(no subject)

[metemmods.insanejournal.com]

Characters: EVERYONE!
Date/Time: Yule
Location: La Theâtre Jeu Ancien
Rating: Probably nothing too bad... PG-13 at worst?
Warnings: Possibly language
Summary: The godlings give their performance!

The theatre was dark for now. Though it was a fairly good-sized audience chamber, only two figures were seated there, both in shadow. Their features could not be determined, but one seemed decidedly feminine, and the other decidedly masculine--with a certain aura of malevolence. Both watched the stage with interest, which was set to show the office of the counting house at the moment, the characters of Scrooge and Bob Cratchit already in place.

As the lights began to come up, Nigel's voice boomed over the theatre:

"Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge."

Comments

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

Bright as a ray of sunshine, even in his rather dreary Victorian costume, Apollo entered, almost bursting into the room.
"A merry Christmas, Uncle! God save you!" he said cheerfully.

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

Hades mustered some real-life annoyance from his nephew's overly cheerful disposition.
"Bah! Humbug!"

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

Apollo's brightness didn't diminish.
"Christmas a humbug, Uncle?" he asked, his blue eyes dancing, "You don't mean that, I am sure."

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

"I do!" Hades said back. "What right or reason have you to be merry? You're certainly poor enough!"

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

"What right or reason have you to be dismal? You're certainly rich enough," Apollo countered.

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

Hades may have had a response a bit more appropriate, but the script called for a less intelligent answer. "Bah! ..humbug."

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

"Oh, come now, Uncle. Don't be cross," Apollo said, maintaining his sunny disposition.

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

"What else can I be in this world!?" Hades didn't know the whole spill, so he winged it. "What's Christmas to you but a time where there are bills but no money to pay them? Every year you find yourself older but no richer! If I could work my will then every idiot muttering Merry Christmas would be boiled in his own pudding!"

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

"Uncle!" Apollo chided.

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

"Nephew!" Hades put a little more sass in that than necessary. "Why don't you keep Christmas your way and I'll keep it in mine!"

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

"Keep it? But you don't keep it," Apollo scoffed with the sort of offhand arrogance only the sun god was capable of.

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

"Then let me leave it alone! It certainly hasn't done you any good!" Hades replied with the kind of annoyed anger he often used when dealing with his relatives.

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

Apollo stood firmly in front of his uncle, head held high.
"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," he retorted, "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, dearest Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

[ieter-amumon.insanejournal.com]

From his spot off to the side at his desk, Asclepius stood and applauded the speech, before ducking his head bashfully, dusting off his hands, and meekly returning to the pages he was scribbling on.

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

Hades turned his attention to Asclepius. "Another sound from you and you'll be keeping Christmas without a job!." He turns back to Apollo. "With speaking ability like that, it's a wonder you aren't in Parliament."

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

Apollo chuckled.
"Thank you, Uncle. But, I implore you, don't be angry. Come! Join my wife and I for Christmas dinner tomorrow," he said, changing the subject slightly.

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

"Why ever did you get married?" He asked with a puzzled expression.

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

"Why? Because I fell in love," Apollo replied, as though it should be the most obvious thing in the world.

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

"Because you fell in love!" He tried to make it sound as if it were the dumbest thing he ever heard. But..his own experience may have weighed on the believability a bit. He put on an expression of annoyance and said dismissively. "Good afternoon!"

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

"But, Uncle, you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?" Apollo pointed out.

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

"Good afternoon," he said firmly, this time his eyes shifting to the door.

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?" Apollo asked.

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

"Good..Afternoon." Hades hated repetitious dialogue.

[aegletes.insanejournal.com]

Apollo sighed dramatically.
"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So a Merry Christmas, Uncle!"

[speakswithdead.insanejournal.com]

"...good..afternoon." He said through clenched teeth.