Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 55th cycle. Now cycle 56!
"The Christmas Tale of Marley the Elf"
Marley, New Directions...
1. On the First Day
Of all the elves in Santa's Village at the Lima mall that year, she was no doubt the only one who had taken on the job not only willingly but with some level of anticipation. She had needed the job and the extra money it would bring in for her mother and herself, but of all the options she might have had, this one had the extra incentive of being sort of magical.
She remembered when she was little, and she still believed in Santa and everything around him. Her mother would take her to the mall, and as timid as she might have been, she wasn't the kid who cried or clammed up by the time they were sat on the jolly man's lap. He always remembered her, which she'd eventually come to realize might have had to do with her mother feeding him information from over her shoulder, and it would make her day. After she'd found out he wasn't real, her mother had soothed the hurt by telling her he was part of the magic of Christmas, and so long as she believed in that, then he was as real to her as she herself was.
The job would no doubt come with the odd awkward moment or two. A lot of the kids from her school would be at the mall, whether they were shopping or bringing a younger sibling to see Santa. She was anticipating her share of comments and jokes, so she wasn't going to expedite the process by letting everyone know about it. If they found out, then they found out, and if they didn't, then they didn't.
Maybe it was her smile and her excitement at the prospect of getting the job, but she was hired in a flash. Soon she was handed a box that would contain her costume. She hoped it wouldn't be too bad. Her mind still went to those dress fittings for Grease, the panic that would overtake her when she would see that her skirt wouldn't close.
But she had taken the box home and, while her mother was still out, she opened it and laid out the pieces on her bed. The skirt, green with accents of gold, matched the shirt, although the sleeves matched the red and white striped stockings. Her accessories included pointed green shoes with bells that would chime as she walked, a matching hat, and lastly the means to make her ears pointy.
Her long hair was pulled into a braid, which she fixed with a green ribbon on the end in order to match the outfit, and she added a touch of sparkle to her makeup, to complete the 'magic' feeling. Once she'd put on everything that was laid out on her bed, she went and stood before her mirror. She was transformed, and with a smile and a jiggle of her belled shoes, Marley the Elf had come to life.
Saturday came around, her first day on the job, and she rode the bus with her costume tucked away in her backpack. She wasn't sure what to expect, never having hung around too long to notice if there might be a lot of people going by throughout the day.
The 'village' wouldn't open for another twenty minutes, and the lineup already spilled out beyond count. Marley saw this and immediately felt both anxious and nervous.
After clocking in and changing into her costume, she had been dispatched to stand at the top of the line, ready to let the children and their parents through when the man in the red suit took his seat and began to receive his guests. At the very front of the line was a blonde girl of no more than four years, sleeping in her father's arms, and what she guessed to be her older brother, six or seven years old and equally blonde. The boy would not stop looking at her from the moment she showed up. He looked at her shoes, her hat, and everything in between. Finally she had to smile and look at him.
"Are you excited to meet Santa Claus?" she asked, crouching in front of him.
"Are you really an elf?" the boy asked directly.
"That's exactly what I am," she promised him.
"What's my name?" he stared her down, testing her. She didn't panic. She shrugged and smiled.
"Okay, I don't know," she told him, and his face said 'ha!' "But that's not my job, that's Santa's." The boy frowned, but she had given him an answer he could approve, so he did. "So what is your name?" she asked.
"Jack O'Malley," the boy told her.
"What are you going to ask Santa for, Jack?" He screwed up his face, shaking his head. "Don't want to tell me?"
"If I say it to someone else then it won't come true, like a wish, right?" Marley smirked.
"What if you whispered it in my ear? Elves are magic, too, you could have twice the chance," she told him, and the boy looked back to his father, who was looking after his freshly awakened sister, before turning back to the elf. He took a step forward and leaned to whisper at the pointed elf's ear. When she heard what he wanted to ask Santa, her smile faltered. She looked back into the boy's brown eyes, took his hands in hers. "I'm going to do my very best, okay?" she promised, and Jack smiled.
Less than a minute later, the doors to the 'village' were opened, and Jack and his sister and all the other children who had come slowly made their way up the line and up to sit on Santa's lap, talk to him, get their picture taken with him… Eventually she had managed to put her first encounter at the back of her mind, but at the end of the day, when the fake ears and the shoes with the bells came off, she could still hear the whispered words of little Jack O'Malley.
"I'm going to ask him to make my mom better."
TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)