｡+.*𝗚𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝗜𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗔𝗜𝗥*+｡ [𝘿. 𝙈𝘼𝙇𝙁𝙊𝙔]¹

XIV. THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL

I've never liked Christmas.

I mean, I like snow--mostly, hitting people in the face with it, but...I don't know.

I was almost never--I was never at the same foster house on December 25th and, I guess, being surrounded by strangers who would dump me in a month or two kind of killed the spirit of the season. My foster parents never knew me well enough to get me decent presents either, or things I actually liked at the time, and sometimes I didn't get anything at all. I mean, some of the people I was placed with tried, they did, but it just never really worked out.

But then, sixty-six days/two months and five days after they first took me in, I spent my first Christmas(and Hanukkah--Dakota's mother is Jewish but her father isn't so, growing up, they blended traditions; Alistair isn't really religious, while Dakota prefers to practice her religion/Judaism in her own way as a private thing, but, whenever Alistair's mum's anywhere in earshot, he's a devout Christian--and doesn't spend his Sunday's eating pizza and bingeing Star Trek with me in our pyjamas; while basically being agnostic, Alistair does respect his mum and his wife's respective religions, he just personally prefers a more Darwinism/science-y belief system)with Alistair and Dakota at a huge family gathering they took me to at Dakota's mother's house(who, much like Alistair's mum or 'Granny', insisted that I call her 'Bubbe' like the rest of her grandkids and stuffed me full of brisket, sufganiyot, and latkes because I was looking a bit 'peaky'). Some of Alistair's family even came over from Scotland(which really brought out his accent; it's one thing hearing the abrupt hysterical switch when he's on the phone to his siblings and his mum, but seeing them all together and how he acts is a whole new level of hilarious)--and it was colourful, and rowdy, and--

And the best Christmas I've ever had.

Not because of the family gathering, that part was super awkward...but because of the present they gave me when we got back to their house.

Adoption papers.

I hadn't even been with them for all that long, but Alistair said that they knew the moment they met me that they wanted me to be part of their family.

Something about my The Clash band shirt and snarky attitude, I figure.

(my file somehow got accidentally mixed up with the infant/toddler ones they were being shown, and after reading it...they couldn't just walk away; Dakota once said that I didn't have to think of them as my parents if I didn't want to--they could just be my guardians, or 'those people that live in my house', or whatever; she and Alistair just wanted to give me a safe place, and get me out of a system that failed me--not out of any ulterior motives, but because they're just genuinely kind, compassionate, good people...a concept that I still have trouble grasping sometimes).

Last year, we spent Hanukkah with Dakota's side of the family before flying to Scotland to finish the holiday season with Alistair's--and, despite the complicated feelings I have for most family-orientated holidays, I actually had a lot of fun(I'd never left England before--despite travelling from city to city whenever I was dumped in a new foster house, or been on a plane, so that was a new experience).