Christmas was the most wonderful time of the year, even though some would argue that it still wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet, and Christmas shouldn’t be celebrated yet, Carlee Hunter had to disagree with them. With all of them. Of course, her love of Christmas had little to do with the sphere she was given, even though as a senshi she pretty much looked like someone who had been covered in Christmas’s vomit, she didn’t base her love of Christmas on that alone. It did help, though, she wasn’t going to deny that fact.

She had saved some of her allowance money, and pooled it together with the money that Arias gave her for helping down at the bakery, and had bought herself a small, artificial Christmas tree from the Savings Megamart. The tree wasn’t too terribly big, for Carlee was not a tall girl at all, in fact she was quite small, hardly breaking the five foot mark. At least the tree was in a box that had a handle, and when she had filled a duffel bag with ornaments that she had both bought, and taken from her family’s supply, she had quite a lot of stuff to carry for a not very tall person.

Carlee made her way to the park and took a good five minutes to catch her breath, and then to make sure that nobody was around to watch her henshin, and her disappearance from the city as she made her way up to Elvira, her asteroid.

...Her cold asteroid. The wind was raging when she made it to the small, cold hunk of space rock, but that wasn’t going to deter her. Digging in the duffel bag she had brought, Elvira pulled out a lovely warm looking sweatshirt and pulled it over her fuku, zipping it up and sighing in content. There, the cold didn’t have to bother anyone anyway, and she wasn’t going to let it...not when she had so much work to do! She rummaged in the bag and pulled out her ipod as well, slipping the earbuds into her ear and quickly finding her Christmas playlist. There was no need to do all this work in silence, after all...and since she would be decorating alone...she didn’t want to end up feeling lonely.

Quickly, the senshi ducked into the greenhouse that was still standing...her favorite greenhouse, to be exact...though it was only her favorite because it wasn’t broken, though she wasn’t going to let the others know that...maybe...one day she could fix them, if she took a lesson on fixing glass and metal and stuff...maybe she could just bring Arias here one day, she knew he could do it.

He could do anything.

Well...maybe not anything...but he could do a lot! And she was quite sure he would at least try to fix the other greenhouses for her. For now though, this one was enough.

Elvira made her way over to the corner that was closest to where she had planted the poinsettia rock and dropped both the Christmas tree box, as well as the duffel bag to the floor with a sigh of relief. At least she didn’t have to hold on to the things anymore! She drew in a deep breath and shook her arms, trying to get feeling back into them, it had been a lot easier carrying the things as a senshi than it had been when she was still just Carlee, but they were still really, really heavy.

Slowly and carefully, the senshi pulled out the pieces of the Christmas tree and fitted them together, grinning when after about half an hour, a cute almost Elvira sized tree stood before her...though it did look a bit...flat? She stared at the thing for a while, then began fluffing the branches, giving them more volume by twisting the metal and letting it look as though there was more...tree and less...not.

It looked better when she was done, but it still wasn’t perfect...of course that was to be expected, as she hadn’t even begun to decorate the thing yet...and a Christmas Tree never looked really good until it was decorated! After taking a short break to really admire her work, Carlee dove right back into her decorating, first stringing on three strands of battery operated lights that she had found at the mega mart and then beginning to pile on the ornaments.

After a minute, the senshi paused, frowning just slightly. Well, it was okay for now. She could get more lights later, when she had some more money...maybe for next Christmas! Maybe...maybe she could even have a party or something by next Christmas...if Arias could help fix the broken glass, she could have a really great party!

Grinning, Elvira went back to putting all of the decorations on to the tree, and when she was done...it really did look good. Really, really good. Good enough to fill her with a sense of pride and accomplishment that she didn’t ever really feel all that often anymore. It was the same feeling that she would get when she would earn a badge for Girl Scouts or when she would compete in a competition for her step dancing. This was hers, this was all hers and nobody could take it away...and that was a good feeling.

Yes, having a party up here next year would be a really fun thing to do, but it would take a lot of preparation to get everything ready…she would have to clean a lot and decorate a lot more…not to mention bringing up some tables and some chairs…it would be a lot of work…but if she could find the right friends to bring up, it would be worth it. Like Ida, she was terribly excited to bring Ida back up, and she was still just so relieved that her friend was all right, just like she knew that she was. It was just good to be right about something like that.

With one last look at the tree, Elvira repacked her duffel bag and stretched, taking off the sweatshirt and the ear buds, and let herself go back to earth, powering down when she was sure that she was alone. Tonight had worked out better than she had expected, and that was a good thing!

Now all she had to worry about was decorating everything else!