"I could stay, with earplugs and a blindfold?"

"Congratulations, that's much worse. 

"I guess we can't watch a lot of them anyway, the last time we did this I didn't have two jobs. Maybe we can exile you Saturday nights for a while."

"Sounds good. 

You could say I could go home."

" - wait, have you been able to go home this whole time?"

"I mean I could but it'd be weird to, for no reason, they'd wonder if I was having trouble or something."

"...they don't, like, miss you?"

"What, already?"

"It's been more than a month! If I had to go more than a month without seeing my niece and nephew I would miss them a lot. Now that we're, like, effectively immediate family and stuff."

"I think time might be less of a big deal to fairies."

"I mean, that makes sense to me once you've lived a really really long time, the way five minutes seems really long when you're three and way less long when you're sixteen, but you're not actually really old, right, you just know you're going to be someday?"

"Yeah, I'm the same age as you."

"Okay. Well. I dunno if you want to go home or not, but you're totally allowed to. On this end. I dunno whether your parents would be cool about it or not."

"Maybe if there's a reason."

"All right. Well. 

"I think we have a tree and decorations somewhere. And stockings, though we'll have to get new ones for you and me. I've never made cookies by myself before but I feel like it's important to give that part a shot. I guess I have to print out lyric sheets for the songs. That seems maybe Christmassey enough. Especially if we can think of good gifts. Maybe I can give little Connor some money and he can buy stuff for us, too, then it can be everybody trading except for Zana. It admittedly might be hard to buy gifts for Zales, but I feel like we should try."

"Okay."

"Okay. Don't tell anybody what you're getting them, it's supposed to be secret. I dunno how much fairies know about this."

"I didn't know the secrets thing! I can do secret presents. - or probably just ask Matt to but it'll work out the same."

"Oh gosh, no wonder yours was boring. Half the presents thing is in, like, you don't know what people are going to get you until you open them, and you have to wonder whether they're going to get you something you really like, and then if they do it's both great because you have something you really like and great because the person who gave it to you knows what you like. And I guess because it's fun to look forward to things if the things end up being nice."

"But it seems like it would suck if they didn't know what you'd like and got you something bad."

"Oh it does! It's high-risk. But if you get a couple from everyone then you'll almost definitely get something you like, and you're allowed to ask for advice and stuff. From other people. Not from the person you're giving gifts to. Or, like, I guess you could do that, too, but it'd take a lot of the fun out. For kids it's a bigger deal because they don't have their own money and a lot of expensive things are things they're only going to get for Christmas or their birthday, so for them there's this whole art to dropping hints and stuff, but once you have your own job it's less important what you actually get and more fun to just see what people end up giving you. I think, anyway."

"Definitely going to ask Matt."

"I look forward to seeing what you get everyone."

"As long as it makes you happy."

"I will be happy that you tried and happier if you succeed."

"What a convenient way to be. Okay."