The fireplace crackled in the background while the Sisters Guild sat on their homemade chairs, neatly arranged in a half-circle so as to share the blazing warmth. Glasses of hot chocolate rested in their hands, and the smell of roasting marshmallows filled the air. The frame slowly zoomed in on one of the girls, who arranged her hair before turning to face the camera.

Relaxed by the cozy winter atmosphere and ready to begin telling a story, Llyn cleared her throat.

But she did it wrong and ended up violently coughing instead.

The camera promptly panned to the person immediately to her right.

"I've got this, y'alls," Lani drawled. Staring straight through the apparatus, Lani smiled warmly. Reaching behind her back, she drew one of her 'borrowed' katanas.

"What? I'm going to give them back," she protested upon receiving pointed looks from the Guild. The looks intensified. "Eventually," she added in a whisper.

"Anyways," Lani began (again) as she started sharpening her blade, "we're taking a little break from adventuring. As you can clearly see." Lani gestures around to the rest of the group with the katana. "We have decided to sit around a fire, eat unhealthy food, laugh until our stomachs hurt, and use our imaginations to come up with the strangest stories possi--"

"What Lani means is that we're going to enjoy winter while sitting around this lovely fireplace, telling stories," Mya interrupted. "I'll start."

The rest of the Guild settled back in their chairs, ready to be lost in the fantasy world Mya was about to conjure.

"Once upon a time, there was a parrot. A party parrot, to be precise. He--"

"Don't you mean 'accurate'?" Rachel asked. "Because accurate means you get something right, and precise means you get the same something multiple times, but not necessarily the right something..." Rachel trailed off.

A cricket chirped outside.

The Guild suddenly became very interested in the wooden floor under their feet.

"Okay then..." Alli broke the silence.

"There was a party parrot, alright?" Mya rolled her eyes. "I never claimed that I could grammar, just that there was a parrot -- by the way. When is the pizza getting here."

"Just continue on with the story," Llyn sighed. " It will get here eventually."

"Okay so there was a party parrot, and he went to Walmart to buy himself some twinkle lights -- or steal them. Same thing."

"I've never been to a Walmart, I wanna go," Rachel whined. "Why do you Americans have everything? You've got graham crackers, Walmarts, fancy marching bands, you get to see movies first before they are shown in the UK..." The list went on and on and on. The Guild covered their ears until she was done. Mya yawned.

"Bleh, anyways, proceed with the neon chronicles," Rachel said, sipping her hot chocolate, eager to know more about the party parrot and its disco blob travels.

"Moving on, when he entered the store, he had a hard time locating the twinkle lights because he was Scottish and had never been to a Walmart either. He looked around the store until he found a small button on one of the shelves. 'Push the button for the twinkle lights,' the parrot read even though he knew very well that parrots shouldn't be able to read."

Alli coughed and muttered something under her breath about the octopus on her piano teaching the parrots to read.

Mya gave her a look ( because apparently Mya is the rude one with the death glares) and continued on, "Shrugging his wings-- I don't know if parrots can shrug, but just go with it-- he tapped the button with one of his carefully manicured talons. All of a sudden, the ground beneath his feet dropped, and the parrot fell into a long and dark tunnel -- "

"Into Mya's basement," Lynn interjected helpfully.

"Not the basement!" Alli gasped. "Anything but the basement. I will not let my babies get lost in that abyss of darkness."

Celin chuckled.

Suddenly the doorbell rang. Mya got up, reasoning that it was the pizza, before she could catch anymore grief about the basement. Lani and Rachel tagged along, because why not.

Sarah stood on the front porch with the pizza. She had a reindeer antler headband on her head complete with little bells.

"What happened to the pizza guy?" Lani asked and peered over Rachel's shoulder to see if he was hiding.

"Pretty sure Phoebe ate his brains..." Sarah shrugged making the bells on her antlers jingle.

"Again?" Rachel exclaimed. "That's the third time this week!"

"I told you you should have ordered brains on the pizza!" Lynn yelled from the other room.

"Can I come in, it's starting to snow," Sarah noted.

The three of them stepped aside.

"Where is Phoebe?" Lani asked as they all sat down in their chairs in front of the fire. Sarah helped herself to some hot chocolate and the sisters broke out the pizza. It was one of those magical regenerative pizzas that never ran out of slices and had everything everyone wanted.

"She ran off to go eat the brains of the mailman," Sarah explained. "Sibby went after her. They should be back soon."

"Ah," Nik said helpfully as she opened the box. "Who has the mushroom, pineapple, spinach pizza with extra cheese?"

Mya raised a hand and reached over to take the slice from the box.

"So what are we doing?" Sarah asked.

"Story telling," Alli replied. "Here's the speed version. Scottish parrot walks into Walmart looking for twinkle lights. He goes and finds this button, he presses it and is plunged into a black abyss."

"Got it," Sarah nodded.

The people looked at Mya to go on; she set down her pizza with an air of seriousness. "The parrot heard many things. Clacking and hammering and high pitched voices ringing through the darkness. He thought he heard screams, or maybe singing. He wasn't sure, he could never really tell the difference anyway. They were both very painful. So the parrot stayed very silent and liste-"

BOOM.

The door crashed open.

Lani jumped up, swinging her katana.

Mya increased the intensity of her death glare.

Rachel finished her slice of pizza.

Phoebe stammered inside, looking a little green. "Brainnnnnnssssssss"

And beside her an odd, crimson splotched fluffy thing went baaaaa simultaneously.

"Oooh, zombie sheep. Cute," Rachel said, running to swoop the thing up her arms before launching into random Italian words as she cooed and patted it.

"Brainnnnnnssssssss," Phoebe said again.

"Pass her the pizza," Llyn commanded.

Sibby ran in, breathless, pointing at Phoebe and the zombie sheep in some weird, kind of sign language only goats understood.

They passed the pizza over to Phoebe and Sibby and the sheep, and Sibby was still doing her strange version of ASLFG (American Sign Language for Goats).

[Rachel: Great, another thing America has that the UK doesn't. Sign language for their goats!]

Sibby shook her head once everyone was thoroughly confused. "Never let me babysit Phoebe again. She dragged me to a butcher shop and made me take selfies with the brains."

"Blame Mya, she's the one who nuked Australia."

Mya looked up from her cup of cocoa in confusion. "Sorry. 2015 was a pretty rough year for me."

"Not as bad as 2016, though... Have you seen some of those memes?" Llyn interjected.

Phoebe finished the last slice of her brain pizza and rolled her eyes. "So what are we doing?"

"Scottish parrot walks into Walmart looking for twinkle lights. He goes and finds this button, he presses it and is plunged into a black abyss," Rachel said as she patted the zombie sheep and fed it some of the pizza box. "There was a lot of screaming or maybe singing."

The sheep nudged Nik's leg with its nose.

Sibby and Phoebe both looked a little confused and decided to go with it.

"Suddenly the parrot started hearing something. It sounded like sleigh bells, and he caught a whiff of strong eggnog. At this point he realized that he wasn't in Walmart anymore."

"Uptown Sheepy sheep sheep, baaaaa," the zombie sheep sang, interrupting and silence descended. The Guild stared at the sheep with wide eyes.

"Ahhh, my favourite song!" Rachel squealed, "Clever sheepy sheep sheep."

Pedro the dog huffed, jealousy turning him as green as the brain eating sheep. He sauntered over to Celin, drawn to the abyss and the crazy radiating from her.

Mya sighed. Too many interruptions were impacting her creative waves. She didn't have time for this spam, not when she had bodies yet to hide...

"Proceed," Steffie commanded, appearing on her magical throne in a puff of glitter, holding a magic wand sharp enough to cut. Bevelled nail polish made her nails look shiny. Alli squawked hello.

"After realizing there was a crack of light created by a trapdoor above his head, he flew up out of the basement and ran into Phoebe, who chased him around the world for his brains until she got too tired. Now, wait for it... this is the best part of the story..." Mya trailed off as everyone stared at her, eager in their anticipation. You could have heard a pen drop.

(You know, because graphic people use pens... okay bad joke... moving on...)

Mya opened her mouth to deliver the best part of her story.

"The end."

"What?! Come on..." Lani groaned.

Rachel sighed.

Steffie face-palmed with utter perfection.

"Baa," said the sheep.

Llyn clapped cheerfully, knowing that what Mya had done was exactly what she would have done, too, aside from making a terrible pun.

"All in favor of another story, with a better ending, raise your hand," Alli proposed.

Ten hands, one paw, and a hoof waved in the air.

"I'll go!" Lani offered, excited. "There was once a sheep named Bob. Bob was a special sheep, because not only was he a sheep, but he was also a zombie sheep. One day, Bob was wandering through the woods in search of some brains to eat, when all of a sudden, he heard some yelling behind him. Moving out of the way, he hid behind a tree and watched as a zombie and another girl came crashing into the forest.

'Phoebe, come on! We have to get back to the house so we don't miss the stories that-- LOOK IT'S A SHEEP!"

"Lani?" Sibby asked carefully. "How are you telling the story about the afternoon I just had?"

Lani ignored her. Llyn chuckled. Mya scrolled through Wattpad notifications on her phone -- bevel text PNGs were in demand.

"How? Oh. You just told us. You didn't? I must be omniscient or something," Lani mused, patting herself on the back. "Anyway, moving on, the girls brought the sheep back to the house and they all sat around the fire and they all talked while they all ate pizza and they all rolled their eyes at Lani and they all groaned simultaneously at Lani's story and they all will sigh in relief because this story is now done and because unlike Mya's, the best part of my story was the end," Lani finished. "Ta-da!"

"Is it just me, or are we kinda bad at the whole story-telling thing?" Sarah asked.

Llyn replied, while staring wistfully at the presents under the evergreen tree. "I prefer to believe that we just have too many ideas and not enough time to say them all separately. So we bundle them all up in one go and then sound more than a little bit insane."

"It's just you," said Mya.

"What Mya said," Alli added.

Phoebe groaned.  "BRAINS..."

Silence filled the room.

Steffie cleared her throat. "Are we going to do something? Tell more stories? Pet the sheep? Be zombies? Because if we aren't, I've got some graphics I've been dying to finish."

"Yeah, we're done. Stories just aren't our thing," Lani sighed.

"Unless you want crazy, insane, out-of-this-world, marvelous, stunning, abso-fan-terrifi-licious-ely stories. Then yes, we are the right people for the job," Mya proposed, nodding her head as more plans for world domination flitted around in her mind.

The camera panned back around to Llyn.

"Take two," Llyn exclaimed. She cleared her throat. Again. And ended up coughing. Again.

The camera panned elsewhere. Again.

But this time, instead of focusing on only one member, the camera slowly moved until all the members, grinning as widely as humanly (and zombie-ly) possible, were visible.

And as a chorus, their voices rose in unison.

"Happy holidays, from the Sisters Guild!"

----------------

Ta-da! To make up for our stretch of inactivity, we at the Guild decided to give you all a little something, in the holiday spirit, from the Sisters Guild. Winter's here (in 3 days) and we hope that this made you smile (if not at Llyn's bad puns, at something or the other) a little. Happy Holidays, and we'll be seeing you soon!

Also, keep an eye out for news on the Graphic Wattys results in the near future-- we'll be sure to keep you posted.

Yours Truly,

The Guild