🎄 PotO Advent Calendar ‘18🎄
Treats from St. Nicholas by @wolfgangamaderik
Erik, yet again, started to get suspicious about his Christine.
That girl was acting so strangely for a time as days of late November and early December were showing up in the calendar. Erik did not exactly understand why though. He knew already that Christine loved Christmas, it was her favorite holiday from among the holidays during the year, but it was relatively far away for such feverish preparations Christine was into already. Erik did not even know why a one day- long holiday required four weeks of preparations, but it wasn’t until the first Sunday of December when Christmas season would have needed to start that year. Erik never liked Christmas in the first place, but this coming year it was his first normal one to spend with his newly wed wife, and so he was less grumpy about sickening preparations, and Christine’s cheerfulness compared to the gloomy weather which meant the necessary arriving of another case of nasal infection for Erik - and Erik with a cold is a G-R-U-M-P-Y Erik. With all the capital letters.
She sure noticed his mood swings, and was desperately trying to make him feel better about the inevitable illnesses he had to go through without a proper nose like everyone else, and she, for an unknown reason, kept asking Erik if she was a good girl throughout the year, and though Erik always answered yes, it did not easily occur to him why is she being so insecure about her manners. She was always a well- behaved lady, with a strong will, and a compassionate heart, which made her marry him, the monster in the end.
The stranger thing was she kept implying Erik was also a good boy. How come? True, he did not actively or passively murdered anyone since the wedding, and he did not throw as much jealousy tantrums towards Christine since he finally owned her, but him being a “good boy” was more than a laughable statement to make, after he nearly drowned the Handsome Sailor and the Daroga in the Torture Chamber, and so on. He did not know what Christine wanted to achieve by praising him so blatantly and carelessly, and he did not even feel entirely good because of that. Sometimes it felt like Christine was trying to mock him, to be honest - knowing what a creature he was, he could not wholeheartedly believe praise did belong to him and he deserves to be called nice things. But Christine would never mock anyone…
The bothering issue seemed to be cleared up on the Fifth day of December, in the evening, he saw with even bigger surprise that Christine was cleaning her boots with such an accuracy and so quick movements it was to be expected to catch a fire in the near future.
- Christine my dear, what in the name of Bach’s hardest Fugue are you doing?
- Cleaning my boots, of course. - She smiled warmly and a hint of nostalgic happiness could be caught in her glance. - You’d better start doing it as well. - She winked.
- They are clean. - Erik shrugged. - But I am not leaving the house tonight anyway, it does not matter. Why, where are you going?- He snorted, his eyes narrowing with sudden suspicion. - Without me…?
- I am not going anywhere. - Christine shook her head with surprise. Surprise, though was mistaken by Erik as fright, which angered him a bit. He still was trying his best not to explode yet.
