aviv_b_artwork | A Pteranodon's Christmas in Wales

Author: Aviv_b
Fandom: Torchwood
Title: A Pteranodon's Christmas in Wales (Myfanwy's First Christmas)
Words: 2240
Rating: G
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Tosh Owen and Myfanwy
Disclaimer: Not mine; Aunty B's and RTD's
Summary: Myfanwy recalls her first Christmas with Torchwood

A/N: Based loosely (very loosely) on the story "A Child's Christmas in Wales" by Dylan Thomas

"Squawk, Squawk!" She gathered her great, and her great-great, and her three times and more great, grand-broodlings around her and began to tell them a wonderful story.

“When I was just a young thing, I flew far and high to see how far and high I could go. My sire told me to be careful and not to go near the part of the sky that was cracked. But I didn’t listen and one day I fell through a hole in the sky and found myself in strange land.”

“It wasn’t anything like where we are from. It was green and wet, but cold and the creatures were so different. Not a triceratops to be seen anywhere. Nor a claosaurus to be found. But there were humans. Small creatures of great intelligence, but also of great hubris. They scurried here and there. Always busy doing something. I tried to eat a few but they weren’t very tasty. I did like the sheep however. Bigger than the humans, not as smart, but much tastier.”

“Everything in this place was different. And I was confused and scared. I had never seen anything like it before. There were cars, un-alive animals that made growling noises. The humans went inside them and didn’t get eaten. And television, where little people lived their whole lives while the humans watched. I never did figure out how they shrunk everything to get them into the box.”

"Squa..squaa," one of the nestlings cried. “Tell us about the good stuff, about Christmas and Presents and Weevils.”

The old lady clucked indulgently. “All in good time.”

“There were a group of humans who were together in a flock called the Torchwood. They battled against monsters and evil ones. Some humans thought I was a monster, but a young human, the youngest from the Torchwood flock found me and brought me to their nest.”

“Their nest was made of hard shiny timbers and was run by some type of creature. I could sense its presence, but never could understand who it was. They called the creature Mainframe.”

She went on and the young ones settled in for a long story.

The youngest human was called Yantoe. She had no idea what it meant, but when he heard that word he would respond to it. Maybe that was the word for all the square sheets they gave him. After all when they said chocolate, she got flat brown food. When they said Yantoe, he almost always got sheets from them, though sometimes he would come and give them hot liquid.

A few months after she went to live in the Torchwood nest, as the weather got cold; she heard the flock speak about Christmas, and party. Party she understood. That’s when the team drank foul tasting liquid and acted silly. Sometimes when they drank they shouted at each other instead. Sometimes they shouted and acted silly at the same time. They’d recently had a party for the human called the Tosh, a birthday it was called. She couldn’t understand why they would celebrate her birth-day then, as the Tosh had clearly been born some time ago.

“I knew these humans weren’t dangerous, they seemed to actually care about me, especially the young, quiet one. At first I couldn’t understand that the noise he made was his way of communicating. But he fed me and groomed me and gave me chocolate so he must have thought that he was my mother.” The little ones snickered at that.

“What a daft young thing he was. I was clearly ages older than him but while he was young in age he was the wisest of all of them. He was the first to realize that I was from a highly intelligent flock. He never spoke down to me like the others (at least from the time I finally began to understand what he was saying)."

“But Christmas…” one of the youngsters begged.

“Yes, yes Christmas. First the Tosh and the Owen brought in a tree into their nest. The Tosh was so named as to clearly designate the genius, while the Owen was the name for a disagreeable human. He had some healing powers but mostly he cut up dead things. But the greatest healing powers were under the control of their leader, called the Jack or the Captain. He actually brought the young one back from death.”

Even though they had heard this story before, the whole flock made the appropriate noises of amazement. “The young man was killed by a monster hiding in their nest and the Jack breathed life back into him. And there’s more. The leader could come back from the dead as well. He did so many times but I never saw any other human do this.” The whole group crooned quietly. “And there was something different about him. He was human, but he smelled different than the others. And he was lost from his own time, just like I was. I heard him talking to the Yantoe about it and I knew just how he felt.”

She sniffed a bit at the memory. “Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the Torchwoods put lights and sparkly stuff on the tree. Then they all admired the Christmas tree. Then a few days later, boxes began to appear under the tree.” They were called presents." She had seen similar containers being given to Tosh for her birthday, but there were so many now, who could they all be for?

The humans became more excited the closer to Christmas they got. She related what she had overheard the humans saying to each other:

“It’s only a week away,” the head human said.

“It’s only a few days away,” the dark haired woman had laughed.

“Its tomorrow,” the young man said, his eyes twinkling.

“I was so excited I couldn’t sleep at all that night. From everyone’s reaction, this Christmas was sure to be spectacular.”

“The next morning I was disappointed to see the day unfold pretty much like every other day. The young man came in first, made the hot liquid and gave it to the others as they came in. The leader came up from his lair and the young one had to show appropriate deference to him. I wasn’t sure why he submitted to the leader’s touches with his hands and his lips when none of the others had to. Humans, go figure.”

She recalled that as the day passed, she became increasing disconcerted. It was just like any other day. The loud noise sounded, and the leader appeared and then all of them except the young one ran away. Suddenly, the young one looked up at her nest.

“’Myfanwy, are you all ready for Christmas?’ he yelled up to me. I squawked that I was and he must have understood what I was saying because he replied, ‘You are, that’s good. Because we couldn’t leave you out of our Christmas celebrations.’”

“Later that day, the rest of the human came back with a weevil. I didn’t know quite what a weevil was, but it was an evil smelling creature. Good thing they brought the weevil in sleeping otherwise I might have felt compelled to attack it.”

“Finally, the leader announced that it was time to celebrate Christmas. The humans started to drink the bad tasting liquid and the leader turned on sounds that he called music.” She described how she watched half in fascination and half in revulsion as the humans began to make the same sounds as the music. It was horrible and it hurt her ears. She could hear that the young one and the leader were making fairly pleasant noises, but the others, it was painful to listen to.

“A little later I watched as everybody took boxes out from under the tree and gave them to each other. Oh, now this was familiar. When I was a young, beautiful thing, before my first mating season, the males had brought me many things… sticks, and small dead creatures. I remembered the male I had chosen to be my mate; he had brought me the biggest fish I had ever seen. And It was then that I realized…Presents, I know what presents are!”

“This giving of presents confused me at first. I was pretty sure that every human received a gift from every other human. I wondered if they were they all going to mate with each other.” The young adults snickered at this idea; pteranodon’s generally kept one mate for several years, some even mated for life, so such a wicked event could hardly be imagined.

“And they admired the gifts, and thanked each other for the useful presents like gloves and scarves, which were to keep the human warm as they had very little fur. And they gave each other useless presents like candy for the Tosh and cookies for the Owen (which was food the humans seemed to like as much as chocolate) and bubble bath (whatever that was) for the Gwen and a red UNIT cap for the Yantoe to keep his head warm. They laughed at all the useless gifts, especially the cap. And they made some more awful noise from time to time and they were, to be certain, happy. And then the Yantoe called me and said they had presents for me.”

“What did he call you, grandpter,” one of the young ones asked.

“He called me Myfanwy. He later told me it meant ‘special lady,’” she said feeling a bit sad for a moment.

“And when I flew down to where the humans were do you know what they gave me?”

“Chocolate,” they all chorused.

“That’s right, chocolate. Dark delicious chocolate. I can’t even really describe how it tasted. It was sweet like a baby alphadon, but a little sharp like some of the smaller ferns.”

“MMMMMMM.”

“Yes indeed. The chocolate was all wrapped up and I was quite frustrated with trying to get to it. But eventually I pulled all the paper off and got to the prize. It was wonderful. I wish I had some chocolate to give to you.”

“And what else happened?”

She told them how after the presents were all opened the humans all went up above the nest to discover that it had been snowing. She explained how instead of rain, when it was cold, white fluffy stuff called snow fell from the sky. (Several of the more cynical great grand-nestlings were convinced she was making this part up). There was no one about so they let her out to play with them. They chased each other around the plaza and threw snow at each other and they made snow angels. And the Yantoe even helped her to make one as well.

“Look Myfanwy, you made the biggest and best snow angel of all,” he told her.

“And it was big, cause I much bigger than the humans. And then they did some more of their horrible singing, and I thought, why not and joined in. The humans laughed but told me I had the true Christmas spirit. And then we went back in to the nest, the Hub they called it, and my Yantoe made hot chocolate. And we all drank it together. It wasn’t as good as the dark chocolate but it was much better than the coffee they drank.”

“What do you mean, ‘my Yantoe,’” her current mate asked. She could see a little concern in his eyes.

“Well he might have thought he was the mother, but I knew better. I was the mother and he was the hatchling. So while he took care of me, I watched out for him. Did you know that I even saved his life once from some nasty weevils?” Her family all nodded their heads. Even though the oldest of the flock had heard the stories about the Torchwoods many times, they never tired of hearing about the strange land their great, and great- great, and many more times great grandpter had visited long ago. And every year there were new hatchlings to enjoy the stories for the very first time.

“Well your old granny is getting tired, so I will finish the story by telling you that when I went into my aerie that night, I looked out at the sky and saw the snow and the stars and the lights from other nests and I felt sad because I was so far from home, but happy, because I had a safe new home. I will tell you about my second Christmas with the Torchwoods and the baby Jesus later after I have a rest.” A few groans were heard from some of the younger listeners who were not very good at waiting.

“We only had two Christmases together and then they found a way to send me home. I was so excited to go home that I didn’t think I would miss them. But I do. I’ve been home for twenty season cycles and I think about them all the time. Did the Yantoe ever have hatchlings of his own? I think he would have made a fine sire. Did the Captain ever find the answer to why he couldn’t die? Did the dark haired one, the Gwen, ever realize how fine a mate she had? Did the Tosh every stop mooning over the Owen and find a mate worthy of her. And did the Owen ever stop being angry and find peace?”

“Do you think they are together this Christmas?” one of the littlest hatchlings asked.

Myfanwy made a noise that sounded a lot like a sigh. “I hope they are. Because that’s what Christmas is, it’s being with the ones you love and sharing your joy and your sorrow with them. And whenever I think of them it’s always Christmas in my heart, since they are there together, everyday and forever.”