Hello Guys!
A Happy Christmas to all.
Wonder where I have been? Been busy becoming the Student of the Year. I was awarded the Student of the Year at my college and had been busy with Annual day and lots of last year shenanigans. My Searing Heaven readers, don't be despaired for update is on its way soon.
But I have holiday treat served here, s is the tradition with us!
Do you remeber the X'mas Eve of last year? Maan the Santa and Geet the Elf? and the letter Maan had started writing his son left incomplete?
So here is the next installment to that, the coming of age this Christmas.
*Edited:
On popular demand, here is the link to last year's Christmas OS, a prequel to this one.
X'mas Eve #2
Coming Home
The full fat yellow moon peeked behind the breast of a cloud as he drove his sleigh with a new rhythm to its gait. His reindeers were inebriated on his glee, as was he on the beautiful turn of time. Ten years. Ten years and it was Christmas again. The stars shone like jewels sewn on the duvet that was the sky, little opals and rubies and emeralds and diamonds, twinkling in a reflection of earthly lights.
His Santa's hat flying in the cold winds of night, Maan crinkled his eyes to have a look at the beauty that was earth down below. Bright lights and puffs of white smoke greeted him wherever he passed. Christmas carols of one accent smoothly merged into another as he crossed sleepy little towns and cities and continents on his way to distribute gifts all over the world. From branch to branch he went, pine to pine in joy, spreading hope to all children around the world who believed. For belief in something or someone must find firmament. Otherwise it just doesn't kill the belief in that thing but the belief itself. This had been Maan's most significant lesson from his father, who had warned him of not leaving any home empty on his quest. Maan had disliked it at that time. Now, he was merrier than he ever had been.
And for once in his lifetime of so many years of being the Santa Claus, Maan really felt happy.
He had detested this job once, hated their legacy, his father's way of life in the cold glaciers of Norway. As the head Claus of little elves who made gifts year round, his father saw no rest. The D'day was the hardest followed by only one night of rest after distributing gifts on Christmas Eve.
Their family was blessed to produce Santas. His father was one, he was one. Unfortunately, his son would be one too. Thinking about his son brought a gleeful smile to his handsome young face as he imagined seeing his son's eyes for the first time. He had seen the boy's face every year this night when he went to his wife's home in Norway at the end of his travels. But his eyes were always closed as he slept in the land of peace and dreams and childhood fantasies. His lovely Geet had tried to describe his son's eyes to him once many years ago but he had not let her complete.
"Let his eyes be my bidding to wait Geet"
He had told her with a kiss and gotten lost in carnal pleasures so basic and primitive to them.
His head reindeer for the evening, Donner, neighed softly as he maneuvered the sleigh into a tall pine tree by decorated houses in the town of Prague. It was a winter wonderland, this beautiful town with its artsy cathedrals and stone bridges. The beauty of the town, wrapped up in twinkling lights, soft snow and smells of cakes and puddings was just the surface. A very sinister side lurked underneath Prague's art. Maan had always wondered how a town so superficially angelic and beautiful had these small artifacts left like a trail of clues to tell of its darkness. Like the stone benches near the Pine where he landed his sleigh.
The bench had beautiful curvy handles of stone, smooth and old, as old as time. The seat and back rest were carved out of a single stone and looked like the seat of angels themselves. The overhead hanging lamps and small lights gave it an orange haze, so vibrant and christmasy. Since centuries these benches sat here to tell people of the sainthood of this town. Except, when one looked for signs and looked beyond what met the eye, there were serpents coiled as base pegs of the angelic benches. As if calling for attention of those who really wished to take notice, these benches cried of the fact that there was evil hidden very near to where good stayed.
Putting such deep musings past him, Maan gathered his sack marked for this town and set about distributing gifts in sleeping houses. Collecting small letters or knick-knacks here and there from stockings hung for him, eating a raisin cookie here or drinking a sip of red wine there as a mark of grace left for him, he went along his usual X'mas chores but with an extraordinary lilt to his feet, a sparkle in his eye. In one small house where the table cloth was patched with old pieces of rags and the tree was but a small sapling in a pot, he found the girl sitting by her tree with a worn red stocking dangling from tightly closed fingers. She was fast asleep as her parents slept on the floor by the fire wrapped in dirty rags.
The beautiful little girl was so dirty; her face covered in soot by spending days near fire to keep warm, eye lids drooped of fatigue and limbs so thin they almost looked like sticks. Maan went against his meticulously prepared list and swapped the biggest gift for her. Tearing a piece of stale shot bread left out for him, he dipped it in a less than generous bowl of honey and took a large bite. Leaving a candy star on top of her tree, on impulse he bent down to kiss the girl on the head and headed straight back to his sleigh.
A permanent fixture on his face, the smile made his red skin stretch even tauter. It didn't show any sign of vanishing. He sneezed once or twice on the way as winds picked up but smiled through the ordeal. For the first time he really felt like shouting Ho, Ho, Ho' to the jubilant world below.
Rubbing his red nose, he took a swig of coffee from the flask he had filled at a house in Krakow, Poland. The family had been thoughtful enough to leave creamy hot coffee instead of the usual wine and cake. Some sense was finally prevailing among modern residents of the world, that Santa's tastes were as humane as theirs, that he was as human as them. He rode his sleigh to Leipzig now, stopping every few miles where homes were spotted, to deposit presents. But the little dirty girl's face didn't leave his mind. Her sweet smile reminded him of Geet.
His Geet.
He thought back to those days of his initiation into a white cold world, beyond this one that he knew, where half the year sun was below the horizon and everything was dreary as night.
"Once upon a time,"
He narrated to his eight reindeers
"When I was just a little boy..."
He shouted above the din created by heavy winds and hail, telling them, his closest companions, the tale of his life. A Santa's life.
In the whites of the Arctic, there was hardly any day to find. The skies were as dark as the grounds below, waters and glaciers were shadowed alike. Sun was a blotch of faint light, dipping below the horizon whenever he lifted his gaze to find any figment of hope in this hopeless country. His father had brought him here. One moment he was preparing for the eve of Christmas, waiting for his presents, another he was flying in Santa's sleigh to his home' in the North Pole with his mother. The discovery that Santa was his father had thrilled him to the core, so much so that he thought he was in a fairy tale.
Only, the tale had ended once he landed in his father's town.
Christmas had just passed and the elves' revelry had ended with it. They were creatures who found indiscriminate joy in every damn thing in life. They had such ideas and dreams of hope and fun for they hadn't seen the world outside of their little abominable North Pole. They sang and played the harp and fiddle and danced around bon fires at night, freezing in temperatures way below freezing point, made toys by the day and spent their lives without a larger purpose. Maan hated it.
And he hated the way they looked at him. The knowing look that said O! You will come around boy.'
He wanted to turn back at them and scream at the peak of his throat
No, damn you! No I am never going to like this place'
Off course, the fear of his father, Mr. Nicholas Claus and the love for his mother who seemed to have blossomed like a flower in these harsh winters kept his tongue in check. But it didn't keep his moods reigned. He went about his days that were perpetual nights in a grumpy state, snapping and belching at whoever was unfortunate enough to cross his path. One of them was a little elfin girl who sat by the cave entrance in mounds of snow, made snowmen, lay in the bed of ice and flapped her hands to make fairies, who painted wooden dolls with colour and turpentine and built her own igloos. He hated seeing her so comfortable and happy in the place. He hated seeing her at home in a place that was his home but had never felt so.
Maan didn't know the person he had become and went about harassing her. She retorted in a surprisingly valiant way and he himself took a step back from bullying her, taken slightly aback. Nights stretched to more nights and he became from miserable to redundant until the sun broke out on the horizon. One day he woke up to find a morning so pink that his heart leapt in his throat and hope spread new rays in his chest. Summer was upon them, solstice was far away but the warmth of sun melted sheets of icy lakes, glacial walls and made way for walruses and whales to leap up.
That was near the time when the sun of his life rose too.
While fishing one day he found eyes on him and turned to find the little elfin girl with a warrior's spirit. The way she looked at him, he was sure she was about to push him off the edge of cliff. If he didn't make peace right here, right now, he wasn't sure he would survive to see another day. Laughing at the thought in his head, Maan approached her, extended an olive branch, scooted in front of her for forgiveness and tried in vain to build an igloo. Finally the girl, half his size, forgave him. The girl was Geet.
Then life took a turn for good as the sun kept rising higher and higher on the horizon of his young heart. Geet became the girl with whom he trekked and tripped, spent his waking days and nights, telling her tales of a world far beyond these icy glaciers and hearing her stories of elves the good beings and goblins the evil ones. She tried his patience with the most difficult of behaviors and brought sunshine to his heart with the sweetest of gestures. He learnt to play the fiddle from one of the old elves in their group and would play often to the tunes of harp, singing along with she-elves, reveling in long days of summer.
Until their adolescence he didn't know she was a rebel inside, just as he had once been. So he entertained her little fantasies of climbing across the edge of their land towards south, sailing away by stealing Musky Elf's boat and pretending to run away from home and land to the new' world.
Once, they almost did run away.
He stole bottles of strong whiskeys from his father's studio and they would often climb up to the tallest of peaks and drink. They would recite little poems of rebellion, shout out to the world to go to hell and drink and dance and plot fake escape plans. But both knew that they loved their lands, never would they leave it. Maan had, after years of trials, come to love the place. As he grew up and his responsibilities as his father's right hand man grew, he saw lesser and lesser of Geet. Summers took up his time in preparing meticulous lists of children and toys, checking on the various factories of elves in different caves and tending to the herd of reindeers. Winters still depressed him and because there would be celebrations in cold and dark, he preferred to sit back home and read.
Every winter Geet would drop home and along with his mother, try his patience out. One fine winter, after a certain amount of pestering she gave up. Initially he was thankful she didn't annoy him further but then his weariness grew from the fact that she didn't annoy him enough. He categorically denied the kind of feelings she was igniting in him, the kind of longing the mere absence of her constant presence was igniting in him. When he could take it no more, he threw away his book and stormed out of his huge stone mansion and towards her igloo. When he was informed by her mother that she had blanched off to fill a bucket with ice without paying heed to the winds Maan got irritated.
That day, in the dark of perpetual dusk, he hated the feeling that gripped him as he thought of her in the sense of something other than his friend, other than the irritating elf. That day in the hated winters, he loved the fact that he wanted to be with her, just her. As he traced his way, following her footsteps, Maan couldn't wait to just be with her, to let that something' between their young hearts grow. The only fear in his mind remained of her mind. If she would want to be with him.
Turned out, when he called out to her and kissed her shocked lips, she did push him away. But when things became clearer and the shock of tender mouths meeting receded, she drew nearer and shyly, with a wary tilt to her mouth, put it to his. Nothing had been sweeter then. No heaven, no summer sun, no warmth had felt as beautiful on his cold tongue as did hers.
Years passed and love grew. The seed so buried in snow now blossomed.
"What will happen now?"
She asked him one winter night.
They had trekked up to one of the steep glaciers and lay on a rock. Her head rested on his stomach and their bodies lay perpendicular to each other.
"What will happen? We will see Northern lights if we are lucky"
Maan answered with a playful tug at her earlobe. She turned her head snuggling his hand and bit his finger. He yelped and she laughed.
"Ow! That's a terrible thing to do. And me lying here helpless with a fat little elf on my stomach"
"Fat little? Fat little? I'll show you fat little"
She maneuvered and straddled him in a swift move, pushed her head down and licked his cold cheek from jaw to ear. He shuddered in chill. She giggled and held his arms under her, licked his other cheek and was eyeing the pale stalk of his exposed neck to extract sweet revenge. He smirked at her and the moment she had bent to take the last piece of revenge he flipped her and rolled with her in his arms, squealing and giggling and laughing and kissing her mouth until their rolling momentum was brought to a halt by the next jutting outgrowth.
"You are crazy Jr. Santa"
She panted
"Imagine. I am with you, I ought to be crazy"
He rolled his eyes and got chucked on the head. They lay down again under the midnight sky filled with stars so big, they looked swollen. An outsider would be forgiven to believe that these stars were about to fall off the sky. It was late February and the cold and dark was as forbidding as ever. But they no more bothered Maan the way they once did.
"I cannot imagine our baby being half Santa and half pure evil"
He snarled funnily at her and she froze. His heart beat picked up and raced a mile a minute with every silent second that passed between them. And then the most majestic miracle happened. The sky broke out in a shine of hot pink. The inky black turned slowly to shades of pink and spread out in purples. Maan's eyes widened and he got up as if in a dream.
It was other-worldly, as if the gods of another world were playing with fireworks in their land. The stars appeared smaller somehow in lieu of the pink and purple sky of Aurora borealis or Northern lights.
"Maaan"
He had heard her call out to him but didn't pay heed until now when she came and screamed in his ear
"Maaan"
"What?"
He turned, blinking as if broken from a trance
"You asked me to marry you?"
"Off course"
He turned again to look up at the northern sky, not ready to miss a moment of it
"It would be so much fun to produce little brown haired Santas with you. And you would try my patience every day, which would be good because I am working on my soft skills. I could be the sane one and stop you from your foolish errands, you could annoy me sometimes, we could go trekking together, fishing, maybe travel south someday on a holiday and see the world you haven't seen..."
She jumped on his back and brought him down in a flurry of snow, pounded him down and held him there
"What?"
His eyes widened but he looked the most adorable, strong, tall, handsome man buried under a beautiful petite elf.
"I do not try your patience"
She clipped. He laughed.
"Get aside Geet, let me see the lights. It is my first time..."
"Say it"
"What?"
"That I do not try your patience"
His mouth quirked
"If this is not what it means to try patience, then no, you DO NOT try my patience"
"I don't run foolish errands"
"You don't run foolish errands. Taking a live wire and trying to conduct electricity in a closed cave isn't really foolish, is it?"
She punched his shoulder and he sobered
"I don't annoy you sometimes"
"No"
He said with a softening in his eyes
"You annoy me everyday"
He added sweetly and got chucked yet again.
"And why should we make Santas? Why not Elves? We will make elves"
He kept looking at her, his gaze focused on her sweet face now. Life with her would never be boring. He would have to embrace his responsibilities. It didn't matter if he wanted it or not, he would have to accept the legend that his blood was and become the next Santa Claus one day, build a new generation of love and hope in a festival the world celebrated as Christmas, live in a land he wasn't born in. But that was all worth every second if Geet was by his side.
"We will make elves"
He promised pulling her down and embracing her. She smiled in his arms and rested there, her eyes on his charming face, his on the miracle in the sky above. Obviously young hearts so in love had forgotten the legends and forgotten that all this love and togetherness would be followed by a heavy price of separation. But for that night, they were together, and the Santa and the Elf were infinite.
As Maan completed his story, he realized he had crossed all oceans and spread gifts to all continents and the night was still young. It was now time to go home, and go home with his wife and son.
In a faraway town in Norway lived Geet with their now ten year old son. Her cottage was small and cozy, bearing a reflection of its maker who had decorated it with little knick-knacks from back home. As Maan parked his sleigh on top of a spruce tree and jumped out to take the usual chimney route, he realized he was not going to another house as Santa but coming home to his family. So for the first time in history, he slid down the roof and walked around to the main door, his heart thudding faster and faster.
The lights were bright inside and sweet smells of milk and pudding enveloped the house in a creamy haze. Snow fell in little fleeces on his skin, tickling him like Geet would. He was sure Geet had prepared a feast for them before they left for home. And his son, his son would be ready for him, just as he had told him to be in the letter he wrote last year.
It would be life again after ten years, Maan thought to himself as he rang the bell. Tiny thuds of footsteps broke the cold silence of outside and his face broke into a smile when the door opened and Geet stood in the entrance. His son came running behind her and stopped at a distance, wide eyed, staring unblinking at him. Maan's heart stopped at the mirror image of his eyes staring back at him. Brown, big, innocent eyes. His son was beautiful.
"Maan"
His gaze drifted back to Geet who threw herself at him. He caught her with a thud.
"Ho ho ho"
He whispered in her ear and heard her crying. She tugged his neck and held him tighter, sniffling as he laughed, holding her with all the love he could. He saw his son moving awkwardly to and fro at the back and held one strong arm out to him. Their eyes met, his son measured him and then came bounding like a furry dog and embraced his mother and father. When Maan wrapped one arm around his son, another tightly holding his wife, he knew his family was finally complete, and finally his.
A loud shrill wail echoed from inside the house followed by howling cries. His son ran inside while he looked on as Geet broke free from his embrace and padded back. His heart in his mouth, Maan followed his family into the hall. For the second time in five minutes that night his heart stopped. A small bundle lay snuggled in Geet's arms, trying to suckle from her bosom. Geet lifted happy-sad eyes up to him and he read her delight and sorrow at his arrival.
The babe made wailing sounds and mewled like a cat but Maan's eyes were only for Geet. She beckoned him.
"This..."
He didn't have words as electric currents coursed through his cold hands. His lips ran dry and nothing made sense. Life as he knew it turned upside down in one millisecond.
"He...she...?"
"We have our elf"
Geet declared proudly sitting him down with them. Their night of passion last Christmas had borne them this little elf. Maan was silent.
Their son stood undecided in front of them and Maan, on an impulse removed his cap, gloves and extended one big hand to his boy. He looked at Geet and at her nod, took his father's hand. Maan pulled his son in his lap and stared wide eyed as Geet prepared to feed their crying three month old daughter.
He couldn't see her face yet, as cocooned as she was in blankets. Her head emerged as she wailed so Geet shifted her and there, he saw the most brilliant blue eyes, the color of Northern lights when they were considered to be the most auspicious. He had never seen blue north lights but he swore his daughter's eyes, more brilliant than her mother's were exactly what Aurora borealis were made up of. His sharp intake of breath brought Geet's attention and she gestured at their son. Maan nodded and took control of the situation.
"So, wouldn't you tell your papa how you liked the letter?"
Maan wondered aloud to his son as Geet fed the baby.
"I read full letter on my own"
His son replied with pride
"Wow! And did you write me back?"
He thought for a while and then said
"I did. But it got lost. I wrote last year"
Maan laughed
"Then why don't you tell me what you wrote? Or better, you could go and write it to me like I did to you"
A little pout formed on his cute pudgy face. Maan could clearly see he thought like his mother; a montage of expressions fleeting by his face as thoughts did in his mind. He clearly was against writing a reply to the letter.
"Will I get to ride the sleigh?"
"Of course"
"How many reindeers you have? Are they really yours?"
"I have eight reindeers, and they are all mine. All my friends. They could be your friends too"
"Really? Will they like me?"
"Well, that depends"
"Why?"
"It depends on what you feed them the first time you meet. They like you at first sight or never do. You see, my father made me feed them pineapple wafer biscuits when I was your age and met them for the first time"
"Did they like it? I don't like pineapple wafer bicuits"
"Oh they liked it alright. But what do you suggest we feed them now?"
"Mummy made chocolate berry cake. Yummy"
"Yummy yummy! Do you think your mummy saved me a piece?"
"That only we will feed the reindeers!"
His son declared happily and ran to assemble the last piece from the kitchen leaving Maan's mouth hanging open. Geet laughed loudly beside him, his daughter still suckling. He gave her a mock wounded look but then his eyes settled on the heavenly sight of a creation of his feeding from the love of his. It changed him irrevocably, that sight tempered his wandering spirit like nothing else ever had.
Maan never remembered seeing Geet feeding his son. He had only met them once a year for a night every year. Somehow a time had never come to see a sight like this.
"Stop staring"
"Why?"
"Its...Its...just stop"
Geet blushed
"I never thought this would happen"
Maan's melancholy voice cut through their sexual tension
"Ten more years Maan, how will we do it?"
He said nothing. Couldn't say anything. Just when he had come home to collect his family back, their exile had been extended by another decade. Furthermore, he couldn't even resent the decade because it was his daughter who had brought that forth. And even without seeing her face properly he had started falling in love with her.
"How was her delivery? Why didn't you send me a letter?"
She shook her head
"I didn't want you to lose heart. You had such dreams of us going home"
"But you knew I would be happy too"
She shrugged
"Geet?"
"Off course I am happy. I am giddy with happiness..."
"But"
"...But, like our son, our daughter also comes with a price to pay"
"Why does it have to be this way Maan?"
"I don't know Geet, I don't know. Years ago, when I accepted my destiny, I stopped asking that question"
"So, you would go away again? Will you take our son with you?"
"You know I have to. He has to know his heritage, he has come of age"
"I know. It is just easier to hear it from you and hate you for a bit"
He leaned to embrace her but that was the moment their daughter chose to finish her feed and start biting her mother.
"Ow"
Geet yelped and disentangled the child.
"Can you hold her for a bit"
"No"
She had already laid her near his chest and he had reflexively readied his arms for the babe too. The moment his child's flesh came in contact with his everything blurred into dust. Her eyes were the prettiest of all, her face as if a piece of the whitest of moons brushed by the pink rogue of dawn. Her little cherry like mouth bud opened in a yawn and Maan patted her unknowingly, awed at her eyes staring into his. She burped and he started but Geet reassured him it was natural. While she zipped her dress and made herself presentable Maan had seen his lifetime pass in his daughter's face.
"Here"
Geet extended her arms for the child
"Pack all your bags"
"What?"
"Pack for all three of you. We are going home"
He said again, not removing his eyes from his daughter
"But Maan, how can we?"
"I can and I will"
"But..."
"The legend says that a Santa has to come of age in a land far away from his own. There is no mention about elves"
"That's just twisting the legend to our convenience"
"Don't you want to?"
"I want to, I do, but not at the cost of your or our children's heritage. You are a hero, your son will be a hero. I don't want to destroy you both for..."
"You will not. Geet"
He turned up his head
"Trust me?"
"Yes"
"Then we are going home with our children"
"What if..."
"What if we were together? Won't that be the best possible scenario than any other?"
Maan smiled and Geet's flattened heart since the day she discovered her pregnancy jolted back to life. She loved her daughter, more than life itself. But she also knew a separation was in order. Not anymore.
Bags were packed, bottles of the best Wines, their son's favorite chocolates, their daughter's crib and toys and the choco-berry cake. Maan brought down his sleigh.
"This is Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blixem"
"And this is my son"
His little boy extended bites of cake to each of his reindeers who happily licked their tongues on the boy's hand. He giggled helplessly when Prancer licked his cheek and Maan and Geet stood huddled together, knowing the next Santa was in the making, and happily so.
"Where is Rudolph?"
"He is backing home. He only accompanies me if the weather is too bad. You know, he is a very special reindeer"
Maan whispered the last bit to his son conspiratorially. His son giggled, taking his hand and jumping into the sleigh. Next, he took his daughter bundled in a green and white blanket from Geet who climbed in too. With a last look back at the world of South, Maan stepped upon his sleigh, handed his daughter back to Geet, took the reins and leaped upon his faith of love and hope, just what he had been spreading world over.
Only time would tell, if the leap led them to their destiny.
Happy Holidays!
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