“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.