( it's the same every year. as the holidays loom ever closer, the energy in garden begins to take on a frenetic quality. it crests in the air, kinetic and boundless. a culmination of giddy whispers and listless wandering. the distraction creeps in slowly and scratches at the edges of squall's mind like a cat at a window until eventually even he finds himself at its mercy and his thoughts lean towards the inevitable promise of what winter break means: tradition.
they are not traditions like the rest of balamb knows them. what squall has is what he and seifer have carved out for themselves after years of being the garden's leftovers; the ones who don't have families waiting for them.
squall isn't sure what it means that everything he knows of christmas he has learned from their secondhand experience of it through stories and programming and haphazardly collected traditions. they are precious to him all the same and he's not sure what that means either. it is one of the few things squall does not need to be forcibly dragged into even if he remains mercurial in nature, choosing which tradition will net him as a willing maverick and which will see him grinding his heels to the finish line.
today, he is much more the former as they make the walk to balamb, bundled up to protect themselves from the first snowfall of the season. ahead, the sleepy, coastal village is a spectacle of string lights and promised warmth. he draws the fur of his coat higher up his neck to help with the job his scarf has failed to do. )
Nothing too crazy this year. We barely made it back with last year's tree.
( accomplice he might be, but that didn't mean he wanted to invite the shore's monsters to follow their tracks of pine needles when they eventually made their way back to garden. )
holiday traditions
they are not traditions like the rest of balamb knows them. what squall has is what he and seifer have carved out for themselves after years of being the garden's leftovers; the ones who don't have families waiting for them.
squall isn't sure what it means that everything he knows of christmas he has learned from their secondhand experience of it through stories and programming and haphazardly collected traditions. they are precious to him all the same and he's not sure what that means either. it is one of the few things squall does not need to be forcibly dragged into even if he remains mercurial in nature, choosing which tradition will net him as a willing maverick and which will see him grinding his heels to the finish line.
today, he is much more the former as they make the walk to balamb, bundled up to protect themselves from the first snowfall of the season. ahead, the sleepy, coastal village is a spectacle of string lights and promised warmth. he draws the fur of his coat higher up his neck to help with the job his scarf has failed to do. )
Nothing too crazy this year. We barely made it back with last year's tree.
( accomplice he might be, but that didn't mean he wanted to invite the shore's monsters to follow their tracks of pine needles when they eventually made their way back to garden. )