering Namine was normally a noncombatant, it had been draining in more ways than one. Though listening to the lectures she'd received for giving into a moment of reckless worry had been uncomfortable, everyone had a point and she did need to be more careful. She was just glad that everyone had made it out of there in one piece.

They could discuss that later, though. Today was Christmas, and it was supposed to be a happy occasion. Just enjoying everyone's company and giving gifts was a good goal to have.

When Sora arrived, Namine waved to him from the counter. "I'm here, Sora. Merry Christmas!"

[dork_of_keys]

Considering that the tea shop could count just about everyone among its patrons, it just seemed to make sense. It was certainly the easiest way to go about it and Sora really didn't feel like over complicating things at the moment.

He hadn't lectured her yet and he wasn't sure if he was going to or not. He assumed she realized by now how crazy it had been to run into that situation like that. While she probably had the potential to be a powerful magic user, she had to, you know, learn some spells first. And even with a magic specialty, weapon skills were still helpful since sometimes spell casting just wasn't good for the situation.

But, lecturing only went so far. The best thing would be to help her learn the useful skills and today was not the day for that. Today was a day for enjoying the company of friends and gift giving and general goodwill.

"Merry Christmas!" He went right over to the counter once he knew Namine was there, digging her gift out of his magically deep pockets as he did. He'd been a bit uncertain for a while on what exactly to get her. He couldn't go too expensive on anyone's gifts unless he wanted to leave someone out, but he didn't want to be cheap either if he could help it. After a stretch, he settled on a book of origami patterns and some paper to start with.

[colorbymemory]

Namine didn't like making situations more complicated than they had to be, either. Most everyone did tend to drop by the shop, so handing out presents should be easy.

She appreciated Sora refraining from the lecture for now. There had been enough to last for a while. With Ienzo teaching her some of the spells that she'd need to protect herself, she was working on becoming a good magic user. Weapons skills were still lacking, but that could come later.

Today was Christmas, though, and time for talking of other things. She smiled as she accepted the package from Sora and handed him his package of cookies. When she saw what was inside, her smile widened. "Thank you. This looks like it'll be fun to try."

[dork_of_keys]

He was kind of relieved that she liked the gift. Hopefully the gifts he'd gotten everyone else would be well received. Well, most of them. He did have a couple of gag gifts to hand out. With any luck, he'd be safely away before those gifts got opened.

"I'm glad you like it." He wasn't sure what else there was to chat about at the moment, but he wasn't really concerned either. If enough people showed up, it might turn into a party anyway, so who knew? Maybe there would be other fun to be had.