"I love you, Santa."
"And I love you, Santa," the teenage boy on skis said sincerely before chuckling. "Who would have thought I not only could say that and mean it, but would actually be living with Santa."
"Me, too!"
"But you are Santa! The real one!"
"Ho! Ho! Ho!" laughed the slender girl with the long brown hair streaming from under her yellow, wool cap. She wasn't wearing her very low-cut, fur-trimmed, red miniskirt of a Santa costume, but a skis, and tight yellow, ski pants over a sweater that wasn't so bulky that it made her look any more flatchested than she was. With her, as always, was her little, stuffed reindeer, Pedro, clinging to her arm.
“Someone’s coming. Someone’s coming,” a small, red-haired girl dressed in a green snow outfit that made her look like an elf.
“Maimai! What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in school!” her big sister cried.
“Maimai-chan’s your little sister, Mai. She just wants to visit her own Santa.”
"You're not a real Santa, yet, Mai!" Sharry made her usual "Gorgeous" entrance, creating, and appearing out of a geyser higher than the trees near the ski slope. She, too, wasn't in her official-and abbreviated-Santa costume, either, but an aquamarine, ski outfit. Unlike her childhood playmate, Mai, she looked like a fully developed woman. "You may be the granddaughter of Santa Claus, but you have to train in magic and pass exams like the rest of us."
"You don’t. You’ve graduated and are in Special studies," Mai said.
"Of course, while you were in the E classes, I was always an excellent student in the A’s. Ho! Ho! Ho!" The blonde knew how to laugh from her belly, though there was no way anyone would mistake it for one of the male Santa’s. "And this would be my territory, the one I was appointed to, if you hadn't gotten this ridiculous crush on this boy who hated Christmas." Suddenly Sharry began to break-up laughing. "...Just because his missionary parents named him Santa because he was born on December 24th! Ha! Ha! Ha! It still cracks me up: Too classic!" She ended up rolling in the snow.
"How cruel, Sharry!" Santa turned to jello and fought back tears as he did every time that sore spot came up.
He would have run away, if Mai hadn't stopped him.
"But Santa loves Christmas, now!” Mai spoke with lots of energy and big gestures. “I helped him see that his birthday wasn’t lost to his friends and family among the Season’s activities! I helped him see Christmas apart from himself! I gave him the belief in his always absent parents and their work for unfortunate children! I changed Santa's life for the good! I gave him the belief in the magic of the Christmas! And his belief gives me the power to be a fully developed, miracle-working Santa!! He is my Source! He’s the happiness of my holidays! Ho! Ho! Ho!”
"Really? Then why don’t you look like an adult woman, at this moment, Miss Flatchest?”
“Well, uh...I’ve made progress. I no longer look like a junior high girl!”
“That’s right. She couldn’t go to my high school, if she did,” Santa said, missing the point.
“Very well, let him be like that to you. You’ll need all the boost to your magic you can get. Noel-sensei has been told by the executive director that you've neglected your magic training long enough. She has to come up with a test that will challenge you and prove to them that you have what it takes to become a licensed Santa.”
“But I’ve only just gotten to where I can produce anything that begins with Sa, not just Sa+n!”
“But you can do a little more, right?” Santa reminded her. “...With the magic of a partner?”
“I’m hungry,” Maimai said.
(Posted Thu, 07 Dec 2006 22:43)
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