Tommy waited until Timmy was prancing right by a big, fluffy piece of popped corn and suddenly swelled the dried cranberry next to it, surprising twirling Timmy, who slipped off the slippery tinsel and crashed into a lower bough of the tree. Satisfied with bumping him down one notch, Tommy swung nimbly up to some porcelain cameos, then some high-hanging balls, repelling like a gymnast. He neared the star at the top when Timmy hit him in the back of the neck with a cold gob of tree sap. Distracted, Tommy smacked right into the star and bounced off, landing on the pointy end of one of the twinkle lights with a shriek that frightened the cats into screaming out the cat door and not stopping until they reached the end of the block. Timmy tittered with innocent glee at this little bit of slapstick, but he stopped laughing, and smiling, then Tommy rushed forward in more than just spirit and crammed him into a clear plastic Christmas ball.

“Now I’ve got you where I want you!” Tommy hissed. “Where your pranks won’t hurt or bother anyone again.”

Timmy yelled and pounded on his plastic prison’s walls, but no sound escaped the sphere. Panicking, he began rocking the ornament back and forth, trying to edge it off the end of the fake plastic branch it hung from, but the ornament hanger seemed to be stuck on some of the fake plastic pine needles. Tommy sighed in the spirit of victory and flowed around the outside of the ball a few times before disappearing inside one of the presents under the tree. Now the pranks and merriment all depended on him, doubling his workload. He hid in the cracks between the presents and bemoaned the absence of his natural and complementary “other.”

“Well, then what’d you go and lock him up for, stupid?” Tammy the Festivus Gnome peered out at him from an oversized bow.

Tommy hacked up a bit of ectoplasm and with a “um, erm, well um” was well on his way to a confession while Timmy’s ornament rocked furiously above them.

Timmy pounded on the inside of his cage with fairy fury flying him round and round inside it until he suddenly straightened up, landed, and grinned. The oxygen in the bubble was getting low and he was becoming delirious. The surface of the ornament shimmered and wavered, as Tommy, keeping an eye on it, so-to-speak, was saying: “I’m a ghost. I crave deprivation. — he’s escaped!”

Tammy looked up at him stiffly.

Tommy bemoaned, “I forgot how powerful fairies become when they get delirious.”

“I think you just like being miserable,” Tammy rolled her eyes.“You whine when he’s loose and you whine when he’s not.”

“It’s so dark. I hate the dark.” Tommy flopped back in despair.

“It’s never dark when there’s a fairy around,” came Timmy’s voice. Tommy and Tammy looked around without seeing Timmy. “Just sayin’.”

“But you’re the Solstice Spirit!” Tammy was astonished. “How can you hate the dark?”

“He said he’s a ghost,” came Timmy’s voice. “Which holiday do ghosts belong to?”

Tommy sat bolt upright, his eyes wide open. “I’ve always wanted to roam abandoned houses and scare trick-or-treaters.” And at that moment, Tommy faded away in a glittering shimmer.

“I’ve always wondered what a Solstice Spirit wanted for Christmas.” Timmy appeared, sitting next to Tammy, a huge grin on his face.