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If you asked Marienrode de Virolai Sierra-Preto what, exactly, she enjoyed about the holiday season, she probably wouldn't be all that hard-pressed to answer you. Being a largely social person from a largely social family, in a career field which necessitated socializing nearly constantly, the answer was even predictable. The holiday season meant parties, and parties meant--well--

She detached herself from a rather exciting conversation about the necessity of teaching grammar in schools--she'd recently read an interesting article stating that grammar drills were actually bad for students, which was something she was going to immediately incorporate into her lesson plans--when she spotted Dr. Westerman. Though they didn't know each other very well, being little more than two people who happened to share union membership, she'd been so lucky as to be assigned as his Secret Santa. Of course she would have been lucky to be assigned as just about anyone else's, too, she supposed. She crossed the room between milling crowds of coworkers and miscellaneous members of the cohort, murmuring apologies where necessary, until she could turn up at Perry's elbow and say, "Excuse me, Perry! Could I encroach on your time for a moment?"

"Almost," said Marienrode brightly, leading him away from the history teacher by the elbow. (You could basically always pick out the Azure Valley and Crystal teachers in a crowd: Their paychecks were higher, and it showed in the way they dressed and carried themselves. Sometimes they even reacted differently to teachers depending on where they'd taught; Marienrode, the single Christmas she'd spent at Hillworth, had definitely noticed it.) "You're missing several syllables, but, almost. Marienrode."

She shouldered her bag once they were quite out of the way and dug through it until she uncovered a (carefully nondenominationally) wrapped present. The cellophane was blue, decorated with white and silver snowflakes, and crinkled loudly in a possibly festive manner as she held it out. "Happy holidays," she said, adjusting her purse on her shoulder for the suddenly much-depleted weight of it. "What exactly is the point of a secret gift exchange? I've always wondered."

Hm, well, that'd be true. She considers: is she showing off? No, probably not, and he probably didn't intend for that to be what she took from it, so she resolved not to take offense. She just liked seeing how people reacted to the items she picked, since… she actually did spend time considering her options! Some years her secret santas haven't felt all that personal, and that's the sort of thing she just couldn't abide. Isn't it worth the effort of getting to know what your secret santa likes instead of just buying one of those credit gift cards? She thinks so.

"I enjoy seeing how people react," she said, which might have been defensive. Not her intent to get that way, but it didn't always have to be, did it? "I don't mean to sound irritated, I'm not. You're probably correct, is what I'd like to communicate by that." Then she added, "There's tape on the back, or if you pull on the silver ribbons they ought to come loose with a certain amount of ease?"

Suri had grown up in a lifestyle of all sorts of parties, shindigs, soirees, and anything else that could be vaguely described as a gathering of people with snacks and a little light music. Despite her experience, however, she was never what someone would describe as a "party person": introverted and judgemental were two personality traits that simply did not for a social life make.

Nevertheless, the Crystal Academy science teacher liked to keep up with Union activities, on the off chance that they tried to do something ridiculous with her payroll. It was also a good platform for scoping out potential recruits, if she could ever work up the gumption to talk to any of these people. As it stood, she was standing primly near one of the corners of the large room, looking out at the crowd with a discerning stare. In her hands was a small parcel, wrapped neatly in silver paper with a tag for one Marienrode de...something ridiculously ethnic. If only she had the slightest clue as to who that was.

As it were, she seemed consigned to a lonely night until she recognized the silhouette of her colleague, Dr. Westerman, who seemed to be conversing with a woman Suri had never seen. With a gait as dignified as one could manage considering the...ahem..."colorful" holiday sweater Suri had donned, she approached the two, doing her best to curl her lips in a smile. Even if it wasn't natural, the gesture was at least well-practiced.

"Dr. Westerman," she greeted the man with a polite nod, using the movement to size up his conversational partner. Exotic, certainly. And young, perhaps even Suri's age. The wheels in the science teacher's head were clearly turning as she shuffled the parcel to one hand so she could extend the other. "I'm Suri Ellis, from Crystal Academy. I don't think we've met?"

With any luck, Suri may have just found someone important, like the Union Chair.

So Perry was chatting with a Crystal Academy teacher and a Horizon Institute teacher. Apparently that mean there was supposed to be an atmosphere of rivalry, full of tension about how much funding particularly went where, but that sort of thing was a waste of his god damned energy. And even if it weren't, it was still a favorable situation than sitting in the teacher's lounge and getting more passive-aggressive flak from Principal Billjo about how he really should consider cutting his hair.

"Suri, huh? Wait -- Suri Ellis you said, right?" He got a courteous nod. "Well, I'll be damned. Looks like I'll be joining you in breaking tradition, Mari." The English teacher would feel a little jab on her arm as Perry amicably nudged it with an elbow. "S'over on the table there, wrapped up in the classifieds pages. Sorry about that, by the way. Ran all outta the good paper."

If the Crystal teacher followed his pointing, she would find a gift roughly the same size and weight as the one Perry just received.

Mari took the elbow jab with good humor, grinning and saying, "It was a silly tradition anyway," as she leaned forward to catch sight of the gift for Suri. It was a pretty decent wrapping job, she thought! Some people didn't bother to wrap them at all, which was really just sad. Part of the fun of gift-giving was seeing the look of surprise on the recipient's face, after all. Although mentioning there had been good paper at all was perhaps a little too honest, she thought.

Ah, well, she really oughtn't be critical.

"My parents had unorthodox choice in names," she said. "My brother is Appolinarius." She accepted the present from Suri and smiled. "Oh, absolutely! Andrew and Jessica have never been bosom companions, though. Eliza and I always thought it was, um…" She made a vague hand gesture, twined a lock of white-gold hair around her fingers and decided that she didn't really have to pursue that topic. It was probably very gauche, not to mention just unprofessional!! "I would like that," she said to Suri, beaming at her. "Shall we head over?"