Peering out from under the blood-stained eiderdown, a figure could be seen dragging its shadow and faint scent through the door. Grasping hard at the mountain of needles that had become a head, a sudden unaccountable surge of nostalgia for a sentence he had never said filled the room.

Then subsided, aching.

There was three of everything. All objects that dared to invade the scan of the eyes fractured cleanly and silently into high, middle and low, Positive, Negative and neutral. Ad Nauseam in more than one sense of the word.

"And lo, it came to pass that on the seventh hour, Elohym vibrated her fiery spirit over and through her waters. The light was spoken and did return. Cast your bread out upon the waters, and it will return buttered with love."

This would never do.

BUT

There was a Mother, a Daughter and a Son. Each were undergoin a revolution, a bloodless coup in their brains. The reasons, at this point it is not important to itemise. In any case, how imprudent of you even to imagine. Only the fact remain.

Each employed thir own armies — some legitimate, some mercenary, some whose morals and motives are as yet unclear. We await reports from the front with an eagerness that is almost indifferent. And who are we do judge? Solace is a state which may be reached through necessity and not perversity. It may be the difference between the Art of submission, or the eternally damned act OF perversion.

The Mother unwrapped her Christmas presents with motions transposed from the geometry of the movements of one condemned. The Daughter ripped and tore at the brightly coloured paper and string, and brought the onset of later life neck trouble even closer by efforts to speed along the rest of the gatherings' discoveries on the festival of the birth of our Lord. The son preferred to prolong the agony, only turning his attention to the gift when the packaging which enclosed it had been obsessively and scrupulously folded and placed at his right side. Guilt, Joy and Gratitude fill the air. But this is to reveal too many clues before the time is opportune.

If we clip our sails to attract a larger congregation, the boat may sink. But what if our vessel is a Submarine? An Airplane? And who knows (and who has guessed), a Sleigh? And are Saints protected by other Saints? Then what of the deposed St.Christopher?
St.Nicholas? St.Michael?

The Mother looks again at the letter which had arrived that morning, Air Mail. It was perhaps the ninth time she had looked at it without a glint of comprehension. She knew (of course — Mother always knows these things...) exactly what it would intimate (but not exactly enough for her liking) before tearing open the envelope. The Daughter received the news of the trivial with the same gluttony as always. Oil to the great machine. The threat of strikes and sledgehammers notwithstanding.

The Son refused to open his massives until midday. A quilt had to be taken to the drycleaners out of sight of parental glare.