The First Gift

Ariel opened her eyes and quickly stretched and sat up, immediately realising exactly what day it was.

"It's Christmas!"

Eric had been quite excited when he told her about this day. He said it was a day of rejoice and merriment, where everyone would get together with their families and other loved ones, show appreciation for each other by giving out special gifts, enjoy lovely dinners, and partake in lots of different traditional and personal activities. There had been so much information about this day that Ariel had spent hours of research both with and without Eric's assistance, trying to take in all the information possible. If this was such a special, important day for humans, then she wanted to try her absolute best to make it as perfect as possible.

The former mermaid hurried over to the window and pulled the curtains open. "It's still quite dark," she said to herself, "I wonder how early it is." She wasn't able to rely on seeing or hearing the palace staff going about their work to figure out what time it was today, as Eric insisted they took a few days off working around this point in the year, at least so early in the morning, unless it was completely necessary for them to continue their duties.

Nevertheless, since she was so wide-awake, Ariel was confident enough that it couldn't be that early and that it was perfectly fine to wake her fiancé up at least; so quickly but quietly, she exited her room and made her way across the hall over to Eric's. Once she was inside his room and had gently shut the door, it was full speed ahead again as she raced over to his bed and jumped on next to him.

"Eric!" Ariel lightly shook the prince to wake him up. "Eric, wake up!"

Eric did so soon enough, and smiled at the gorgeous sight just above him.

"Merry Christmas, Eric!" Ariel almost sang at him gleefully.

"Merry Christmas, Ariel." Eric laughed softly, before pushing himself up on his elbows. "This is definitely the best sight to wake up to on Christmas."

"Yeah, well consider yourself lucky," Ariel told him, "I didn't get to have you as my first sight."

"Okay, I'll try and somehow wake up before you next year, if that's what you'd really like," offered Eric.

"Correction; you'll wake up before me tomorrow. That is what I'd really like," returned Ariel.

"Well, I'll see what I can do."

"You better."

Before Eric could respond to that, Ariel kissed him to ensure he couldn't.

"So," she said happily, once they'd finished, "shall we go downstairs now, or wait here a little while?"

"Actually," replied Eric, "I have something for you here."

"Oh! Really?" Ariel's face lit up even further, before falling a little, "But I don't have anything for you here!"

Eric chuckled a little. "That's fine," her told her.

"Are you sure? Because I could go and bring one from the tree up here and-"

"It's fine, Ariel," Eric assured his fiancée, clasping his hand around hers, "This isn't much, I just thought it might be a bit nice."

Ariel thought for a few seconds. "Okay," she agreed; it wasn't like she hadn't gotten him anything at all, it didn't make a very big difference. "But when we get downstairs, you open one from me first, before I open any."

"Okay," chuckled Eric, shrugging, "It's a deal."

Ariel nodded. "Good," she said with faux-pride at her deal settling. Eric laughed a little more, as did she.

"Alright," she asked him, "So what is this first gift you have for me?"

Eric reached over to his bedside cabinet and pulled a drawer open, presenting to Ariel a rectangular package with a curved top, about the length of a pencil or two. She took it from him and delicately unwrapped it; inside was a small wooden box with a hinged lid. She looked to Eric, who was slightly biting his lower lip anxiously. Ariel smiled; Eric was really so intent on pleasing her that even something such as her liking a Christmas gift mattered so urgently to him that he made himself nervous.

"I know I'll love it whatever it is," she assured him, giving him a small kiss, "It's the thought that counts, you told me."

Eric smiled and nodded slightly in agreement, but she could easily tell he was still nervous, so she decided to just open it. When she did, she had to cover her mouth with her hand to stop her from laughing too loudly.

Inside the box, pressed into a red cushion used for padding, was a small stack of about four or five forks, each of which had the word "dinglehopper" engraved onto the handle. Eric gave a small sigh of relief at her reaction.

Ariel had somehow managed to take several forks for her hair from the kitchen without being noticed. She had figured out that brushing ones hair with a fork wasn't its intended usage, but she saw no harm in doing so and kept on using the one she had first used when she arrived in the castle. Every once in a while she would innocently collect another one from the kitchen to replace the last, but eventually Louis began questioning where so many of the forks had gone. Once the news had spread through the castle to Ariel, she had immediately returned them all, except her first one, which Louis was happy to let her keep.

Despite Ariel still having one fork - and her most precious one at that - Eric had decided only a week or so ago that it would be a nice little extra gift to Ariel to get her some more, as well as ensure that they were easily identifiable from any other forks should they somehow end up in the kitchen.

Ariel recovered from her laughter and placed the box down.

"Thank you," she giggled, as she wrapped her arms around Eric and gave him another kiss.

"You're welcome," he replied, smiling back at her, still feeling quite relieved.

"You were really worried I wouldn't like it," she teased.

"Well, I mean... yeah, a little," he shrugged.

"Just 'a little'? Really?" she smirked.

"Alright, quite a bit," he admitted, "but it's your first Christmas present ever, Ariel. I guess that just made me more worried than I should have been."

"Well, I love it. I love each of them," she told him, tapping his nose with her finger, "And I love you."

Eric's smile broadened as it always did whenever she said those words. "And I love you too." he told her, causing Ariel's smile to widen in return, before they shared a brief kiss.

She then picked the top fork from the box and started brushing her hair with it. "How good do you think I am at using them?" she asked.

"I doubt there's anyone in the world as good as you at doing that," answered Eric, chuckling.

"Oh yeah? Well thank you very much," she laughed, "So why did you choose this one as the one for me to open up here."

"I'm not really sure," he admitted, "I just kinda figured you would wake me up before anyone else would, so I should probably have a present here for you already, and I didn't know if anyone else would understand the... significance of the dinglehoppers, so I chose them. That, and Louis might be a little disappointed if you get forks and he doesn't."

Ariel laughed again, "Yeah, that's fair enough." She placed the dinglehopper back in its box and closed it. "So shall we go down now, or shall we still stay in here a little bit longer?"

Eric looked up at his clock.

"Ariel, it's half past three in the morning. I think we should just stay here and let everyone else sleep a little while longer."

A/N: Merry Christmas to all! I think I mentioned "giving that extra bit more" part of Christmas a few days ago, and this was my actual intention of that, though honestly I wasn't sure if I'd get this up in time. Not gonna lie, if I didn't have it done by now, I probably would've waited to post it until next year, because that's just how I tend to do things. But I have it done, and I'm really glad for that because I really wanted to get two out now as a compensation of sorts for my lack of activity in recent months. I don't know how many people would have time to go on FanFiction on Christmas day anyway, but just in case, you know. This didn't take me as long as they normally do, and I'm not sure if that's too apparent within the writing other than it being shorter, but I think it's made for a decent little one-shot.

But what do you all feel? Do you like or dislike, is it a good Christmas-based story? Feel free to tell me via reviews or favourites. Make sure to check out the stories of those who have reviewed my other stories, they're all great. I hope you enjoyed this story, I'll see you all later, and have a great Christmas. Bye!