Mirror hated Christmas.
Well, not exactly. Sounds melodramatic when you put it like that, doesn't it. The correct phrase would be: Mirror hated the lack of Christmas s/he'd had in the past three years.
And now he was spending the holidays in the Mansion, with a bunch of other students who had nowhere else to go, and it didn't make his mood any better, not one bit.
All right, Chtulhu might have had something to do with that too.
Fighting a monster was at least something to do. It was also something to sleep on, and Maya slept through most of Christmas day. When she woke up it was already dark outside, and snowing, and the Christmas spirit that somehow leaked in through closed doors and windows finally got to her.
And reminded her she had Stuff To Do.

She was planning on doing it sooner, but Chtulhu changed her plans. She would have preferred to do it as Gawain too, but it didn't really matter now... not like anyone would see her doing it anyway. What does it matter if Santa is a chick, ya're not supposed to spy on him, get back to bed, now.
She already knew where Twyla's room was - the one she shared with the Rapunzel girl - she chanced upon it totally by accident one day when she was poking around in the Mansion. Twyla wasn't there, but it was easy to spot it was her place, familiar clothes and all that.
She climbed into the mirror in her room, and started walking. She glanced into rooms she passed; most of them were empty, in some of them people were already asleep, others had Christmas lights and music - she quickly slipped through those. Finally arriving to Bubblegum's room, she peeked in through the mirror.
The room was empty. Hmm.
She knew Twyla stayed in the Mansion for the holidays. She didn't know why, but with mutant kids this was always a delicate issue... family.
Is it better to have one that hates you than not having one?
Philosophy. BS.
She also knew about Twyla's birthday. How?...
Well, the files were not exactly kept locked away behind iron doors. It only took some luck and some stealth.
It. Was. Not. Stalking.
One thing for sure: Twyla spent her birthday and Christmas in the school instead of going home, and apparently not many people knew about it. There was only one phrase to describe that: it sucked. Mirror knew that first hand.

She reached out of the mirror, and placed her presents on Bubblegum's desk. After that, she lingered for a minute or two, not really sure what she was waiting for, if she was waiting for anything at all... she finally turned around, and walked back to her room.

On the first day of Christmas, my mirror gave to me...

Okay, so it was not something big and flashy. It wasn't even wrapped. But it was two separate presents, because if there was anything else that sucked beyond not celebrating it, it was having your B-day this close to Christmas.
She left two pairs of hairpins on the table: one pair was made of wood, curiously resembling a pair of chopsticks, but carved more pretty, with strings of glass beads hanging from the end, and on the end of each string a tiny red-gold autumn leaf. The other pair was bubblegum pink (trust it to the Chinese to make stuff like that), with a pair of pink flowers on the end.
(And he paid for them too. Well, he paid for one pair, because that was all he could pay for; the second pair he charmed out of the girl in the jewelry shop. Gawain could talk, if it was for a good cause...)
There was a note to both of them:
One said "Happy Birthday. G."
The other said "Merry Xmas. M."

The door slammed with more forced than was needed and wet camouflage chucks were mercilessly kicked off of feet and into the wall. Stocking-covered feet slowly padded there way across the room. Twyla’s good arm was laden with the random groceries she had spent some of her ‘just in case’ money on. Her left arm was still recovering from the battle of the day before and sported a purple wrist brace and some bandages. She was tired and cranky and just a little depressed. Usually the holidays didn’t get to her but usually the holidays were not spent fighting giant scary monsters in Central park or in New York City at all for that matter. This was the second Christmas in as many years that she hadn’t been home to enjoy it. Luckily, there was a cure to these bad feelings and that cure was junk food. Maybe it wasn’t a permanent cure and maybe it wasn’t as healthy as talking about her feelings with someone but being alone and eating an entire box of Twinkies sounded like an awesome time to a girl who was on the edge of a melt down.

The Twinkies were to comfort her as she nursed her wounds and disappointment alone in her room. Sugary snacks would keep her from crying, at least that was the thought process. Twyla didn’t particularly like to cry and ever since she got the call from her mother canceling her Christmas plans that’s all she’d felt like doing. Sure, a giant monster in Central park had kept her distracted for a while but she’d really rather not find another clay monster to charge at, not for a while at least. More than once it had occurred to her that maybe, just maybe she could tell someone about her mom blowing her off but that felt like whining about her problems. Sure, there was a pretty good chance that Henrietta or Maya/Gawain would listen to her sob story and try to make her feel better but for whatever reason that felt selfish–there were so many kids at the Mansion who had it worse than her, at least her family hadn’t run her out of town with pitch forks or something...at least she still had a family. If anyone asked she told them her parents were going out of town for the holidays. Technically they were, at least that’s what they told her.

She probably could have told someone about her birthday as well, there was no sob story in that, but it never really came up and she didn’t want to make people feel obligated to celebrate it or anything. It’d be easier to just let it pass by unnoted. In total truth she had forgotten about it until the week of, time had really gotten away from her it seemed. It didn’t really matter anyway, it was just a day after all.

To top all of the holiday blues and lack of birthday wishes Twyla had nightmares as she slept of slimy tentacles weaving themselves around her. Silent screams were torn from her throat when she woke and she had been too frightened to go back to sleep. Hence the trip to Walgreens that resulted in twenty dollars worth of unhealthy food that was probably going to give her a stomach ache...but what a glorious stomach ache it would be. The girl was about to rip open a bag of Doritos when something on her desk caught her eye. Something didn’t seem right. Had she put something over there? The rest of her room was in a state of constant chaos but Twyla usually kept her workspace clean of clutter–the better to study with. Had she put something on her desk?

Padded steps made a beeline from the bed to the writing table. What was found there was really a total surprise: two sets of hair pins that looked quite a bit like chopsticks were sitting on a pile of her papers. Next to them were two notes, that read: ‘Happy Birthday. G.’ and ‘Merry Xmas. M.’. Very carefully Twyla picked up one of the wooden ones and held it closer to her face for further examination. On the end of it was a string of glass beads and a tiny goldy-red leaf. Brown eyes were suddenly wet with happily surprised tears. The hair pin was just as carefully placed back on the table before free hands went to work on the mass of tangled blonde and pink hair, working the knots into a bun on the top of her head with a hair tie procured from the good wrist. Twyla leaned down so that she could arrange the wooden sticks in her hair in front of the mirror.

She smiled at the result and that smile stayed on her face for the rest of the day as she randomly distributed Twinkies, Ho Hos, and suckers to students with a bright and cheery “Merry Christmas”.

When Twyla returned to her room that night she sat on her bed and pondered the events of the day. There had to be a way to pay Maya back for the gifts, but how?

As soon as Twyla found the appropriate response the gesture would be repaid.