Baby, it's cold outside \\
Portia was drowning in her tea, slipping into the warm scent of cinnamon and pomegranate as if it was a drug. Vapor was coming out of the mug, gently resting on her skin, and as she looked at her reflection on the liquid surface, she thought that that was the most depressing Christmas ever.
Her parents had left to spend Christmas skiing, and she couldn't really blame them - they had hesitated, at first, and they did for her. But she had reassured that she would have been perfectly fine - except she wasn't. She was miserable, and lonesome, but there was no way she could fix it. She didn't have any friends, at least not close ones, her parents were away and the only person who could have really made her happy had died a long time ago.
She still remembered her sister, even though she was only four when she had died. She remembered everything about her: her smile, the way she hugged her as if she could have shielded her from all the evils of the world. She even remembered her scent, scent of home. It was all gone now, but memories kept on crashing in her mind.
The clearest one, she remembered, was from the Christmas before her sister died. It was the last happy Christmas her family had ever lived, the last one when they almost looked like a normal family. Portia had made a gift for her sister in kindergarten, a horrible flower pot which, in the wisdom of hindsight, she had better thrown it into the garbage. But her sister liked it, she truly did, she hugged her and gave her her present in return: a whole lot of finger-painting colors, which Portia had just loved. That night, she remembered, they both stuck their hands in the paint and started messing with the walls. Her mother never got angry, she actually got herself dirty, too, and the whole family found themselves children again. In moments like that, Portia felt like it was heaven, on earth. She ignored how everything would turn into a big, awful hell, from then on.
Shrugging her shoulders, Portia came back to reality and wiped the tears off her eyes. She was being childish. There was no use dwelling in the past - she was still young, she still had a whole life to live. But she knew that pain would never go away, no matter how hard she tried. It was just too hard to pretend she was fine, at Christmas time. For most of the people, Christmas was a time of joy and happiness. To Portia, it was just the memory of the greatest happiness she had ever lived, and how it all slipped away in the blink of an eye.
