Who: Eloise and O'Brien. What: A long night. Where: Public Library When: December 25th -- 11ish am. Rating: Low Status: Incomplete
After a Christmas Eve comprised mainly of wine and chocolate for dinner, random research of nothing for fun, and a several hours long tournament of card games, Eloise was finding it difficult to hold her head up.
She was used to getting little or no sleep, and functioning on this as if it were all she needed. She'd even managed to convince herself for the most part that it was better this way. She was used to a lot of things. Maybe the thing she wasn't used to was Christmas. Ellie had never been an especially sentimental or excitable person. The holiday season had only ever been important for one reason: it was one of the only times her elusive parents managed to stay in one place for very long. As a child this had been more thrilling than any gift.
Now that Ellie was alone and without family at all, Christmas meant even less to her. She'd gone through the motions -- echoed greetings, given gifts to the small handful of people she wanted to make happy. That had been a part she enjoyed. The general mood inside of the library was infectious as well, though it only seemed to affect her peripherally; all of that happiness (shaky as it was) seemed to bounce off of Ellie's skin, as if she were incapable of it.
This was why, when she woke on Christmas Day with a small headache and no desire to move at all, she embraced it. It was rare for her body to relax enough that rising became difficult.
For the majority of the morning Eloise was in and out of sleep -- or something resembling sleep -- having crawled on top of an empty table during the night. There was a nearly empty wine bottle by her head, and she'd managed to doze off on top of the box of cards, backpack laid precariously by her side. The European History section wasn't unoccupied by any means, but the people here were older, quieter. They had been strangely tolerant of Ellie's behavior today, even though she was sure she'd been mumbling funny things in her sleep.