The Scientist

Chapter 3. holly jolly pop-bangers

And as the sun rose back to the sky they fell back to Juliette's bed knowing, that some day soon they needed to say goodbye.

***

Kal was in favour of candle light combined with wine and cheese type of Christmas' instead of colourful lights and holly jolly pop-bangers. And they had always spend their family Christmas' in the Alps with their family and friends where that was possible. The only con was that too rich people were famous for being arseholes. And in his opinion that was very true.

They stayed at this luxury resort where a lot of people from the Society also spend their Christmas and new year. And look, of course it was great. He spend a lot of time with some of his closest friends Lauren and James betting on billiard games and occasionally skiing. But he hated the actual adults, the people of the Society. 

Kal knew that they were important people and that they had been very close to him his whole life. And it was a pure miracle that he had grown so different from them, in his opinion. They were just mostly aristocratic and cruel men filled with misogyny, and their bored wives who were a lot smarter than their husbands.

On different levels of course. His own parents weren't that bad, nor few other people. But he had seen enough of the worst men getting drunk and speak about women or politics or what Kal should remember about life so that he avoided them to his best ability.

But Kal loved Christmas.

And on Christmas eve morning, at 9.02 o'clock at breakfast Eliza send him a meme where Cheddar the dog was dressed as an elf with a caption: MEEERRRYY CHRISTMAS!/Saint Nicholas' day! And GIF where one of his favourite characters said "It's pronounced Nikolaj!" And he chuckled out loud at her absolutely horrible humor, drawing an amused look from his mother. "Who is that?" Kal gathered himself and just shook his head with a lingering smile. "Nothing, just a meme." And Christmas had gotten better.

Knowing that Lauren wouldn't wake up in hours (and that he was bored), he called Eliza. Kal didn't really have a topic in mind, he just wanted to talk to her.

Eliza's drowsy voice picked up and Kal regretted the call immediately.

"Hello?" She yawned.

"Hi, sorry did I wake you?"

"Kinda, but it's fine."

"Okay... okay, good."

"—"

"—"

"So did you have anything specific to say?"

They talked about Christmas traditions and Kal found out that Eliza's parents were divorced. She was pleased to learn that Kal was a candle light combined with wine and cheese type of a Christmas person as well. The conversations moved forward and after an hour Eliza ended the call saying that she needed to start preparing foods for the dinner. 

They wished each other merry Christmas.

***

The Society wasn't a monstrous all powerful evil organization, but just like anything, it had it's problems. Thanks to the crazy exclusivity over the years and some forgotten dark moments in history, there wasn't exactly any unwealthy Gifted families. But that didn't really ease their egoism or jealousy towards the most wealthy, aka the Society.

Their main role was to make sure that the Academy was doing it's job and that the Gifted didn't act out or draw any unwanted attention to themselves. They had their own laws for the use of power and had a strict court that kept order in the community. But they also threw the most exclusive events in the Gifted community. Outsiders had no other source of information about these events than over heard conversations. About Jack's need to get a new suit for Saturday. Or excited predictions over if Ryan Harlow (the governor) was going to attend.