Chapter 3

Gold and Silver Sparkles

"Maroon," Bernard playfully hissed across the dinner table, as Katie was swallowing a mouthful of peas. Another mischievous grin inched its way along her face.

"Red," she whispered back. By now, her dad had heard, and was looking at the two with a mixture of bewilderment and amusement.

"Maroon,"

"Red!"

"It's maroon! There's too much purple in it to be considered red!"

"Purple's got red in it, smartso. It's red!"

"What's red?" Katie's dad asked, now wanting to know what they were talking about.

"Maroon," Bernard corrected.

"Fine, what's either maroon or red?"

"His shirt," Katie answered.

Taking a quick look at Bernard, her father looked back at Katie and said, "Well, you're both wrong." Katie and Bernard looked at him with stunned looks.

"It's green!"

"Not that shirt, Dad!"

"Which shirt then?"

"The one I was wearing earlier."

"Oh…well then, I have to agree with Bernard."

"Dad!"

"It's maroon with gold embroidery!"

"Bronze," Bernard corrected Katie's dad for the second time. Katie half groaned and half laughed as she put her head into her right hand.

"Gold. It's golden thread, Bernard," she said, shaking her head, which was still in her hand.

"Bronze! Maroon with bronze thread!"

"Red with gold!"

"Maroon with bronze!"

"It's just a shirt!" Katie's dad interrupted their argument again. "I don't need you at each other's throats like this all year! I'll go insane!"

Both arguers lowered their heads to their plates. Bernard just stared, and Katie poked at her meat with her fork. After a few minutes, Bernard started eating. The dinner progressed on silently, and when most attendants were very close to finishing the meal, Katie's dad got up and left the table. Katie herself looked up at Bernard as soon as her dad was out of earshot. Bernard saw her move out of the corner of his eye.

"Huh. Maybe she's going to admit that it's stupid to fight over something as trivial as the color of my shirt." He looked up though, not to a defeated face, as he expected, but one that was trying to feign it…unsuccessfully.

"Bernard," she asked, maliciously.

"What?" he answered in a similar fashion as he would to Curtis.

"Red and gold."

"Sorry that I didn't clear off the top of the table for you, Bernard. I just couldn't find another place for them." Katie said through the divider, as both changed from their clothes into sleepwear. Bernard's new maroon pajamas that matched his shirt gave him that weird, stiff "new clothes" feeling. Elves didn't have to sleep every night, like humans did, but only about once every two or three months. Some of the other elves at the North Pole did own sleepwear or nightgowns, but they rarely used them (even taking into consideration how little they would need them). Most of them, though, were like Bernard, and just slept in the clothes they had on. "This is going to be very interesting. Santa didn't tell me if I had to go to sleep every night, or if I could fake it, and wait until she was asleep. I guess he didn't think that I would be sleeping in the same room. Either that, or he thought I could figure it out on my own."

"Hello? Are you still alive?" Katie asked through the divider, when he didn't answer in a reasonable amount of time.

"Excuse me?" he answered, shaking himself out of his thoughts.

"I'm sorry that I didn't clear the top of the dresser off!" Katie said, louder, stressing each syllable. "I couldn't find another place for my pictures!"

"Okay, okay," he said, "I get it!" He could hear her stifled giggling. "I probably wouldn't have used it anyway." This wasn't completely true, but he didn't want to hurt his hostess' feelings. As he was pulling on his sleep shirt, he looked over at the dresser in question. There were framed photographs on every inch of it. Looking more closely at it, he saw in most of them, Katie was with either her dad, or a woman who looked a lot like her. "That must be her mom. She's really familiar. Where have I seen that woman before?" In one of the pictures of Katie's family at the beach, he noticed that both her and her mother had gold and silver sparkles on their cheeks. What surprised him more, though, was that the woman's ears were pointed. He picked up the photograph and examined it more closely.

"I'm opening the divider, alright?" Katie called through it.

"Okay." Bernard said, quickly putting the picture back down on the dresser. It fell over, knocking down several other pictures with it, as Katie pushed the divider halfway into the wall.

"My pictures!" she cried, laughing as Bernard tried to put the pictures back up, only to knock more down.

"Sorry," he mumbled, blushing again. He could hear Katie giggling and walking closer. "Don't worry about them," she chuckled, taking his hand off the pictures. "They never stay up anyway." She looked up at him, just in time to see him blush more.

"You blush a lot," she noted, lifting a hand to his bright pink cheek. Katie didn't think she was flirting, but…then again, she never thought that she was flirting. It was just in her nature to do things like this. She moved some of his curls from the right side of his face.

"Hey," Bernard tried to duck his head out of the way, unsuccessfully. It only made her hand slide up to the tip of his ear. It was only for less than half a second, but Katie's hand felt the point. She gasped, then pulled her hand back to her chest.

"What?" Bernard asked, worried that she realized his nonhumanhood.

"N-nothing," she stammered, her eyes searching his now pale cheeks for silver or gold sparkles. She found them as he quickly stood up, the light hitting them in just the right way to make them shimmer.

"Oh my gosh! He's an elf! A real elf!" she thought, then, to change the subject, quickly added, "Uh…what time do you want to get up tomorrow?"

Bernard, who was expecting to hear what Katie had been thinking, was startled. "About 7 in the morning, but what about-"

"Are you wearing make-up, Bernard?" she asked, acting playfully like an interrogator.

"Excuse me?"

"Are you wearing make-up?"

"No, why-" he began, warily. "I think I can see where this is going."

"Then why are your cheeks so sparkly?"

Bernard's already pale face lost all the color it had left. "Oh no! She knows I'm an elf!"

Katie laughed, making Bernard both angry and confused. It wasn't an evil laugh, as one might expect someone to use when they've figured out a piece of very important information, but Katie's just sounded like she was just laughing at the fact he was blushing.

"Don't look so scared, Bernard! I'm half-elf myself!"

Bernard fell down onto the floor with a loud THUD!