The mezzanine we stood upon looked down over a vast room, like a warehouse, except it was more like a temple dedicated wholly to worshipping Christmas.
I took a few stumbling steps closer to the railing and gripped the wrought iron which was wrapped in holly. Everything in sight was wrapped in holly, or was adorned with bows of wreaths or lights; you get the idea.
Down below in the room, people were working hard at individual stations, but they weren't really people at all.
"Look, Mommy, see? I told you there were real live Elves!"
"Yes, you did, baby." I murmured faintly.
I felt myself grow lightheaded and sag suddenly to the side.
Nick stepped up beside me then, catching me against his shoulder in a way that protected both my body and my feelings.
He smiled down at me. "Wanna go take a closer look? See how all the magic happens?"
I could only nod, speechlessly.
For once, I simply had no words.
*~*~*~*
We slowly descended a spiral staircase, trimmed in garlands of holly, of course.
I was no longer as concerned with keeping my children close to me. The world that I knew, I had just left behind, and they seemed way more comfortable here in this new world than I was.
When we reached the stone floor, we proceeded along down the aisle between all the work stations, but I didn't get very far before I had to stop and stare at what was taking place upon these wooden work stations.
The elves turned with huge, curious, impossibly bright eyes to stare at me like I was the oddity in the room.
They were green. That was the most obvious, striking thing about them.
Not a solid, garish green, but a soft, almost translucent kind of green. They were more slender than humans, with long, clever fingers, and long, green fingernails, and they had sharply pointed ears, as well. Their eyes were, as I said, massive inside their smooth faces, and seemed to be primarily either green or pale gold in color.
They were dressed in simple uniforms; dark trousers and dark green tunics with droopy green hats atop their bald heads. Some of them had long, stark white hair.
There were both male and female Elves, I saw. From what I could see, the work force consisted of only adults, and most of them, if they stood up, would be taller than me.
Some of them had individual trendy accouterments about them that set them apart from the rest; a face of blue facial hair here, a pair of horn-rimmed glasses there.
I even saw some interesting tattoos, and oddly all the elves seemed to be barefoot with little anklets that jangled cheerily as they moved around, so the whole place had a certain melodic atmosphere.
As astonishing as these whimsical creatures were, even more captivating was what they were up to on their individual work stations.
I instinctually reached out for Nick to grip his arm and stabilize myself as I stared down at the surface of one of the tables.
Only distantly was I aware of how he had his hand gently supporting my lower back.
"Wha-wha-what the fuck?" I muttered to myself. Luckily my children were out of earshot by now; scampering around and chatting among the elves like they'd been living here their whole lives.
The elf closest to me was furiously hard at work, ignoring us as she gazed intently down into a large snow globe. Each table had one that the elf was consulting, long green fingers gently encircling the respective globe.
The snow globe contained a calignostic, swirling visage, and for a moment, I couldn't discern anything in it at all.
Then suddenly a little girl appeared within the blizzard. She was alone, with her back to a wall, holding her knees as she wept.
The sight instantly tugged at my heartstrings; her little curly-cues trembling as she sobbed.
The elf wrote something on a piece of parchment paper with a fancy quill pen attached with a great green plume.
I gasped again and jumped when a swirl of sparkle dust lifted off the desk and then a rag doll appeared, just like that. It popped into existence right before my very eyes. One minute I was staring, puzzled, at the swirling, sparkly stuff, the next an old-fashioned Raggedy Ann doll was lying innocently on the work station.
The image of the little girl disappeared and the elf scrawled out a receipt to pin to the doll, then she dropped the doll into a red cart off to the side of her station and rang a little golden bell. "Gift wrapping!" She called out in a voice that sounded a wee bit like a kazoo.
Another little elf, and this one really was a tiny little thing, only coming up to my hip, came trotting up to push the cart away to pick up more items in need of gift wrapping.
I felt like I was going to be sick or faint or something, but Nick gently steered me on in pursuit of my children, who were almost across the room now.
I could barely walk without Nick's arm wrapped around me and I kept absently pinching myself, trying to wake myself from this surreal dream.
As sweet as it was, I think I was ready to return to reality now.
All sorts of things kept appearing, popping into existence to my left and right, making me jump.
And all the while, the swirling images of people; children mostly, though I did see some adults, trapped inside the magical snow globes. They seemed distressed and the overlapping sound of their sobs and moans became like a phantom echo in my head.
Finally we made it to another set of double doors at the far end of the magical warehouse, and we stepped through into an environment that I was infinitely more familiar with.
A kitchen.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Happy holiday reading, everyone! Hope you're enjoying the story so far!
HRH
YOU ARE READING
Happily Ever Christmas
RomanceEmberly Faust first sees Santa Claus when she's just a little girl. HER Santa, however, comes in the unexpected form of a tall, dark, and handsome forty-something. Young Emberly has only one request of Santa that year; for her disenchanted parents t...