Melody loved Christmas. Despite everything that had happened before Christmas, during the Pulse, despite the fact that she had lost her parents just four days before Christmas. She knew her parents would want her to continue celebrating it too. It really wasn't all about religion, either. Her parents hadn't been too religious. But they had believed in the kind of love that lay beneath it all, and that it was right to spread it.
She liked that her tribe opened up on that day for outsiders, welcoming them to sit at their table, share their food. And Melody wanted to share, too. She had already brought cupcakes before the End of the World Parties as a small token to those she cared about, because they were strewn all over the tribes. Like right now she was just returning from meeting Vesper and giving her her gifts too, because she hadn't gotten around to it before.
She was on the way back home, still trying to decide if she would stop by the clinic to ask Topher to come over to Tawa lands later today for dinner. She was so lost in her thoughts and her own world, that she didn't even realize she wasn't along on the streets. She was almost home now, but she could still go to town after changing and having a bit to eat. She was just about to get the keys for her place when someone jumped out of the trees behind her. She literally jumped, a surprised, scared shriek on her lips as she sent her keys flying, tripping over her own two feet and landed on her hands and knees, scraping the skin off painfully on the frozen ground. She was so out of it that she didn't even have the mind to look who had been stepping out of that tree.