Hey yall! Here's part two of my Christmas fnfic. Also written for @Smalden Ender Joveson's Christmas writing challenge. Also, this is the last 'sad' chapter, i wanted to set a mood... lol. Anyways, here ya go! Enjoy! Chapter Three sould be out this week, since he last day of school is wednesday, and i should have moe time to write. Chapter four should be the week between Christmas and New Years :) Merry Christmas!

Warm, callused hands guided a pair of small, sweaty ones over the bread, grabbing the dough and pushing it down and to the right. Laylann Cove showed her young son the art of turning the bread until the dough was thick enough to bake and rise. Fleck was eager to learn and couldn't help letting a smile crease his young face. His Hazel eyes practically glittered in the light, and his fur was dusted finely in flour. 

Laylann dusted flour from the fur in between his ears. “It's getting time for a haircut, Fleck-star.” He giggled, reaching for the thick dough to tear off a piece. “It shall taste much better, baked.” Laylann warned him.

Fleck helped her lift the dough into a square baking tin and place it on the metal rack over the fire. The cauldron of stew already hanging was bubbling happily and smelled of the beetroot Fleck had helped Laylann chop into chunks and the herbs the broth had rehydrated. 

The door swung open on rusty hinges, and a draft of icy wind drove Jebidiah Cove into the room. The fur on his face was crusted in snow and ice, and he unbuttoned his thick jacket and shook the snow from it. “It's getting colder. The ice is so thick, we have to saw through it with an ice-saw.” 

Fleck flung himself into the muscular rabbit’s arms. “Daddy!” Jebeidiah ruffled Fleck’s fur and bent down to unlace his steel-tipped boots. “Mama taught me cooking!” Jebeidiah laughed heartily, and swooped Fleck onto his huge shoulders. 

Fleck giggled with happiness and excitement. Christmas Eve was tonight, and while home happened to be a trashy little fishing village, to five year old Fleck, it was the best place in the entire world. Jebeidiah had cut a small evergreen tree from the yard and erected it in the corner of the small two-room house. Lawrence had helped him saw a base out of logs, and Ainslie had cut a garland of snowflakes out of a roll of butcher’s paper Jebeidiah had stolen from the packing station on one of the barges used to catch fish for Morbin’s regiment. Fleck and Stretch had helped her string it around the tree.

Each family was given three candles a month, used to light the room in the darkened months. Laylann had selected the tallest, most perfect one and set it in the sill of the cracked window. She kept it burning all through the night, a little glimmer of hope in a dark and dismal world.

The entire family sat on the floor for dinner. The bowls were chipped and cracked pottery that leaked slightly, and the wooden cutlery was tarnished and stained. The soup was warm and filling, despite the lack of ingredients on hand, and the simple sourdough bread dipped up the broth like a sponge. 

Jebeidiah wasn't one of many words. He had been putting in long hours on the barges, cracking the black ice away from the sides of the sailing craft so the fishing could continue even under the fire circumstances. Lawrence, the eldest Cove sibling, had been quick to crack a joke. 

Ainslie, the second oldest, picked up on his punchlines and carried her bright, cheerful laughter through the gloomy room. 

Stretch, Fleck's twin brother, was deathly ill and ghostly pale with an unknown illness. Fleck practically hovered by his side at all times, like a shadow. Laylann cradled baby Meredith, the youngest, in her arms until his sobs faded away. She picked up the chorus of a very old Christmas hymn in Old Natalia dialect, and the rest of the family joined in.

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Somehow, even with less than before, the Cove family was still content. Jebeidiah, though beaten and overworked and frozen with cold from slaving in the Akolan Quarries, mining enormous blocks of stone, still played his fiddle at night when the family gathered around the hearth.

Laylann worked as a slave in Morbin’s layer, repeatedly swooping the floors with her mop, and cooking the finest meals with the little potatoes they were given. She never quited her voice.

They had no tree, no garland of pretty snowflakes, no snow, only ash. The candle still flickered in the window, as if caught unaware by the darkness around it.

Fleck and Stretch crouched on the ground near the crackling fire in the hearth with a stick of charcoal. 

Stretch abandoned his attempt at the alphabet and instead drew a rather sloppy M. It was followed by an A, and than an R, and then an E. He left a decent gap in between the last letter and his next attempt and wrote a K, and then an R, and an I, followed by an S, an M, an I, and finally, a very sloppy S. ‘Mare Krismis.’

Fleck drew his best picture of a tree next to his brother’s writing, and both of them sat back to observe their work.

“Merry Christmas.” Fleck said, reading the words aloud to himself. “I think you spelled it wrong. Maybe there's a letter missing. I think there's a T in Christmas. And a CH, not a K.” 

Stretch was several years behind in his reading, due to a debilitating illness that laid him in bed for months after months, with an occasional weekly reprieve where he almost seemed recovered. It was during these reprieves that Fleck, as determined as he was, set about teaching his brother the alphabet, one letter at a time.

“I think I spelled it right.” Stretch argued, looking at Fleck indignantly. “I think it's a K, not a CH.”

Fleck picked up his own charcoal and spelt ‘Merry Christmas’ neatly in the hearthstone. “That's how you spell it.”

“Why’d you put two Rs in Merry?”

“I don't know, it looks better that way.”

Stretch swept the charcoal from the stone with the little oiled cloth the bucks used to erase their writing. He picked up his charcoal and looked expectantly at Fleck. “Can you help me write it?”

Fleck spelled each word out for his brother and corrected his form on a few of the letters, until Stretch’s Merry Christmas looked almost as neat and perfect as Fleck’s had been. 

Laylann had swooped out of the kitchen, her skirts covered in flour and her fur lightly dusted in the fine white dust when her two sons called to her. In one arm she held a freshly baked loaf of potato bread. Meredith, now three years of age, had followed her out of the kitchen and stood in the doorway, watching his two older brothers fidget with excitement.

“Merry Christmas, Mama.” Fleck said, looking into her eyes with his seven-year-old innocence. “And look! Stretch write it, Mama!”

Laylann burst into tears and swept the two small bits into her arms. Sobs shook her too-thin frame as she wept with the sorrow of seeing her sons grow up in such an evil, cruel world, and with the joy of seeing Stretch alive and well. 

“Why are you crying, Mama?” Stretch asked in a tiny voice.

“I'm just so proud of you, boys. I love you.”

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Fleck locked the cold out behind him as he blustered into the stone apartment he shared with his twin brother. The wind howled like a frightened beast outside, ravenous for flesh to freeze. 

He heaped a few logs and tinder onto the fire and poked it with the poker until the flames leaped higher and his frozen, stiff fingers had warned up enough to gain circulation. 

He grabbed the handle of the water pot with his shaking hands, wincing as blood pumped through his fingers again. He shouldered the back door open and stepped into the wind and whirling snow, staggering against the horrendous strong gusts.

He smashed the ice in the well with a long, spiked pole and dipped the bucket into the frozen water. He lacked the energy to pull the bucket out, and for a good while he rested with his hands in the water, feeling warm for the first time all day. Eventually, he tensed the muscles in his arms, drew the bucket out of the well, and staggered back to the house. 

He pulled the bucket into the hook in the metal rack with the last of his faltering strength. He tore some strips of fabric off his shirt with faltering, shaking, numb fingers, and wrapped the strips around the heating metal. Some warmth tingled back into his swollen hands.

Fleck’s legs shook and he crumpled onto the ground, lacking the strength to stand. His mouth was covered in horrid, bleeding sores that made it impossible to speak or breathe without causing excruciating pain. His arms shook with pain from two deep wounds, and he could feel blood seeping through his tunic.

Stretch shuffled into the kitchen, covering a cough with his elbow. His illness had returned earlier in the year, more forcibly than before. Stretch couldn't work, even on the days when he was feeling better. He never deserted Fleck, however sick he was. “Fleck!” Stretch exclaimed, pushing himself into a hurried jog. He crouched down next to his twin brother and grabbed Fleck’s swollen, bleeding hands. “I need to work. You need a break.”

“No. You need to stay home and rest.” Fleck answered in a shaky voice. “I'm fine.”

“You’re not fine.” Stretch, shaking the same as Fleck, unwrapped the strips of heated cloth from the wire, soaked a pad of cloth in the steaming water, and grabbed a roll of bandages from the top shelf in the kitchen. 

Fleck gritted his teeth against the excruciating pain and allowed Stretch to clean his wounds with the steaming water and wrap them in bandages. Stretch also wrapped Fleck’s frost-chilled hands.

“What’s this?” he asked, lifting Fleck’s wrist and examining a deep, raw wound. “It looks suspiciously like a third degree burn.”

Fleck jerked his arm away from his brother, tears welling up in his eyes with the extreme pain. “It's nothing.”

Stretch didn't ask any more questions. He cleaned the wound with a superfluous supply of scalding water and bound the burn tightly with the sterilized cloths. Fleck sat, shaking with cold and pain, on the floor. Stretch draped his twin brother in a tattered wool blanket. “I'll heat up the leftover soup.”

“I'm not hungry.” Fleck replied, using the last of his energy to curl into a ball on the ground. His face hidden in his arms and the blanket, he let the tears run down his cheeks. 

“It's Christmas Eve. Even if Mama and Dad and Lawrence and Ainslie and Meredith aren't around anymore, we can still celebrate.” Stretch hooked the canteen of soup over the fire and bent double, caughs racking his spindly form. 

“You can. I don't feel like it.” Fleck replied, too lost in his own emotion to feel anything else.

“Fleck?” Stretch called, repeatedly, three times as he crawled across the floor to his twin brother. Stretch placed his hand in Fleck’s, as Fleck so often did when Stretch's illness threatened to overtake him. “It's okay.” 

Sobs wracked Fleck's thin form as Stretch pulled him into a sitting position. He pulled Fleck into a hug, mindful of the whiplashes across his brother's back. 

“You've been strong for too long, Fleck. Ever since… ever since that day, for two years, all you've done is fought. You fought for me, you fought for the younger slaves, you even fought for Mama and Dad’s legacy, and you never stopped. You don't have to carry this burden alone, Fleck. I'm here. I'm always going to be here.” Stretch whispered in his brother's ear as Fleck cried years of uncried tears, soaking his brother’s tunic. 12 years old was way too young to be fighting such a painful battle.

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“I knew I'd find you here.” Stretch said, climbing the last stair to the top of the seventh standing stone. From the top of the pillar, one could see the entire green of Cloud Mountain. A row of perfectly manicured little cabins with smoking chimneys. The cliff face, pockmarked with little dark caves. Rows of soldiers training for battle in neat little columns.

Fleck was huddled, back to the bench, on the ground, wrapped in his mottled green cloak for warmth. There had been a time when Fleck had been terribly skinny and malnourished, but now he was strong and stocky, with a good deal of muscle. Stretch sat down next to his brother. “What are you thinking about?”

“Christmas.” Fleck answered, tracing a crack in the sandstone with his fingers. “You remember how mama used to light that candle in the window?”

“Yeah. Even if it meant we had to eat dinner in the dark?”

“Yeah. Remember that year, the year before we ran away, that we spent all of Christmas Eve on the kitchen floor?”

“Yeah.” 

Fleck pulled up the cuff of his sleeve and looked at the scar on his forearm. Stretch could make out the shape of an M burned into his brother’s skin. 

“You never told me about that one.” Stretch commented, “you jerked your arm away.”

“I was singing. There was a scared new worker, a little die, maybe seven or eight, and she was scared. The guards took me to the dungeons, and flogged me, and I met Morbin’s little pet torturer.”

“Vitton?”

“Yeah.” Fleck shuddered at some ancient memory and bunched himself deeper into his cloak. “I lost all my rebellion that day. Gave up. Decided to live a life of apathy to the horror around me.”

“Then you met Bastille.”

A smile broke out on Fleck’s face. “Yeah.”

The two brothers sat on the cold ground for some time, together, and thinking, as usual, together. Finally, Stretch broke the silence. “Remember that first Christmas?”

“How could I ever forget? We were reveling in our freedom. I wasn't scared to death that someone would find out about my backstory. We tried to cut that Christmas tree, and ended up plowing into that huge snowbank.”

Stretch laughed. “And last year?” 

“All the better.”

Stretch grinned. “And this year. We should make this year a Christmas to remember, too. But not because everything was so dark. Because someone remembered to light a candle on the window, and leave it burning.”

-Fleck 😉