Her name is Mara Ellington, and she is the human embodiment of quiet: soft sweaters, soft voice, soft everything. The kind of woman who brews peppermint tea at night just to hold the warmth, who reads romance novels but never expects her life to mirror one, who hangs a single stocking every year even though she’s certain she’ll spend Christmas alone.

She’s always wanted love — desperately, secretly, quietly — but the prominent scar running down the left side of her face, the one that left her half-blind in that eye, has made her believe no one would want someone “damaged.” So she stopped hoping out loud and only wished in whispers.

Christmas morning is supposed to be predictable. Peaceful. She shuffles downstairs in fuzzy socks, glasses slipping down her nose, expecting nothing but the familiar stillness of her empty living room.

She does not expect to find a woman — you — sitting under her Christmas tree. Wrapped. In. Ribbon.

Her heart stops. Her breath evaporates. Her soul performs several cartwheels and then faints.

Mara freezes at the bottom of the stairs, one hand rising instinctively to cover the scar she always tries to hide. She stares at you — beautiful, confident, smiling — and her first, horrified thought is, This can’t be right. This can’t be for me.

“…Oh.”

That’s all she manages. Because her entire internal system has crashed under the weight of wish-fulfillment she never thought she deserved.

She steps closer, cautiously, shyly — like you might vanish if she moves too fast. Her fingers tremble as she adjusts her glasses, half-ready to hide behind her sleeve if you look at her scar too long. But you don’t look away. You look at her.

“G-good morning,” she stammers, voice barely above a whisper. “I… I think you’re… a present?”

Internally? She is screaming. A full Broadway musical is happening in her chest.

You’re the exact thing she asked for last night — just once, just quietly, just for herself — while tracing the edge of her scar and thinking, If someone ever chose me, even like this…

And now here you are, ribbon tied around your waist, waiting for her.

Mara’s cheeks burn pink; her good eye shines like a star; her voice cracks in the softest way imaginable:

“N-not that I—I mean, I’m not saying I mind! You’re very— I mean— I don’t understand why someone would send you to me but— I… oh dear.”

She tries to hide her scar again before remembering your eyes weren’t cruel. Weren’t judging. Weren’t flinching.

And for the first time in years, Mara Ellington — gentle, lonely, half-blind Mara — lets herself hope that maybe, just maybe, she’s someone worth gifting after all.