Our laughter filled the room as we played with the toys that Papa had whittled himself while Mama worked by the fireplace on supper. We didn’t have a care in the world back then, we were still children after all. My biggest concern used to be what toy I wanted to play with before my little brother took it to play with instead. The toys that we had were rough and unpolished but that didn’t matter to us, we were still able to transport them into a whole other world where they could be perfect despite their many flaws.

Mama must have been growing annoyed with all our yelling and had signaled to Papa to come inside, or he just got sick of waiting out in the cold, because Papa soon came in carrying a present in each hand. Talon and I looked at each other for a brief moment and ran up to Papa excitedly trying to be the first to him. I remember yelling, the both of us were yelling over each other. I doubt anyone could have understood what we were saying. I couldn’t even remember myself

I heard my Papa chuckle to himself before giving each of us the presents to open one at a time. Of course, we didn’t listen to him and just tore into the paper that covered our gifts. 

My gift, which I still remember perfectly, was brand new. It was the first toy that I got that we had been able to afford to buy from the shops in town. It was painted red and black like a soldier. It had a smiling face, even though it never looked like a person to me. Or at least it didn’t look like it should even have a face. 

Talon and I were ecstatic, we weren’t used to having brand-new things let alone anything father hadn’t made. Least of all toys that were all our own. We played with them for hours, it was easily the best day that we ever had up to that point. We had been so excited that we had gotten brand new toys that everything else may as well have disappeared while we played with them together. 

We played while Mama finished supper and tried to get us to settle down to eat. Papa just sat to watch and drank from his “special bottles” he told her to leave us alone because we were just too excited to eat yet. 

Mama was annoyed but decided to drop it since he was technically right. I could tell though, even back then, that she did not like any of it. Least of all his drinking while she worked hard to parent us and keep us fed and clean. 

Papa was drunk before too long, he pulled Mama into a kiss underneath the “mistletoe”. It was just a beautiful fall flower that Mama had preserved years before I had been born. My face pulled back in disgust when I saw them kissing. I hated it when they did that and they did it all the time. 

Things seemed normal for a while, Mama finally calmed us down and got us to eat supper. But Papa was slurring his words and could barely feed himself. I thought that it was funny that Mama had to help him eat. She hated every second of it though, and she made sure that Papa knew. It sparked an argument, one that Mama should have easily won. They had never fought in front of us if they could help it, so it was always scary when they did.

Papa was getting angry, he never liked it when Mama brought up his drinking problem. He stood up angrily going on and on about everything that he does for all of us, but he was stumbling and slurring his speech too much for us to understand any of what he said. At one point he bumped into the Christmas tree hard enough that he brought the both of them down, landing on Mama. 

He froze watching it, I felt something hit my cheek but I was too shocked by what had happened to my Mama to react to the pain that it brought with it. 

It wasn’t long before Papa came to his senses and got the tree off of Mama to help her up. She was angry with him, that was obvious, but she saw me and rushed over. I couldn’t figure out why at the time. Papa ran over and picked me up and rushed me into the kitchen. Mama grabbed a rag while Papa picked little bits of something out of my face. I started crying more with each shard that he picked out. I felt each pull on my skin and the bloom of pain that erupted as they were pulled out. Once he finished Mama came with her wet rag and cleaned my cuts and made Papa clean the mess that he had made. She muttered under her breath about what she would have done if Talon had gotten hurt too.

I touched my cheek, the one that held the scar from the ornament that had gone flying into my face. I was lucky that it didn’t get into my eye, we wouldn’t have financially recovered from having to go to the hospital for it let alone having a newly half-blind son and everything that came with that. Or if Talon had also had to heal from an injury.

Papa felt so terrible about the entire thing that he couldn’t even look at a bottle of alcohol anymore, I had to help him put the rest of his stock into the tiny cellar that we had. It was great for us for the rest of our childhood. Even when some of the bottles mysteriously started going missing in our early teens. 

I sighed, closing my eyes cupping my cheek as if it had only just been injured. My cheek still felt stiff and cold, it really shouldn’t have surprised me, at least not as much as it did. I wondered if my whole body was just as stiff as my cheek was. I tried stretching out my fingers,  but they were so stiff that they had a hard time stretching out all the way. I thought I didn’t have a body anymore, why am I still so stiff? 

An ominous noise bounced around the trees in the distance pulling me away from how stiff I still was. The noise confused me, it sounded like the echoing of carols in the distance. But that couldn’t be right, there couldn’t be carolers yet. It's still way too early for that. 

Right?

I could have sworn that it was still early November. Carolers don’t usually go around this early, late November maybe but not now. The carols’ tunes still echoed all around me regardless, the words themselves lost to the distance between me and the carolers. It was beautiful to hear something so familiar, if only we were closer together. If only I could go to see them, if only I could be seen by them or anyone for that matter. 

If only I hadn’t died. 

Why did I have to go so far up the mountain?!

The wind kicked up out of nowhere, it pushed me back into the tree I had been lightly sitting against. It seemed so angry at me, everything did, but...it couldn’t be. How could it? It's just the wind. It seemed to get colder and colder as it rushed past and around the trees that surrounded me. I shivered as the freezing wind blew through my hair, into my old jacket, and straight through me to my very core. 

“If I’m dead...If I died, why am I still so cold?”