Rudolph Saves Christmas

1: Snow is Falling

It was snowing. Heavily.

Great big flakes as big as your hand were drifting down to Earth. They were taking their time, not rushing or falling so quickly they'd land on your nose before you'd even seen the snowflake coming for you. Why rush? Snow didn't know what Time was. It didn't know three seconds from twenty minutes, so they simply drifted down.

It was cold. Cold enough to turn the water from a dripping tap into an icicle in less than a heartbeat. Cold enough to turn your nose to a frozen lump of skin that couldn't sniff a wet dog in a dry kennel. Cold enough to make your fingers go blue even if you had on two pairs of gloves and kept your hands shoved so deep into your armpits they almost became bears in hibernation.

It was cold enough that the snowflakes knew they were going to be quite safe casually dropping down to lay on the path or road or garden or field. Nothing was going to make them melt as they covered the tree branches in their white blanket. They slowly erased the landscape, blending one feature into another until the only thing that could be seen was a white mass of nothing. Some great giant had opened a tin of emulsion and turned it upside down, letting the contents paint the world in a huge coat of brilliant, glaring, white.

Cars had become bumps, houses were ripples in the landscape and somewhere a Dalmatian howled for its owner to open the door and let it into the warmth.

The snow didn't care. It did the only thing it knew how to. It fell.

It was the night before Christmas Eve. Everyone - the newspapers, the parents, the guys on TV and the postman - all said it was going to be a 'white Christmas'. Of course it was. It didn't take a genius to know that waist deep snow didn't disappear overnight. It didn't matter, though. It would be a white Christmas and people were excited - apart from not being able to move their cars or walk more than four steps without becoming frozen solid and needing to be thawed out in front of the fire for an hour or two before their teeth would stop chattering and their knees would stop knocking - each trying to see who could knock the loudest, or if they could do it in time with each other.

Rudolph was sitting in his armchair dozing. He'd been out trying to dig his way to the front gate and had given up after three hours. As fast as he'd dug a pathway to the outside world, the snow had sneaked up behind him and filled it back in again.

So Rudolph was tired, and he was having a well- earned rest. He planned to wake in about half an hour, just in time for tea, and he would then be nicely refreshed and ready for the meeting.

In the run-up to Christmas, whilst Santa and his elves were putting the finishing touches to the presents and making sure they knew which children had been Naughty or Nice or couldn't decide which was which, the reindeer had nightly planning meetings. They had to figure out the best routes to take to cover each house across the world in the shortest time possible. Once upon a time it had been easy. Once upon a time it had all been villages and little collections of houses huddled together trying to be a village. Cities had never been heard of and towns were odd places where houses had forgotten where they were and wandered around until they'd found other dwellings in the same predicament.

Now, though, villages were in danger of being washed away by the constant building of new estates and towns were bundling together to try and be pretend they were cities.

Houses were everywhere, and it made Santa's job - and thus that of his reindeer - sooo much harder. Even with a sat-nav being built into the new sporty sleigh they were trying out this year, getting round every house was going to be a major task. So, the reindeer planned, down to the finest detail, the route they'd take. It wasn't necessarily a good idea to visit one child and then drop by his friend next door. It might be quicker and easier to pop across to the other side of the country and catch the friend on the way back, taking in the next street along the way.

The reindeer enjoyed their meetings. They felt like they were playing a part this year instead of just pulling the sleigh and letting Santa take all the credit.

Now, don't get the wrong idea about them. The reindeer loved their job, and looked forward to nothing more than Christmas Eve, when they'd get their wings and be able to fly for that one solitary night of the year. The thing was, Santa was always the one that everyone talked about. It was Santa this, and Father Christmas that. People couldn't even remember all the reindeer names.

It wasn't Santa's fault. It was obvious that the one you'd remember would be the big guy in the red suit with the bushy beard that brought you the goodies.

How could a reindeer compete with that?

So they'd plan and they'd talk, and sometimes they'd argue. But in the end they just wanted it to all go smoothly.

Rudolph snored loudly. The snow that settled upon the roof did so quietly so as not to wake the snoozing reindeer. The odd flake drifted down the chimney to see the famous leader of Santa's sleigh team in action - even if that action included sleeping in a comfy chair.

Rudolph yawned and slipped further into sleep, oblivious to his frozen audience.

Within a few moments he was snoring softly, the odd snicker and grunt indicating he was dreaming.

Half an hour went by, during which his slumber was filled with dreams of soaring through the clouds with a sack of presents on his back - just him, the air and the gifts.

A crash. Not in his dream, but in his kitchen. Hushed mutterings. The sounds of something being bumped into and someone telling them to be quiet. Then, just as Rudolph managed to sit up and shake the tiredness from his eyes, darkness fell.