Wyvern Protection Unit - Chapter 81: Chapter 81

Two days ago in the Magical Christmas Village…
“Candy Margaret Kane, come back here!” yelled Mrs. Stripes.
But she was too late. Candy had already rushed out the back door. The young Christmas Elf just had to make a break for it. The time to act was now.
Santa’s Magical Christmas Village, aka the North Pole, only existed on the earthly plane for one week out of every human calendar year. The days leading up to Christmas Eve were filled with hustle and bustle.
It truly was the busiest season for all Christmas Elves. There was a ton of work to be done, but Candy Kane had other things on her mind besides tinsel and presents.
She had already squandered half her time doing the same old chores. Candy was a helper. That was not an official title, but as she had yet to choose a specialty, she went where she was needed.
Research and development, building toys, wrapping gifts, even fetching cocoa and cookies, etc. There was a plethora of jobs to choose from. She was just waiting for something to spark.
Candy had once been assigned to product testing, but after the whole tinsel incident of 1889, she’d been asked to not come back there again.
Sigh.
As if that whole thing was her fault! How was she to know they’d used flammable oil to separate each string of tinsel?
Bunch of snowball sniffers!
Candy did not know everything would catch fire when she lit the firepit next to where they were testing. She also had nothing to do with the fact they’d set up shop near an enormous stand of Christmas trees.
Nope. Not on her.
It was a total freak accident. But all those misunderstandings aside, Candy had a deep and abiding love for Santa’s Magical Christmas Village. It was her home.
But this was it.
Her only chance to escape and find out for herself whether her old Granny Elf had been right about Candy’s future. She sucked in a deep, fortifying breath and put a little pep in her step.
The scents of clean snow, hot chocolate, and sugar cookies filled the air. Those homey smells always reminded her of Granny Elf, and she bit back a sob. She missed the old woman fiercely, even though she’d been gone for some time now.
As Christmas Elves, her people tended to live extremely long lives as the time-space continuum worked differently for them. Her grandmother had finally gone to that workshop in the sky after almost a thousand years of hard work and service to Santa, and to Christmas itself, but not before she’d imparted a secret to her favorite granddaughter.
“Sweet Candy,” Granny Elf mumbled in a raspy, weakened voice that was unusual for the spritely woman.
She grasped her granddaughter’s hand tightly and looked at her with twinkling green eyes that were the same Christmasy shade as Candy’s.
“Your destiny is still out there. I’ve seen your happiness in the stars, my girl, and you will find true love, but not here, and not among the other Christmas Village dwellers.”
“But Granny⁠—”
“Hush and let me finish,” Granny said fiercely. “Now, listen here, child. Take heart. You must leave here if you want to find your one true mate.”
“But how will I know it’s time?” Candy asked, eyes wide.
“Look for the signs, Candy. When the stars align, you must seek him out in the human world. During Christmas week, that is when he will appear, you must go to where our kind is forbidden to travel.”
“Granny, you can’t mean that,” she’d responded.
“Oh yes, I mean it. Be brave, Candy, your one true mate is out there. You’ll find him in the blinding white, chilled to the bone, and unknowing of our ways. He will be a challenge, but you will know love, my girl,” she’d said, sighing happily.
“Oh Granny. Hold on.”
“No, it is too late for me. But not you, my child. Yes, you will know love, my sweet Candy. Remember, you will find him when the stars align. You will know when. Only when the time is right. Watch the stars, Candy.”
Watch the stars, her grandmother’s voice echoed in Candy’s brain.
Always a good girl, Candy Margaret Kane had done just that. She watched the heavens for the signs Granny Elf spoke of.
Every fluffing night since.
The years had passed slowly, but all that stargazing had finally paid off. Candy ducked down an alley, untying her apron as she went. It was almost Christmas Eve, and if she didn’t find him and come back before midnight on that night, she’d be stuck in the earthly realm.
“But I need to try,” she whispered to herself.
It was not easy to muster the courage necessary for such an adventure. But after so many bad dates and seeing all her old Elvish school friends mated and having kids, well, Candy just had to try.
She knew the risks, and she was willing to take them. She would simply have to be vigilant. So, she repeated them aloud as she hustled down the street.
“If I return to Santa’s Magical Christmas Village without my one true and fated mate, well, we all just blink out of the earthly plane of existence for what was just another year to the mortals, but hundreds to a Christmas Elf,” she murmured.
Her kind lived so long, that was hardly an issue. However, if her mate was human, then he would be long gone by the time she returned.
“That is why I have to do this,” she whispered fiercely.
Candy could not get stuck in the human world. That would have all sorts of repercussions for the pointy-eared she-Elf. But the idea of another few centuries passing before she returned was simply unfathomable.
Magic sure did work in mysterious ways. Time did not pass the same way in the Christmas realm. How could it? They handled the entire planet’s one night celebration. Holiday preparations of that size could never be performed in a single year for the entire human race.
Everyone knew that.
Candy wanted so much more than the other single Elves seemed to want. She needed more than just making toys and stuffing stockings and going drinking at Jingle Balls The Way, the local Elf lounge, every Saturday night, singing Christmas Karaoke.
She wanted to know what it was like to really live. To experience a love like her Granny and Gramps had back in the olden days.
Fluffernutters. Now, that was love!
Their romance was just tinsel. An epic love story that still made its way around the whispering circle. She wanted that for herself. To be so loved by a man that their romance became legend.
#Aspirations
Candy bit her lip as she pulled her white hat down on her head and covered her pointy ears. Those suckers got cold super-fast if they were left out in the open.
All those silly Christmas cards normals made that showed Elves’ with their ears sticking out had obviously never been to the North Pole. One good wind and those little sensitive appendages could get frostbite. When that happened, it was snip-snip with the old dead tissue, and that was so not a good look on an Elf.
Gave her the shivers just thinking about it. Candy huffed out a sigh and put on her mittens as she snuck down the alley between the cookie makers’ hut and the new snow cone factory.
Nerves had her belly doing flip-flops and her heart pounding. She was so close now. Just a couple more steps—ahhhhhh!
“Pssst! Candy, is that you?”
“Eeek! Jolly, you scared the sprinkle-coated poop outta me,” she hissed, and swatted at the skinny redheaded Elf.
Jolly Golightly, her BFF since she was an Elfling, rubbed his arm after she popped him a good one. Candy grabbed onto his elbow and ducked behind a big barrel of cookie rejects.
The delicious, yet irregular, confections would go to feed the stray polar bears, arctic foxes, and penguins that hung around their magic borders before the end of the day. Of course, they only sent the best cookies out to the children of the world.
“Wow! So, you really are going,” Jolly whispered in awe, as he stared at her with wide eyes.
“Yep, I have no choice, Jolly,” she explained for the tenth time since she told him her plan.
“Okay. Just making sure. Um, anyway, I got you this!” Jolly giggled nervously, and Candy slapped a hand over his mouth.
“For fluff’s sake, Jolly, shush it or we’ll get caught,” she whispered.
“Sorry, I just can’t believe you’re really going out there,” he said and handed her a small backpack filled with snacks and the necessary human identification papers she’d need for travel, since she did not know where exactly her adventure would take her.
“Of course I am going. Granny said I would find my true love only when the stars aligned and I’ve been looking every night, Jolly. This has to be it. Look,” she said and took out her Sparkle Phone 12.7.
It was the best and latest model, of course, and showed Jolly the picture she’d gotten off the Santa-2069-009 satellite. They’d rocketed that bad boy into outer space to orbit the planet over a thousand years before the humans had invented anything close to it. In fact, they were the ones who’d slipped that technology into the sugar plum dreams of human scientists a couple of decades ago.
Elves were one of the most technologically advanced supernaturals. Magic and science were intricately woven together, something every Elf knew. Candy and Jolly included.
The one thing normals had over Elves, far as she could tell, was the ability to use cusswords. And boy, was she envious! Jingle balls and snow cruncher were some of the worst things a Christmas Elf could say about something. They were just hard-wired that way.
Sigh.
It made sense, considering Christmas Elves were made from pure goodness. Their very nature was on the side of good, and that meant cursing was just not possible. Even though Candy’s rep had her pegged as one of the naughtiest Elves in the whole village.
Still, she had to make do with a lot of fluffs, poops, and snickerdoodle-oos when she was mad. And that was quite often these days. But what could she say?
Candy was tired of being alone. She’d tried dating apps and office hook-ups, but she had never felt that special zing.
You know the one. It was that one singular sensation preceding an unparalleled, oh-so-clever connection to the one and only person Candy was destined to be with.
That was what she was after. The spark that would only appear when she finally met her one true and fated soul mate.
“You see. Just there,” she said to Jolly, and pointed up to the shining North Star in the dark velvet sky.
“The stars Polaris, Dubhe, and Mehrak are perfectly aligned. That doesn’t happen very often, Jolly. This has to be the sign Granny was talking about.”
Jolly opened his Ghoulgle app, tracking the three prominent stars of Ursa Minor and Major she’d just named, and gasped. Candy nodded, sighing heavily as he came to the same conclusion she had.
To the untrained eye, it looked as though they always sort of lined up, but not when looking at them through images taken from space. For the first time in many, many centuries, all three were perfectly aligned.
It was the sign. Candy just knew it.
“I mean, I guess so. And if you’re sure,” Jolly said, scratching his prominent red hair, he shrugged.
“Then okay, Candy Kane, here, I wanted to offer you this,” he said and handed Candy what looked like a small foil wrapped candy.
“A truth mint?”
“Yep. I’ve been saving it.”
“But Santa banned these after the Christmas Elf Truth Bomb Party of 1965,” she said, staring wide-eyed at the little ticking bomb.
Truth mints were one of those inventions that got put on the back burner after a trial run among the Elf population had caused riotous discord and an almost complete shutdown of all toy and Christmas related accessory production. It was a total mess.
One that Candy had absolutely no hand in, she was both proud and disappointed to say. Weird, she knew. But fluffin’ snowflakes was that a party!
“Um, Jolly, why would I want a truth mint?”
“well, to see if the man you find is your true mate, of course. Candy, look,” Jolly explained as if she was a child.
“We aren’t like Shifters or even Vampires, you know. We don’t have that sixth sense that just lets us know when our mate is there. The truth mint will let you know for sure whether the guy you shack up with is truly yours.”
“Wow! Okay then, thanks,” she returned and tucked it in her backpack.
“Hurry, you need to go before they sound the alarms,” Jolly said, checking the street for any signs of the Elf Security Officer in the area.
“You are right. Bye, Jolly, and thank you! I’ll let you know where I land,” Candy whispered.
Biting back the tears, she grabbed her backpack and waved goodbye one last time before heading out into the frozen wonderland of the Arctic.
One could never be too sure just where exactly the North Pole would pop up each year, but Candy didn’t care. She was an Elf on a mission.
What could be more worthy an adventure than searching for her one true and fated mate on the earthly plane before Santa’s Magical Christmas Village disappeared until the next Christmas?
She could not think of one. Heart pounding and excitement buzzing in her veins like so much Peppermint Schnapps, Candy started walking.
She was going to succeed, she just knew it.
No matter what, she nodded to herself as the cold bite of the polar wind stung her skin through her normally very comfortable faux fur jacket.
She’d forgotten the weather was carefully controlled inside the village by Santa’s magic. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to freeze her snickerdoodles right off!
Oh well, she shrugged and wrapped her scarf tightly around her neck.
There was no turning back now. She had until midnight on Christmas Eve—approximately one earth day to find her mate, bring him back to the village, show proof of her claim to the big man himself, or it was bye-bye Candy for another hundred years!
Like in the Christmas realm, that plane of reality where the North Pole existed for the Elves and other Christmas creatures was slow moving for a single Elf. She really wanted someone to share it with, she realized with a whispered prayer.
Please, powerful Fates, if you are listening, let me find my mate this day.
There was no guarantee that she would find her mate now or later. None at all. Hope was all she had. That and Granny Elf’s predictions!
This was her shot, and she wasn’t going to throw it away!
“He’ll be there,” she vowed before putting her goggles on and strapping her backpack tight around her waist.
“I’ll find my mate. I just know it.”