The morning arrived in a flurry of twinkling lights, jingling bells, and the unmistakable sound of someone’s slipper being violently assassinated in the hallway. In the warm glow of the living room, Athena the husky reclined atop a mountain of blankets like a Victorian duchess recovering from the scandal of someone using the wrong salad fork. With her sleek black, grey, and white coat and her two dramatic eyes, one the icy blue of a winter storm, the other the warm brown of a Christmas pudding that’s seen things, she radiated elegance.
Or at least she would have, if she didn’t currently have a stolen bauble wedged between her front teeth like a jewel thief mid-getaway.
She wasn’t chewing it.
She was simply… holding it.
Suspiciously. Intentionally. Possibly menacingly.
Obito the malamute. Her brother. Her chaos. Her burden. Her joy. Her walking carpet, stumbled into the room like a merry avalanche with legs. At only one year old, he was already the size of a well-fed reindeer and covered in fluff thick enough to repel arrows, insults, and basic reasoning. Powered entirely by affection, clumsiness, and the single brain cell Athena leased to him on weekdays, Obito bounced in with his black face and tan eyebrows raised in permanent “Who, me?” innocence.
Seeing his sister, he greeted her with a hearty, enthusiastic forehead lick, Athena’s personal equivalent of being slimed by a well-meaning swamp creature. She did not appreciate being moisturised.
His tail wagged with such force that it generated its own weather system, which immediately toppled a plate of mince pies. Obito trotted over to the fallen pastries with great intensity, not to eat them, no, he merely needed to examine their moral integrity with several deep investigative sniffs.
Athena spat out her bauble at once. She was dramatic, stubborn, allergic to wet paws, and in possession of more personality than should be legally allowed, but she was NOT stupid. Any pastry within Obito’s gravitational pull was a warzone. She valued her life.
Outside, the garden lay cold and frosty, sparkling like a diamond mine. Athena considered it “hostile terrain unfit for Princess paws,” despite happily trekking through knee-deep mud on hikes as if she were competing for “Most Heroic Explorer Canine Division.” The garden, however, was a mere three meters of slightly damp grass, which meant she tiptoed across it like a Victorian lady discovering someone had moved her fainting couch.
Christmas was always unpredictable. The humans never knew when Athena would suddenly decide the living room required urgent patrolling, sprinting full-speed through the house and clearing the sofa in a dramatic arc like a furry Olympic pole-vaulter. They also never knew when Obito would attempt the same maneuver, forgetting that he weighed as much as a small motorcycle and had the aerodynamic grace of a dropped backpack.
The tree stood beautifully decorated. The room smelled like pine, cinnamon, and the quiet but powerful threat of chaos.
Athena surveyed the scene with the calculating expression of a small, furry mastermind. She saw the gifts. She saw the stockings. She saw a stuffed snowman toy under the tree, looking smug and blissfully unaware that it had approximately two minutes left to live once Obito noticed it. She saw… possibility.
Obito, meanwhile, saw only one thing, cookies cooling on the table.
He made his approach with the stealth of a fridge falling down a staircase.
Athena rolled her eyes so hard she nearly saw her past lives. She leapt from her blanket throne with swan-like grace and intercepted him before he could hoover up the treats. Her motive was not noble. She had already mentally filed those cookies under “Athena’s Personal Snacks.”
Somewhere between her body-blocking him and him licking her entire face in thanks, they both crashed directly into the presents.
The sound was catastrophic.
Wrapping paper detonated into the air like confetti at a Mardi Gras parade. Ribbons shot across the room. The stuffed snowman met its fluffy, tragic death. Obito stood in the epicenter of the destruction, tongue hanging out, eyes sparkling with pride as if he had single-handedly saved Christmas by destroying it. He looked moments away from ascending into the heavens.
Athena stood beside him with the dignified posture of a monarch watching her kingdom be ransacked by a village of overly friendly goats. One ear twitched. Her brown eye narrowed. Her blue eye widened. Together they formed the universal expression for,
“I did NOT sign up for this.”
Just as the humans burst in, eyes wide, voices rising, ready to declare household martial law, something magical happened.
Obito panicked.
And in classic Obito-fashion, he launched himself onto the nearest human and delivered a kiss capable of drowning a fully grown adult.
Athena, unwilling to let him monopolize the pity, immediately rolled onto her back, paws in the air, tail doing delicate angelic wiggles, radiating the innocent glow of a creature who could never commit a crime. Not even hypothetically. Certainly not within the last thirty seconds.
Her eyes said,
“I am beauty. I am grace. I was absolutely nowhere near that destroyed present, Your Honor.”
The humans melted.
As always.
Because remaining mad at Princess Athena and Mr. Toe Beans was physically impossible. Cosmically impossible. Written in ancient prophecy impossible.
Later that night, after the cookies had been rescued, the presents re-wrapped, the snowman buried with full military honors, and the living room restored, the dogs curled up together in a gigantic nest of blankets.
Athena tucked her face into Obito’s mountain of fluff, secretly enjoying the warmth but maintaining her official position of “mildly inconvenienced royalty.” Obito rested his chin on her back, sighing like a man who had completed a great heroic quest (because he had, in his mind).
Snow drifted against the window.
The world grew quiet.
If you listened closely, you could hear Obito snoring gently… and Athena whispering to herself,
“If he drools on me again, I’ll commit a festive crime…”
But she stayed right there anyway.
Because it was Christmas.
And even dramatic princesses love their gigantic, clumsy, lovable disaster brothers at Christmas.
Merry Christmas from Athena the Princess, Miss Pants Extraordinaire, and Obito, Mr. Toe Beans, the fluffiest chaos gremlin the holiday season has ever known.

©️Lainey Green Intwined.blog

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