A Tygerian Christmas

By Shannon West

Blake has big plans for the holidays. With no skills at all in the kitchen nor in decorating, he still decides to try and create the “perfect Tygerian Christmas.” He orders a complete holiday meal—like the ones he remembers from Earth. His reasoning is that Tygerians have no idea what they’re missing, and they’d love Christmas and holiday meals if they were just exposed to them. He plans a big dinner with all the trimmings and plans to teach the holiday traditions to all his sons and create wonderful new Christmas memories.

His plans begin to unravel when one thing after another goes wrong. No one seems to care, the food he ordered is all wrong and he loses his temper, along with the joy he used to find in the holiday. Davos is out of town, avoiding him, and none of his children seem interested at all in his plans. Blake’s hidden fears bubble to the surface and he wonders why he even tries. Frustrated and unhappy, he wishes he’d never come to Tygeria in the first place, throws a jar of gravy against the wall, and slips in the greasy mess, knocking himself out. When he wakes up, his whole life has changed, and he gets the chance to see what his life might have been like if he'd never come to Tygeria or met Davos or had any children at all. He learns that sometimes life is really wonderful after all, and it’s a terrible mistake to throw it all away. Because love, like the holiday spirit, can show up where it's least expected. And maybe, just maybe, it's been there all along.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Painted Hearts Publishing
• Release date: Nov 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215782651

Book preview

A TYGERIAN CHRISTMAS

SHANNON WEST

A Tygerian Christmas

Copyright © 2023 Shannon West

Published by Painted Hearts Publishing

Smashwords Edition

About the Book You Have Purchased

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A Tygerian Christmas

Copyright © 2023 Shannon West

Publication Date: November 2023

Author: Shannon West

Editor: Mildred Jordan

All cover art and logo copyright © 2023 by Painted Hearts Publishing

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

Author’s Note:

This story contains a slightly alternative version of Blake and Davos’s first meeting, taken from some early notes about the incident, first imagined some twelve years ago in the first book in which they appeared. And since this differs from the original version of the story, written about in later books, I thought readers might enjoy reading this earlier version.

"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. And when he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"

--Frank Capra, It’s a Wonderful Life

Chapter One

Excerpt from Prince Rakkur’s electronic journal

Omak has decided to celebrate an Earthan holiday named Christmas again.

Christmas is a weird holiday on Earth when people decorate their houses with lights and ribbons and stuff and then cut down some perfectly good tree to drag it inside and put even more lights all over it. Then everybody eats a lot and sits around and opens gifts from each other. Those parts wouldn’t be so bad, except the food is never anything good, and the gifts are never good ones either, like knives or disruptors or any kind of weapons.

I keep telling my omak to let me pick out my own gifts, but he said that would defeat the purpose. So I said, what’s the purpose? To make all of us miserable? He told me to shut up.

The holiday has something to do with religion, too, but it’s not my religion, so I don’t know why I have to do it. I don’t know much about it either. I know there’s a baby and a star and an Earthan animal called a donkey involved. Something called a camel too, but my omak described it to me and I think he was just making one of his little jokes. My omak told us the story behind the holiday a million times, but sometimes I kind of tune him out.

There’s also a fat man with a white beard who wears a red suit for no apparent reason, and he brings you more gifts, but only if you’ve been good. He only comes on one night during the holiday, after breaking into your house when everyone goes to bed. How creepy is that?

But if you stay up to catch him so you can beat him up, then it’s you who gets in trouble. Omak even leaves him a snack to eat while he’s there prowling around in the dark. I told him this guy is a liar if he says he goes around the whole universe in one night with only a few animals to pull his ship. Like who could do that anyway? What kind of animals could breathe in space? Why don’t they all freeze to death? Humans make no sense at all. But it’s all about magic, according to my omak. And then he tells me to shut up again and stop being so literal minded. I don’t even know what that is.

Personally, I don’t think he should tell me and my brothers to shut up as much as he does. My friends’ omaks don’t do that stuff. I told him that too, and he just laughed and said it again. That time he pinched my cheek, like he does sometimes, though I’ve asked him to stop, because that shit hurts.

Oh, and people hang their socks up by the fire—their socks—can you believe that? And omak—I know it’s him though he denies it—fills the socks with candy and fruit. Like I’d want to eat that once it’s been inside my socks.

My omak does this every year, with varying degrees of success, and tries to get the rest of us involved. He gets really excited and stressed too, and then he and my father get into a big fight about it.

It’s a time we all dread every year, but we try to get through it as a family. This time, just when I thought he might have forgotten about it, the whole thing started up again while we were eating dinner.

Or as Omak puts it, having family time.

Like I said—weird.

****

Ryan, Royal Consort to Prince Mikos

What’s wrong with Blake? Ryan asked, glancing over at his father-in-law as the family gathered for the nightly family dinner. Mikos shrugged, while continuing to chow down on his orlew stew, a spicy meat dish that Ryan heartily disliked. For one thing, it smelled like someone had boiled up an old shoe, and for another, the meat, though it came from a domestic animal and was the Tygerian version of beef, was greasy and an odd, grayish color.

Ryan was eating a salad, the iceberg lettuce and a few of the other greens grown in Blake’s personal hot house, where he grew some of his favorite Earth vegetables. Not so much he, personally, but the gardeners Davos had hired. Doing it himself would have entailed Blake putting his hands in dirt and risking the chance that a bug or God forbid, a worm or two, might be lurking around, ready to crawl on him, and Blake didn’t do bugs and worms.

The small, heated building, made entirely from some glass-like substance, had been a gift from King Davos a few years earlier, and Blake and Ryan supplemented most of their meals from the garden’s bounty. Davos had arranged for the seeds for the vegetables to be brought in by Nilanium traders either directly from Earth or from the old Earth colonies in the solar system, all of which were now Tygerian territories.

You’ll have indigestion later, you know, Ryan said, glancing over at Mikos and addressing his remarks to him, as he filled his bowl with stew again. You’ll be up half the night, complaining about your stomach.

Mikos gave him a sideways glance. I may indeed be up half the night, but not because of any stomach issues. He leaned over and murmured in Ryan’s ear. Have I mentioned how good you look in that robe, nobyo? Though the fabric is a little too thin, don’t you think?

Mikos eyed the perfectly inoffensive silk of Ryan’s robe critically, reaching over to finger it and managing to grope Ryan pretty effectively while he was at it. Yes, this is way too flimsy—it’s practically see-through. We’ll have to get you out of that as soon as possible. Let’s go to our bedroom and talk about it.

Ryan slapped his hand under the table. "It’s fur-lined, as you well know, and definitely not see-through. And Blake would have a fit