Boreas introduced Ginny to the whole team over dinner on the twenty-third. She met Krampus’ mate, the Christmas elf named Avery, a baker. She met some of the ice elementals under Boreas’ command. Of course, she met Boreas’ rival, her friend Befana’s husband…Santana Claus.

The Jolly Fellow.

Santa Frikkin’ Claus.

Unfortunately, due to the ongoing situation, Santana didn’t exactly have time to give Ginny the grand tour. Boreas and Santana were working on figuring out where the heck their kids were, while Befana flew around the world with the elementals, looking for Jack and Pandora.

Krampus was helping coordinate the flight paths of the ice elementals. That meant Avery and Ginny were stuck together, hanging out at The Workshop. The two became fast friends, bonding over baking in one of The Workshop’s many kitchens.

In fact, that’s why they were there when ‘It Happened.’ After ‘It Happened,’ it would forever go down in history as the time ‘It Happened,’ and would never be given a formal name when discussed among the Christmas elves.

Ginny would call it ‘The Time I Saved Christmas, Thank You Very Much.’

Avery and Ginny rolled a cart of freshly baked goods into one of the main hangars at the Workshop. It was a ‘flex space,’ meaning it was used for a variety of different purposes, in a flexible capacity. If the elves need space to build a giant gingerbread house, or to store extra gifts, that was where they could do it. The flex space had boxes and boxes of gifts stacked in palettes up to the high ceiling. The area was the base of operations for the current order of business — finding Jack and Pandora. The hangar was surrounded by giant pane glass windows, rather than opaque walls.

“Hey,” said Avery, coming up to Krampus to give him a kiss. “Hope you’re hungry.”

“What’s all this?” asked Krampus.

“We baked!” said Ginny, opening the cart to reveal a variety of yummy Christmas treats.

Just as she opened the cart, there was a crash that rendered all the treats inedible, as they soon became covered in bits of glass.

Out of nowhere, something came slamming in through one of the side walls. It slammed into a stack of presents, which came crashing down. Glass flew all over the hangar, including over the treats.

“What in the heck was — Pandora!” said Avery, looking over at what had crashed through the dang window.

It was big, brown, with metal runners.

It was a sleigh.

It was Santana Claus’ magic sleigh.

In the front seat, there was a curvy woman, passed out. In the back, there was a man in a leather jacket and aviator sunglasses.

“Get them to medical!” ordered Santana. “Shit. All this glass. We’re going to need a cleanup crew to —”

Ginny hadn’t thought before she had lifted her hands in the air. The shards of glass rose into the air, off of the floor, off of people’s clothing, off of the tray of pastries. Ginny focused on the shattered wall of glass and rearranged the pieces of glass as best she could, very quickly, as if she was assembling a thousand ten thousand piece puzzles — that’s one thousand separate puzzles, each containing ten thousand pieces.

Ginny formed a rough pane of glass using her magic. Then, she motioned to put the pane of glass back into the wall, lining up a single corner of the magical array of glass with the metal frame of the window wall.

Suddenly, the glass turned red, bright red. The falling snow that was streaming into the hangar turned to water and then, to steam, hissing away as it hit the glowing glass. Ginny had melted the glass down with her fire magic so she could remake the window. The work was rough, but the red heat spread through the pieces of glass and bound them to each other and to the frame of the building.

“Did you just…” said Santana.

“I am a fire elemental, and I can work with sand, some metals, as well,” said Ginny.

“It’s nearly perfect,” said Krampus, looking at the glass which seemed a bit wavy.

“Is this better?” asked Ginny, raising a brow, locking eyes with Krampus while waving her hand back at the window. Without looking, Ginny had smoothed out the glass.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Boreas.

The medical team arrived and took Pandora and Jack away. Just as they came, the pair woke, to the relief of all folks present.

The clean-up crew arrived to clean up the boxes that had fallen down from the carefully stacked palettes.

“They’re all ruined,” said one of the elves, coming up to Santana, who had stayed behind and not followed his daughter to the hospital so he could give the doctors room. The elf was holding an open box filled with broken pieces.

“What was in there?” asked Santana.

“Ornaments,” said one of the elves. “Real fancy ones. Made of glass. They’re all ruined.”

“Made of glass?” asked Ginny. “Santana…do you mind if I try?”

“You’ll ask permission to fix an ornament ball, but not to fix a giant window?” asked Santana, eyebrow raised. “You are a mystery, Ginny. Remind me a lot of Befana that way. Knock yourself out…but there’s a big difference between putting together a window and putting together a —”

Before Santana could finish his sentence, Ginny had fixed the ornament. She’d looked at the design on the box and copied it. Her copy wasn’t perfect, but to the untrained eye, it was pretty good. Any flaws could just be chalked up as adding character to the ornament.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Santana. “Boreas, you mind if I borrow your gal for a while? Boreas?”

Boreas, unlike Santana, had left once he saw his child land. Ginny had been so focused on cleaning up that she hadn’t noticed he’d gone. Her heart fell. He was her fated mate, and here she was, dicking around with sand.

“You mind if we do this after I go check in on him?” asked Ginny.

“Of course not,” said Santana. “Avery, can you show her to the hospital?”

“Of course,” said Avery. “Right this way, Ginny.”

Avery knew all the shortcuts through The Workshop so, in no time flat, Ginny was in the hospital wing, where Boreas was attending to his son. Ginny waited outside, as Boreas was sitting next to his son, talking with him. He wasn’t yelling. He was quiet, gentle, more worried about his son than he’d let on in the plane.

Soon, Boreas came out.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come with you,” said Ginny. “I —”

“I saw what you did,” said Boreas. “The window. Thank you. You helped so much.”

“I did?” asked Ginny.

“If you didn’t fix the window, clean up all the glass, the emergency crew would’ve been postponed,” said Boreas. “The elves would’ve had to clean up the mess first, but you, you handled it in seconds.”

“Is he going to be okay?” asked Ginny.

“He’s already fine,” said Boreas. “He’s just exhausted. He’s overexerted himself.”

“What…happened?” asked Ginny.

“They were dicking around the sleigh and accidentally touched a switch,” explained Boreas. “The switch they touched was the one that turns off tracking. It’s usually used for testing the tracking system and forcing hard resets. It’s not meant for stealth. Of course, the switches are all obscurely labeled in a language those kids don’t read. They tried to fix the problem, but instead, the sleigh took off on a route — The Ride.”

“So they went on…” started Ginny.

“The Ride, but, a modified version, not a real version of The Ride,” said Boreas. “Because the sleigh had been in diagnostic testing, the route assigned to ‘The Ride’ was actually just a one-day route around the equator. Over and over. And over. And over. They’re hungry and thirsty, but a day without food and drink won’t kill ‘em. It’ll teach them a lesson I’m sure they’ll never forget.”

“They didn’t steal the sleigh?” asked Ginny.

“Nope, but I’m glad my son had some sense knocked into him,” said Boreas. “He ain’t just my boy — he’s becoming a man. Heck, he’s already an adult, but he’s a bad boy. He needs to at least become a bad man.”

Boreas laughed, and Ginny laughed along with him. She squeezed his hand.

Somebody else walked into the ward. It was a man in a red velvet hoodie who looked tired and weary, much more so than he had when Ginny had seen him just a half hour ago.

It was Santana Claus.

“Boreas,” said Santana.

“Santana,” said Boreas. “Did you reel in the troops?”

“Befana and your elementals are on their way back now,” said Santana. He nodded to Boreas. Boreas nodded back. Santana went into Pandora’s hospital room. His voice was much louder than Boreas’ had been, but it wasn’t with anger, but with worry.

“I think we should give them some space,” said Ginny.

“I agree,” said Boreas. “Those two need rest, and I think they scared themselves into never doing this again. But…before we go, we have one thing left to do.”

“What?” asked Ginny.

“Come on,” said Boreas, leading Ginny to Jack’s room.

“Are you sure?” asked Ginny. “Is this the appropriate time to meet him?”

“This is the perfect time to meet him. After all, if you make a bad impression, just pretend you’re meeting him for the first time when he’s done healing up,” said Boreas. “Just say you’ve never met before, and he must’ve imagined it, being on all these painkillers.”

Ginny rolled her eyes at Boreas’ corny joke. Then, she composed herself. She readied herself. She was about to meet the most important person in Boreas’ life. It was a big moment.

Boreas led Ginny into the room.

“Hey,” said Jack. “I was wondering when you two would come in here.”

“Hey,” said Ginny. “I’m Ginny, and I’m —”

“My father’s fated mate,” said Jack. “I can tell. I’ve never seen him look this…serene before.”

“Serene?” asked Ginny.

“If I crashed a sleigh into the side of a building this time last year, he would’ve had my hide for breakfast,” said Jack. “Only thing different is you.”

“Did you try to crash the sleigh into the building?” asked Ginny.

“Not exactly,” said Jack. “Pandora was steering the sleigh. It headed to The North Pole…right into the ocean. I wasn’t down to drown, so I used my powers to force a wind to blow the sleigh onto the tarmac…but those glass walls made it hard to see the hangar.”

“Well, I think you’re very brave,” said Ginny. “Your father’s talked to me about you. Is there anything you have to ask me?”

“I got a weird question,” said Jack. “You don’t have to answer this, but…how old are you?”

“Mid-thirties,” answered Ginny.

“Dad, gross!” said Jack. “Your girlfriend’s closer to my age than to your age!”

“If I only dated women close to my age, I could literally only date glaciers and demons,” said Boreas. “All the good timelessly old women are taken. I gotta go younger.”

“Ha-ha,” said Ginny, rolling her eyes. “Well, Jack, if there’s anything I can do, you let me know. Even if you just want someone to talk to. We’re gonna be seeing a lot of each other, and I know you’re too old to need a ‘mom’ but —”

“Who said I’m too old to need a mom?” asked Jack. “I’m in my twenties. I need someone to talk to about girls.”

“What about me?” asked Boreas.

“How old are you? And you just finally got a girlfriend this month?” asked Jack. “I’ll go with Ginny’s advice on…”

Jack’s voice trailed off.

“Piece of advice number one — get some sleep,” said Ginny with a wink. “Ladies aren’t into guys who have bags under their eyes.”

“See you,” said Jack. “And Dad…I love you.”

“I love you too, son,” said Boreas. He gave his son a kiss on the forehead and left with Ginny.

Boreas and Ginny were about to leave the hospital wing when Santana called out, “Boreas! Ginny!”

They turned and walked over to Santana, who was peeking out of Pandora’s room.

“What’s up?” asked Ginny.

“Pandora wants to say something to you two,” said Santana.

Boreas and Ginny entered.

“Hey Boreas,” said Pandora. “Hey, Ginny — my Dad told me about you and what you did for us. You’re really helping save Christmas, you know?”

“I am?” asked Ginny. “I guess I am. Thanks.”

“No, Ginny — thank you,” said Pandora. “I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused, and Boreas…I’m sorry I got Jack involved in this. It’s so stupid.”

“Can I ask you a weird question?” asked Ginny.

“Go ahead,” said Pandora.

“Why were you two in the sleigh?” asked Ginny.

“It’s so embarrassing,” said Pandora, blushing.

“I see,” said Boreas. “Moving on…”

“It’s not that,” hissed Ginny. “Pandora…you wanted to know what it felt like, right? Sitting in that sleigh?”

“Yeah,” said Pandora. “I did. I just imagined myself in the air, with our team of reindeer — with Dasher and Dancer, with Prancer, with Vixen…Comet, Cupid, Donner, and of course, Blitzen. Ginny, I could practically feel the wind running through my hair, the snow hitting my face…and then I realized I did feel it. It was from Jack. He was doing that. He was making my dream feel more real. He got in the sleigh and…well, we had one of our talks. When we were getting out, I hit a switch, and, trying to fix my mistake, ended up getting us into this mess.”

“Did you learn something?” asked Ginny.

“Yes,” admitted Pandora. “I shouldn’t fuck around in my Dad’s sleigh.”

“Then at least this was a learning experience,” said Ginny.

“You’re right,” said Santana. “You shouldn’t fuck around in my sleigh.”

“I know, Dad,” said Pandora. “I’m sorry, I —”

‘You should only fuck around in your sleigh,” said Santana.

“What are you saying?” asked Pandora. “Dad, I nearly ruined Christmas, I —”

“You’re an adult, and you obviously understand the gravity of sitting behind the reins of a sleigh — but that’s not the sleigh for you,” said Santana. “After the season is over, you and I…we’re getting you a sleigh. Your own sleigh. With buttons, you can frikkin’ read. And your training, well, it’s gonna be harder than the training Krampus gives his bad boy bear shifters down at The Wreath, but…it’s gonna be worth it in the end. Trust me.”

“Dad, I don’t know what to say,” said Pandora.

“How about ‘Merry Christmas?’” suggested Santana, pulling his daughter in for a hug.

“Merry Christmas,” agreed Pandora, squeezing her dad tightly. “Speaking of Christmas…here.”

Pandora clapped her hand, and a present appeared. She put the new present on top of a box that had been sitting by the side of her bed. The new gift was rather small, covered in flames, and the other, about the size of a breadbox, covered in an icicle pattern.

“These are for you,” said Pandora, passing the icicle patterned box to Boreas and the flame-patterned box to Ginny.

“What the heck just happened?” asked Ginny.

“I can conjure gifts out of thin air — something you want, or something you need, ideally, both,” said Pandora.

“So what’s in here?” asked Ginny.

“No clue!” said Pandora, shrugging her shoulders. “I’m just the messenger. It’s a tradition ‘round here to open a present early.”

Ginny and Boreas opened their gifts. Boreas opened a long box to find a bottle of ice wine. Ginny’s small box contained a necklace identical to the one she’d melted down to make Boreas’ glass decanter set. The only difference was that the jewelry was made of white gold, as pale as snow.

“How…how could this be?” asked Ginny. “How did she make a copy of the exact same necklace I melted down to make the glass set?”

“Welcome to The North Pole,” said Santana. “We got a little thing called Christmas magic. Get prepared for an evening full of it.”