Earth Deliveries - December 24–25, 1825 | Subjective Duration: 60 days

In the dark stillness before midnight, the Lab of Ticking Wonders shimmered with soft blue light. The air ticked and hummed with a thousand clocks and chronometers, all synchronized to the very second. The main chronoswitch on the wall clicked forward: 11:59 and 49 seconds. The sleigh was ready. The reindeer were ready. And Santa Chris Kringle… took a breath.

Beside him stood a young but remarkably steady elf named Lindle Timewhirl, a quiet sort with an intuitive grasp of rhythm, pacing, and pause. Of all the elves who might accompany Santa on this unprecedented voyage, Lindle was the one who understood time not by numbers, but by feel. He had trained his entire life to count not just minutes, but moments.

"Are the Portal Sacks aligned?" Santa asked.

Lindle nodded. "All six pairs. North Pole end is prepped, and I just got the signal from the Amsterdam team. Bromley Longbranch confirmed the Earth-side channels are holding steady."

Santa turned his eyes to the sleigh—trimmed with Red and Yellow Fairy Dust along its rails and runners. The Red would keep it flying; the Yellow would bend the air around it, slipping through space like a fish through a stream. And the Blue... well, the Blue was the reason this night would last far longer than any other.

The last clock ticked. Midnight.

Santa flicked the reins, and the sleigh surged skyward, vanishing into the night with a trailing burst of blue light. To the onlookers, he disappeared in the blink of an eye. But to Santa and Lindle, the world slowed to a crawl.

Day One.
They crossed the Atlantic on the wind, the stars pulsing like fireflies. The first home was in the Scottish Highlands. Santa landed softly, stepped through drifting snow, and left a carved wooden flute near the hearth. Lindle handed him the next gift, already waiting from the bag beside them. No rummaging. No searching. Just the next child's name, the next home, the next joy.

Back at the North Pole, shifts of elves worked in 6-hour rotations, feeding thousands of toys through the inbound Portal Sacks. Each sack had been dusted with Yellow Fairy Dust—tested thoroughly over the past year—and now served as a magical tube, transferring toys across dimensions with absolute precision. Racks of labeled parcels, scrolls of child-lists, sleigh-reinforced toys, and wrapped surprises flew down the line with remarkable speed.

Every 10 subjective days—about 4 hours of Earth time—Santa and Lindle returned briefly to the Pole. Bernard kept the rhythm, timing each break down to the minute. There, Santa would rest: eat warm gingerroot stew, soak his feet, nap, even stretch. He refused to allow exhaustion to blunt the magic. This was no ordinary night—it was the night.

Day Fourteen.
In rural Mongolia, Santa crouched under a sky glowing with northern lights. A camel watched him with mild curiosity as he left a puzzle box carved with sun patterns by Tinsel McGinnis himself. Lindle handed him the next gift—already sorted, already packed, already perfect.

They spoke little, but the sleigh thrummed with a warm silence.

Day Twenty-One.
A blizzard struck over Cape Horn. The wind howled and the stars disappeared. Santa gritted his teeth. Red Dust kept the sleigh aloft, but the teleportation element of the Yellow Dust had to be throttled back—too much shifting mid-flight could cause a spill. Lindle redirected them upward, into the upper stratosphere where the air grew still, and the storm passed beneath them like a churning blanket.

Below, children slept with dreams of candlelight and cinnamon.

Day Thirty-Five.
A snag.

One of the six Portal Sacks at the Pole malfunctioned. It had begun duplicating toys—two tops for one child, three dolls instead of one. Bernard halted the entire station. Crumbelle Frosting, of all elves, ran the diagnostics. The issue was a residual coating of Blue Dust—used in a prior experiment—that had become trapped in the fabric. The sack was quarantined. Replacement sacks were swapped in, and only a few hundred homes experienced the tiniest of delays. No child received less than they deserved.

Santa never even noticed. Lindle made a discreet mark in the log and handed over the next box, this one with a clockwork owl inside.

Day Forty-Eight.
In the deep deserts of Arabia, Santa set a carved camel with gold-painted hooves just inside a courtyard door. A breeze passed by. The moon was low. The magic shimmered in every footstep.

Lindle paused. “We’re halfway.”

Santa nodded, rubbing his shoulder. “You ever wonder if we’ll feel the 60 days once we’re back?”

Lindle smiled faintly. “Only if we let time catch us.”

Day Fifty-Seven.
Back at the Pole, elves cheered as Santa landed briefly in the Sleigh Yard. He looked older than when he left—tired, yes, but bright-eyed. Tandy Thistle handed him a thermos of hot peppermint cocoa and waved a candy cane like a signal flag. Rudy Winters saluted as he guided fresh reindeer into place. Even the reindeer needed breaks. The original team rotated every ten Earth hours. Of the 53 reindeer in the Village, at least 20 took turns in the harness, working in pairs or trios with the senior team.

Inside the Toyworks, the final batch of toys was sealed and handed to the Portal Crew.

Day Sixty.
The final gift. A home on the western coast of Alaska. A quiet, wind-brushed place.

Santa landed softly, opened the flap of his bag, and withdrew a small wooden bear. Handcrafted by Shoe Elves in Cobblerton. Simple, charming, and loved already.

He tucked it beside a bundle of dried fish and a hand-drawn note from a sibling.

Then he stood tall and looked to the sky. "That’s it."

Lindle’s eyes closed for a moment. “All homes reached. All gifts given.”

Santa grinned. “Then let’s go home.”

Midnight. Real Time. December 25.
The sleigh reappeared above Santa’s Village in a burst of shimmering blue and red. Elves flooded the Sleigh Yard, cheering and waving lanterns. The reindeer touched down gracefully, tails flicking. Bernard clicked the master stopwatch.

“Exactly twenty-four hours,” he declared.

Santa stepped down. The 60-day beard he’d grown inside the time field had faded back to a single night’s scruff. Time had compressed again. But something in his eyes told the truth of it. He had been gone. He had lived every moment. And he had made it matter.

Lindle followed behind, carrying the empty bag and the logbook filled with careful notations. He handed the book to Bernard and said quietly, “Let’s print this one in blue ink.”

Aftermath

In the weeks that followed, the elves revised every part of the system—from toy logistics to portal sack rotation, from reindeer pacing to gift telemetry. Santa insisted on preparing even earlier next year, and plans were drawn to deploy one or two elves per continent to serve as remote scouts and aid distribution. But for now, the fires in the Great Hearth Hall burned warmly, and elves shared cocoa and stories of the Longest Night.

The magic had worked. The vision had held. Every child, every home, every hope—reached.

And Santa, for the first time in his life, believed it could be done again.