milliways_bar | (no subject)

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[elfwarning]

The bar is full of dollies.

This does not seem to have upset Coral, who has assembled about thirty of the dolls into what appears to be a school classroom. Several of them are now wearing name tags, and Coral has a small chalk board and a register.

One of them, labelled 'Elfis', has been put in a cardboard box marked 'detention'.

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Hey! There's a grey fox in the back row! When did that happen?

He has a little collar with a name tag that says "Dōji," and he seems to be listening attentively to Coral's lesson.

Oh dear, pressure!

Coral seems to be doing mental maths with the elves at the moment. Or at very least asking them sums and then saying 'very good' or 'try again'.

"What's three times five?" she asks the fox, when it's his turn.

"Fifteen, sensei!" the fox says.

He knows the elves are...well, in the terminology of his magical practice, they're fetishes. He wonders if they're learning anything.

(Also he wonders why Elfis is in detention.)

"Very good!" Coral beams. "You can have a star."

She leans forward with a star sticker, but then pauses.

"But I don't want it to hurt your fur."

"Perhaps on my nametag, sensei?" The fox looks over at the detention box. "What did he do?"

Coral puts it on his name tag.

"He was mean to Emma. He called her a midget." she says.

All the elf dolls appear to be the same size.

"Goodness! That was very rude of him. Hopefully he did not upset Emma too much."

"Emma's friends like Emma the way she is." Coral says.

"It is good that Emma knows whose opinions really matter," the fox says. "I agree that Emma is ideally Emma-sized."

"Emma has good friends. She's going to make them something special for Christmas." Coral says.

"Oh! What sort of something? I promise not to tell."

"Special hats." Coral says.

"Ah! I hope to have the privilege of seeing these special hats." Pause. "What would Emma like for Christmas, do you think?"

Coral considers this.

"World peace. Or to be taller." she says. "Or Sylvanians."

She puts Emma back in the class and releases Elfis.

"You are likely to get at least one of those things," the fox says.

"Do you celebrate Christmas, Seimei-sensei?"

"No," the fox says. "I am Buddhist and Shinto, so I do not."

Although most of his countrymen are also Buddhist and Shinto and do celebrate Christmas, after a fashion.

"We are part Sikhs." Coral says. "But we celebrate the non-religious way."

"Well, your family lives in a majority Christian country, yes? It would be rather difficult not to."

That might be exaggerating a bit, but the point is that it makes sense for the Sandhus to celebrate Christmas as a cultural (though not religious) holiday.

"I think lots of people don't, but they just go along with it quietly and enjoy not going to work." Coral says. "Lots of people say they're Christian but they don't really do it except at Christmas."

She considers. "Do you celebrate new year?"

"Oh yes! The new year is a very important holiday."

The way he celebrates it has changed, of course, but it's still important.

"Is it the same date as our new year?"

"Well...yes and no. I celebrate the solar New Year, as you do, but also the Lunar New Year, as we did in the old days."

Like all observances based on a lunar calendar, the date of the Lunar New Year drifts around a bit.

"What's looner?"

"Lunar. L-U-N-A-R," the fox explains. "As in based upon the moon. The lunar calendar follows the phases of the moon, from new to waxing to full to waning. Many societies based their calendars on the moon, but now almost all of them use the solar calendar."