“What do you think of when I say the word 'Christmas?'” Glorious Purpose asked Will.

“Uh,” said Will, who hadn't anticipated the question from someone who wasn't Christian, had no concept of Christianity, and had never heard the word 'Christmas' before.

“That's perfect, thank you.” said Glory, who vanished in a flash of light.

In hindsight, Will should've seen the events that followed coming. A few days later, at a bit past midnight, Glory knocked on his bedroom door to wake him up. Will knew it was Glory because he had announced as such.

“It's Glorious Purpose,” Glory said, rapping on the door. “Get up. We have a surprise for you.”

This did not bode well. Still, Will got up. In his closet, instead of his usual stupid options for outerwear, he had new, unusual stupid options.

He settled on the dark green harness with a minimal number of bells. As much as he hated to admit it, he felt naked without something to wear. As he got ready, he ripped as many bells as he could off, but more seemed to keep appearing.

“Glory,” Will said, standing behind the door. “Are you attempting to reverse engineer Christmas from my incomplete and biased memories of a holiday you have no context for?”

“That's exactly correct,” Glory said with mild cheer.

Glory could read Will's mind, and in fact couldn't not read Will's mind, so he followed the trail of logic Will's mind took.

Will rationalized his actions as scholarly curiosity; he wanted to see how accurate Glory had been, and was genuinely curious to see where this whole thing went.

Both of these were true, but only Glory knew that the most important reason Will was willing to go along with it was simply that he was touched by the gesture; a fact Will was too jaded to admit to himself.

Glory also noted to himself that this was in it of itself a very Christmas-like thing to occur.

“Can I at least wear something that won't jingle all day?” Will asked, his disdain for the word jingle apparent.

“Certainly,” Glory said. With a snap of his fingers, the bells on Will's harness vanished, though the ones on the floor didn’t. To Will, it felt like they had been sucked off with a small vacuum cleaner.

Will opened the door. He had been half-expecting to find Glory wearing some kind of tacky sweater, which is why Glory wasn’t. Instead, Glory was holding a coffee mug that had a ribbon wrapped around it. It held hot chocolate with four marshmallows, which Glory had decided was the optimal number of marshmallows.

“Oh, uh, thank you,” said Will, taking the cup. It was actually fairly cold outside, so Will took a sip.

“It’s good,” Will said. He didn’t know what else to say. “This is… my mug, from back home?”

It had the same picture of a tired owl as his, at least, and it felt the same in his grip. Will had to stop himself from tipping it over to see if it had the same chip on the bottom.

“Well, it’s an exact replica,” said Glory. “Completely indistinguishable in every way.”

“Huh,” said Will. “Neat. Can you do that with other objects?”

“The more complex an object is, the harder it is to duplicate,” said Glory. “I wouldn’t have been able to clone, say, a computer with this spell.”

“Can you clone a living thing? With enough juice, at least?”

“Certainly,” said Glory. “Although it’s some serious magic.”

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“Like the magic you use to bring me here?” Will asked.

Glory knew what Will was really asking and decided to avoid dancing around the issue.

“I’m pretty sure you’re not a clone of the real Will who would be on earth and unaware of any of this.”

“Pretty sure?”

“Magic is complicated and unpredictable,” Glory said. His confidence was wavering slightly. “It’s hard to be completely and totally sure of anything. But assuming the spell worked as intended, you are, by any reasonable definition, the only Will Terronson.”

“Okay,” said Will. “Why didn’t you copy me?”

“Honestly… to avoid having to answer ‘yes’ to your question.” Glory said apologetically. “It’s already a lot, being here. I didn’t want to add that existential complication.”

“Well, I…” Will paused. “Appreciate that. I think. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” said Glory. “And merry Christmas.”

“Uh, merry Christmas, Glory.” Will said. He expected Glory to leave, which Glory didn’t take personally. “Is that it? Was it just the mug?”

Will wasn’t sure if he was worried it was, or worried it wasn’t.

“No,” said Glorious Purpose. “Care to join us at the fire pit?”

“We have a fire pit?” Will asked.

“We do now,” said Glory with a monocular wink.

The fire pit had been set up near the estate’s exterior spring. It actually looked to Will rather like a sauna that had been cut in half, with the roof and two adjacent walls discarded. A folding ladder was holding some of Rex’s spare enchanted glowing gemstones in imitation of a christmas tree.

“The estate had a sauna when it was actually used as a bed and breakfast,” Virgil helpfully explained. He was roasting a marshmallow on a stick. “But it’s been out of commission for years. Better we get some use out of it than let it languish.”

Dio, who was holding a handful of burning marshmallows directly in the fire, grumbled. “Maybe I could’ve used a sauna.”

“You wouldn’t fit in the sauna,” Virgil countered politely.

“Excuses, excuses,” Dio countered. He brought the charred mass of molten sugar up towards his face, eating it like how a bear eats a honeycomb.

“So,” Virgil asked, leaning a carefully calculated amount towards Will as he spoke. “What’s Christmas about?”

Will thought to himself ‘Glory I know you can hear me I can explain this,’ then said “Well, historically it’s tied to the winter solstice and is a celebration of the birth of the… religious figure Jesus Christ. See, Christ, Christmas? You get it. But nowadays it’s more of a generic gift-giving holiday. It’s a huge deal for companies, especially toy and game companies. Genuinely it’s a billion-dollar industry; no holiday comes close to how much economic weight—”

“Sorry, hold on a second. Billion? Like with a B?” Virgil asked.

“Yes,” said Will. “Probably actually it’s a trillion-dollar industry.”

“That’s a million times a million,” Glory helpfully provided.

“What are people buying that’s worth a trillion dollars?” Dio asked. He didn’t know how much a million actually was, but it sounded big.

“Advertisements, mostly,” said Will.

“What are they doing, pasting flyers on every flat surface?” Virgil asked. “On other flyers?”

“Pretty much,” said Will. “Everything. Ads on clothes, ads on billboards, ads on every webpage, ads that play before other ads. Ads all the way down.”

Will generally tried to avoid mentioning the internet, especially because it made him homesick. Advertisements, at least, did not elicit that emotion.

“As much as I want to say Christmas is really about giving or family or faith or anything worth a damn, I don’t really think that’s true,” said Will. The thought surprised him. “It’s just… nothing. An empty void you try to fill with whatever you can buy.”

“And you’d really rather go back to that than stay here?” Virgil asked, which he immediately silently regretted.

“That’s a great question,” Will said. He thought about last Christmas, which he’d spent watching the same slew of holiday movies everybody watched, eating leftover pizza. It was the first and only Christmas he’d spent totally alone, which at the time had felt liberating. “Can I get back to you on that?”

“Sure,” said Virgil. “Sorry I don’t have anything to give you except the mug.”

Will leaned back, looking up at the night sky. The moon here was different, as were the stars. With no light pollution they were so, so much brighter here. Will had been meaning to ask about constellations, but he never seemed to find the time.

“That’s okay,” Will said. “I don’t know what I’d ask for.”

Glory did, but he didn’t feel the need to share.