by C. D. Gorri
Candy was hundreds of years old, as Elves aged differently than normals, and virginal to boot, but even she recognized that Medjed was pretty much built for sex. He had the most incredible physique. And that masculine part of him was by far the most magnificent dick she’d ever seen.
Okay, so yeah, she’d seen her fair share of erotic movies, or, er porn. She was an Elf not a Saint. Elvish bachelorette parties were remarkably similar to human traditions, though in Candy’s opinion supernaturals were far superior in the package department.
Elves came in many shapes and sizes, but Christmas Elves were very close in both to humans. Hence, their preference for human-like traditions. I.E. pornography.
Anyway, how she got off on that tangent she had no idea. She only knew that Medjed had earned the nickname “sword of the ancient Egyptian underworld” for more than his prowess with his khopesh.
Giggle. Snort. NO, wait, this was not funny. He was still a two-timer and her heart was still broken. She worked on getting her thoughts organized. Then her eyes snapped to his.
“Where are the dogs?” she asked distractedly, looking behind him for any sign of the team of Huskies that she’d grown to love.
“They are fine, rohi,” he smiled warmly as if pleased by her question and she wanted to kick him in the shins, “some of your friends took them from me outside and promised to feed and water them. I trust they will be cared for.”
Medjed spoke calmly and assuredly as if he knew how much it meant to her that they were safe. Fine. Easy guess, she figured. After all, she was a softy for most animals.
“Yeah, the Elves will take fine care of them,” she exhaled and turned her face so as not to have to meet his unrelenting stare.
Medjed had the most infuriating way of seeing exactly what it was she wanted whenever he looked at her. Of course, mostly what she had wanted was him naked and making love with her. The wonderful bliss that she had experienced in his arms had been better than anything the inexperienced Christmas Elf had ever known.
Jingle balls, she was so screwed. Sure, she’d snagged a kissed or two under the mistletoe after so many hundreds of holiday office parties, but Candy was a hopeless romantic.
She’d saved herself for her one and only. The thing was, her one and only already had a mate. Pain rocked her to her core and she wanted to cry but managed to hold herself together.
That no good toffee-toothed snow blower! Rrrr.
How had she come to love him so completely in so short a time? And he’d lied to her! Completely pulled the wool over her dazzled and gullible gumdrop green eyes! Candy bit her lip and exhaled through her nose..
“Please don’t gnaw your soft lips that way, rohi, you will do yourself injury, and I cannot abide that,” he said, cinnamon scent growing stronger and she gasped, realizing he had somehow moved and was now right in front of her.
“How did he get there?”
“The guy blinked!”
“That is so hot!”
“Check out his assets in those snow pants!”
Her fellow Elves needed to learn to whisper, she thought grumpily. Candy turned to give the two she-Elves nearest her, the ones who were currently checking out his taut bottom in the tight white ski pants, the stink eye.
“Back off,” she growled at them and that earned her a similar sound from Fluffy who was currently nestled in Medjed’s hands.
Their little penguin chick was quite possessive of the Egyptian warrior. Almost as much as Candy was. If only she had the right to be.
She still could not believe it. But it was true, she’d heard it with her own pointy ears! He belonged to another. She was just another flake on his mountain of snow.
“What is going on here? My Elves, why is no one working? We have to get ready, it is almost time,” a large booming voice called out and Candy turned to find herself staring into a pair of twinkling blue eyes.
“Is that him?” Medjed whispered suddenly right next to her, and she slapped a hand over his mouth and nodded.
It really was him. Her boss. The big man himself.
“Santa,” she swallowed down her nervousness and smiled up at the cheerfully corpulent chairman of Christmas himself!
Larger than life in his exquisite red velvet suit with hand-stitched golden thread and pristine white fur trim, Kris Kringle, aka Santa Claus, looked down at Candy and the stranger who was currently trying to push her safely behind him, with an amused expression on his pink-cheeked face.
Of course, his expression changed to startled when a very large, very sharp, curved sword, a khopesh to be exact, appeared directly in front of his nose, held by the stranger who was of course, Medjed, the warrior of Osiris.
“Put that down!” Candy hissed angrily and grabbed Medjed’s unmoving wrist as Santa blinked and backed up slowly with his gloved hands raised high in surrender.
“You are he? The fiendish oppressor of the young? The one who seeks to punish children with your lists and your erred judgement! I know of you San Ta Claws.”
“Son,” swallowed Santa, “the name is Santa Claus. And just who are you?”
“I am the Warrior and Guard of the House of Osiris, the Sword of the Underworld. I am Medjed and I will put an end to your nefarious practices thereby freeing the children of the world from your cruel voyeuristic games,” growled Medjed.
“STOP!” shouted Candy.
“But rohi, I am sworn-”
“You listen to me, Medjed,” Candy said in her best no-nonsense voice, “drop that sword or I swear on everything sparkly and tinsel-y that I will never speak to you again,” she narrowed her eyes and turned swiftly, placing herself between his sharpened khopesh and Santa.
Medjed immediately put the weapon down. Narrowing his eyes, he snapped his fingers and disappeared the thing entirely.
“Candy, please,” he begged, but she was really mad now.
“Now, you two seem to be having an issue,” Santa said and stepped between the arguing couple, “I think I can help. Mrs. Claus does say I have quite the knack for mediation. Now, Candy, and you too, son, why don’t we sit down and take this thing from the top over some hot cocoa and cookies?”
“But Santa, if you don’t leave soon-” Jolly began.
“I have time for this,” Santa said, and beckoned the two angry and confused lovers towards a table that had somehow just appeared.
“Start at the beginning,” Santa said as he poured steaming cocoa into Christmas tree shaped mugs and handed one to each of them.
Candy, being one of his Christmas Elves, felt that she should go first.
“Well, it all started when…”
Chapter 1
Two days ago…
“Candy Margaret Kane come back here!” yelled Mrs. Stripes as Candy rushed out the back door.
But it was no good, the young Christmas Elf had to make a break for it. The North Pole only existed on the Earthly plane for the week leading up to Christmas Eve and she’d already squandered half her time doing the same old chores. She was a helper, not an official title, but as she had yet to choose a specialty that meant she went where she was needed.
Research and development, building toys, wrapping gifts, even fetching cocoa and cookies. She’d once been assigned to product testing, but after the whole tinsel incident of 1889, she’d been asked to not come back there again.
As if it was her fault they’d used flammable oil to separate each string of tinsel! Bunch of snowball sniffers! How was she supposed to know everything would catch fire when she lit the firepit next to where they were testing that and other products on a stand of Christmas trees? Total freak accident.
All those misunderstandings aside, Candy knew that Santa’s Magical Christmas Village was her home, but this was it. Her only chance to escape and discover for herself if her old Granny Elf had been right about her future.
Candy Kane sucked in a deep fortifying breath. The smell of clean snow, hot chocolate, and sugar cookies filled the air. It always reminded her of Granny El
f 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 Christmas-y shade as Candy’s, “Your destiny is still out there. I’ve seen your happiness in the stars, my girl, you will find true love but not here, and not among the other Christmas Village dwellers. You must leave here if you want to find him. 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?” she’d responded.
“Yes, child, be brave now, 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, “Yes, you will know love, my child, when the stars align you will know exactly what it means. Only when the time is right. Watch the stars, Candy.”
And Candy Margaret Kane had done just that. She watched the heavens for the signs Granny Elf spoke of.
Every fluffing night since.
And it had finally paid off. This was it, yes, it was almost Christmas Eve, and if she didn’t find him and come back before midnight she’d be stuck here, but she needed to try.
If Candy came back to Santa’s Magical Christmas Village without her one true and fated mate, well, she would blink out of the earthly plane of existence for what was just another year to mortals but was hundreds to a Christmas Elf.
And that was the best she could hope for, if she did not find him that is. Being stuck in the human world could have all sorts of repercussions for a pointy-eared she-Elf. Still, the idea of another few centuries passing before she returned was unfathomable.
It was just the way the magic worked. Time was not the same in the Christmas realm. 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 Elves seemed to want. She needed more than just making toys and stuffing stockings. She wanted to know what it was like to really live, to experience love the way her Granny and Gramps had back in the olden days.
Gosh, their romance was just tinsel! She 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!
She huffed out a sigh and put on her mittens as she snuck down the alley between the cookie makers’ hut and the snow cone factory. Nerves had her belly doing flip-flops and her heart pounding. She was so close now.
“Pssst! Candy is that you?”
“Eeek! Jolly, you scared me,” she hissed and swatted at the skinny, redheaded Elf.
Jolly Golightly, her BFF since she was an Elfling, rubbed his arm as he and Candy snuck behind a barrel of cookie rejects.
The delicious, yet irregular confections would go to feed the polar bears, arctic foxes, and penguins before the end of the day. Only the best cookies went out to the children of the world, of course.
“Wow, you are really going,” he said with awe, “Um, 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 purposes.
“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,” she took out her Sparkle Phone, only the best and latest model of course, and showed Jolly the picture she’d gotten off the Santa-2024-009 satellite they’d rocketed into outer space to orbit the planet over a thousand years before the humans had invented anything close to that kind of thing.
Elves were technologically advanced of course, magic and science were very intricately woven together. Every Elf knew that, and Candy was no different.
The one thing normals had over Elves far as she could tell was the ability to use cusswords. And boy, was she envious!
Imagine if jingle balls and snow cruncher were the worst things you could say!
Sigh.
But Christmas Elves were made from pure goodness. Their very nature was on the side of good, and that meant cursing was just not possible. She had to make do with a lot of fluff’s, poop’s, and snickerdoodle-ooo’s 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. That singular sensation, that clever connection that Candy would only achieve when meeting her one true and fated soul mate.
“You see,” she said to Jolly and pointed up to the shining North Star in the dark velvet sky, “Polaris, Dubhe, and Mehrak are perfectly aligned! That doesn’t happen very often, Jolly. This has to be the sign that Granny meant for me to wait for.”
After she’d named the three prominent stars of Ursa Minor and Major, she sighed heavily. To the untrained eye, it looked as though they always sort of lined up, but for the first time in many, many centuries, they were perfectly aligned. It was the sign Granny spoke about, she just knew it.
“If you’re sure,” Jolly said scratching his prominent red hair, “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?”
“Exactly!”
“But Santa banned these after that one year they got into the Elves’ stocking stuffers during Christmas 1965,” she stared wide eyed at the little ticking bomb.
Truth mints were one of those inventions that got put on the backburner when it came to distribution after a trial run amongst the Elf population had caused riotous discord and an almost complete shutdown of all toy and Christmas related accessory production.
It had been a total mess. One she had no hand in she was both proud and disappointed to say.
“Um, Jolly, why would I want that?”
“Oh, to see if the man you find is your true mate of course! Candy,” Jolly began, “we aren’t Shifters or Vampires, you know, we don’t have that sixth sense that just lets us know when our mate is there. This way you will know for sure.”
“Um, okay then, thanks,” she smiled and tucked it in the backpack.
“Hurry up and go before they sound the alarms,” Jolly said checking the street for any signs of the Elf Security Officer in the area.
“Bye Jolly and thank you! I’ll let you know where I land,” Candy whispered.
Biting back the tears that threatened to fall, 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! To find her one true and fated mate on the earthly plane before Santa’s Magical Christmas Village disappeared until the next Christmas. She was going to succeed, she just knew it.
No matter what, she nodded to herself as the cold bite of 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 day, to show proof of her claim to the big man himself, or it was bye-bye Candy for another hundred years in the plane of reality where the North Pole existed for the Elves and other Christmas creatures.
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.”
Chapter 2
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jennifer Dylluan scrubbed her face with her hands, and yes, she might’ve screamed aloud while doing so.
“Medjed!” She yelled.
Medjed, her voice still echoed through the halls. It was, of course, the name of the most recent bane of her existence, and that was saying something considering she was the liaison for the Wyvern Protection Unit, and those four were always a headache.
But nothing and no one could top the menace that was the ancient Egyptian Warrior for the House of Osiris, Lord of the Underworld, and God of the Dead, Medjed.
Debates over whether he was a demon or a minor god ran rampant in the secret government office where she worked, but Jennifer couldn’t care less.
All she knew was that she couldn’t go on like this. Not when her other assignments were currently demanding her attention, and one Wyvern brother in particular was giving her fits.
The Great-horned Owl inside of her growled unhappily as she stared at the pile of paperwork she now had to deal with because of him.