Dexter Tinker Arc 1
The Tinker's Trouble
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Sleigh Ride Squeaky Bells Decorator Menu Mixup Hall of Records Panic
The Unscheduled Sleigh Ride
Sleigh Yard - December 22, 2021 8:10 P.M.
Dexter Tinker had been born with a gear in one hand and a wrench in the other—or so the joke went around Santa’s Village. No one really remembered seeing him without some sort of gadget strapped to his belt or an oil stain on his cheek. He wasn’t the tallest elf, nor the strongest, nor the most organized by any sleigh-bell jingle—but he was the most inventive. Which was, depending on the day, either a blessing or a blizzard-sized headache.
He wore his curiosity like a scarf: wrapped around everything he did, sometimes trailing behind him in tangled knots. At age 64 (a sprightly teenager by True Elf standards), Dexter had already constructed five kinds of snowball launchers, rewired the cookie oven for “turbo mode” (a mistake no one would forget), and tried to develop self-wrapping gift paper that, unfortunately, also self-detonated.
So when the Elfling Assignment Board posted his December rotation—Sleigh Yard Assistant, 3rd Shift, Report to Reindeer Barn at 9:00 PM—Dexter had danced an entire jig around the bulletin board.
The Sleigh Yard! Santa’s actual sleigh! The reindeer! The snow-polished launch track! For Dexter, it was like being assigned to the moon—and given a shovel to dig craters.
He reported early. Very early.
It was only 8:10 PM when Dexter bounded into the barn, his cheeks rosy with anticipation, goggles pushed up on his forehead, and a multi-tool jangling on his belt like it was caroling.
"You're keen," grunted Rendel Brightnose, the Shoe Elf in charge of sleigh readiness for the evening. He didn’t look up from the harness he was inspecting. "We don’t even start prep until half past."
“I know!” Dexter beamed. “But I wanted to review the sleigh’s subframe, double-check the rear runners, maybe lubricate the yaw controls on the dash, and—”
“It’s not a submarine,” Rendel muttered. “Go polish the sleigh bells.”
“Yes, sir!”
Dexter saluted, which startled the sleigh bells in question into jingling from their rack. He dashed off like a peppermint whirlwind, hardly noticing that the barn cats—three lazy felines named Comet Jr., Spot, and Knickerwhisker—scattered from his path with grumpy meows.
Outside, the snow had stopped. The wind was calm. And the stars had begun to blink overhead like the world's most ancient string of fairy lights. Inside, the barn glowed with lamplight and the smells of cedar polish, hot chocolate, and reindeer oats.
Tonight wasn’t the big night—not yet. Christmas Eve was still two days away. But the final week of preparations followed a precise schedule, and third shift was responsible for a critical transition: hitching the sleigh to the reindeer, hauling it across the snow to the Loading Dock, and beginning the first of many scheduled transfers. Giant red portal sacks—each one tied shut with golden cord and numbered—were stacked and ready nearby. These “Portal Sacks” would deliver toys that would be sent from Santa’s Village on Dondavar. Moving them into position now saved precious time later.
Rendel kept the team moving efficiently. Two elves tightened straps. Another polished the lead lantern. Wink, a Messenger Elf no taller than a loaf of bread, zipped through the rafters making inspection notes.
And Dexter? Dexter got to see the sleigh.
She was glorious.
Sleek as ice, red as a candied apple, gold trim curling around the edges like ribbon on a package. Santa’s sleigh sat on its launch platform like a dream made real—larger than Dexter had expected, and more elegant than any blueprint could show. Eight-point harnesses hung from the forward brace, already adjusted to reindeer height. The whole sleigh sparkled, freshly waxed for the occasion.
Dexter drifted toward it like a snowflake caught in a draft. He knew he wasn’t supposed to touch anything without permission—but maybe, just maybe, he could look closer.
Then he saw it.
Right there on the dashboard—between the sleigh stabilizer toggle and the enchanted altimeter dial—was a smudge. It wasn’t a big smudge, just a faint streak, like someone had leaned on the panel with a mitten on. But once Dexter noticed it, he couldn’t un-notice it.
“Unacceptable,” he whispered to himself. “Santa deserves a spotless sleigh.”
He looked around. Rendel was busy adjusting Vixen’s chest strap. Wink was off in the rafters again. The barn cats were asleep. No one would mind if he just… wiped a small spot clean.
The footstep rung glinted in the light. One rung wouldn’t hurt.
He climbed it.
Then the next.
Then, before he could think better of it, Dexter found himself in the sleigh, kneeling on the driver’s bench, pulling a clean cloth from his belt pouch.
He wiped once. Then twice.
The smudge came off, revealing the polished brass underneath, and Dexter grinned.
But as he turned to slide back out of the sleigh, his foot nudged a small brass pedal marked “Initiate.”
The sleigh... hummed.
Not a loud hum. Just enough to make the lantern flicker and the runners vibrate.
Dexter froze.
“Whoops,” he muttered, reaching for the pedal again—but at that exact moment, something outside startled Blitzen. The reindeer jostled.
One of them let out a grunt.
The reins tugged.
A chain slipped.
And then—whoosh.
The sleigh shot forward.
December 22, 2021 – 9:03 P.M.
The sleigh rocketed forward with the force of a candy-cane cannonball. Dexter shrieked—very unheroically—and clung to the dashboard as the barn doors whooshed open before him. Magic sensors, detecting the sleigh’s sudden motion, activated the polar field barrier, which shimmered away just in time to let him blast through.
Snow swirled behind him in a rooster tail of glittering ice.
“No no no no NO!” Dexter shouted, flailing for the reins—which, naturally, were out of reach. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the sleigh, let alone piloting it.
The reindeer surged forward with eager precision, their hooves hardly touching the snow as they hit the ramp at the far end of the yard. Eight bodies moved as one, a smooth wave of muscle and magic.
And then—lift.
The sleigh went airborne.
Dexter screamed again, this time with wind in his throat. The ground fell away, and the rooftops of Santa’s Village shrank beneath him like toy houses on a shelf. He flew over the candy-striped signal tower, zipped past the twinkling lights of the Clockwright Assembly Hall, and soared directly through the Great Fir Tree’s wreath ring—accidentally knocking two of the bells askew.
Somewhere down below, an elf in mid-cocoa-sip saw the sleigh pass overhead and spat marshmallows in surprise.
“I’m not qualified for this!” Dexter cried.
He fumbled for the console. Every dial, toggle, and lever was labeled in elegant script—but Santa was the only one who knew the entire control sequence by heart. Dexter had studied blueprints and heard rumors, but nothing in his tinkering experience had prepared him for actually flying the sleigh.
Still, he had to try something.
“Okay, okay,” he panted, grasping the stabilizer lever and easing it back a notch.
The sleigh bobbed in the air like a cork in a glass of soda.
“Too much! Too much!”
He pushed the lever forward.
The sleigh dipped and then lurched, gaining speed.
Below him, the Rootbeer River gleamed like a silver ribbon, and beyond it stretched the snowy fields leading to the Eastern Hills. The sleigh wasn’t just flying—it was cruising, faster than Dexter had ever traveled outside of a tunnel slide.
At this rate, he’d be halfway to Dromstad in under ten minutes.
“Focus, Dexter! Focus!” he told himself. “You’re an engineer! A problem solver!”
He tapped a button labeled “Altitude Hold.” Nothing happened.
He flipped a lever marked “Long Glide Mode.” The sleigh began to spin sideways, gently at first, then more insistently.
“Oh peppermint pickle sauce—”
He hit the lever again. The spinning stopped, but now the sleigh was pointed southwest, entirely the wrong direction. The reindeer, loyal and trained, obeyed every input—but they didn’t question who was issuing the commands. To them, Dexter was just another elf in the driver’s seat.
At least they weren’t panicking. If anything, they looked energized. Prancer was even tossing his antlers in delight.
“Glad you’re having fun,” Dexter muttered, yanking his goggles down over his eyes. Wind whipped his hair, and the cold pressed against his cheeks like frozen mittens.
The sleigh hit a turbulence pocket near the Londloan Steeps. For a moment, it dropped a dozen feet in a stomach-churning plummet, then caught the updraft and shot skyward again. Dexter’s toolkit flew open. Nuts, bolts, and a handful of peppermint screws whirled through the air like festive confetti.
The sleigh looped slightly—too steep to be safe, too shallow to be impressive—and Dexter finally spotted a large glowing rune button, set into the center console, ringed in red.
“EMERGENCY SUMMON”
“Oh, I really hope that means what I think it means,” he said, and slapped his palm down on it.
A moment passed.
Then another.
Then—
ping-ping-ping-ping!
Far behind him, deep in the northern sky, a series of blinking lights flared to life in a spiral pattern. Then a streak of blue light zipped out from the horizon like a comet on a rescue mission.
Dexter squinted.
It wasn’t a comet. It was a person. A very small person.
With no wings.
“A Messenger Elf!” Dexter gasped. “Wink must’ve seen me launch!”
The blue streak angled toward him at impossible speed. In less than thirty seconds, the elf zipped alongside the sleigh and matched its velocity with shocking ease. Sure enough—it was Wink, wearing a wind visor and a look of deeply unimpressed calm.
Wink tapped on the sleigh’s side.
Dexter cracked open the side panel window and let in an icy blast.
“Do you have a license?” Wink shouted.
“DOES IT LOOK LIKE I HAVE A LICENSE?” Dexter yelled back, flailing as the sleigh wobbled again.
Wink didn’t roll his eyes, but it was a very near thing. Instead, he made a series of brisk gestures and mimed pulling something.
Dexter blinked. “The… counterpull dampener?” he guessed.
Wink gave him a double thumbs-up.
Dexter dove for the right-hand lever beside the seat—the one labeled “D.P.A.” in gold foil script. He had no idea what “D.P.A.” stood for, but he pulled it anyway.
Instantly, the sleigh decelerated, dropping to a lower altitude. The reindeer began to arc in a wide, slow circle—no longer racing, just gliding.
Wink zoomed ahead, tracing an easy return loop. The sleigh followed.
Dexter let out a long, shaky breath. “Okay,” he mumbled. “Okay, I’m not dead. I’m not dead, and I didn’t crash. That’s… something.”
The sleigh coasted lower, drawing back toward the Sleigh Yard. The lights of Santa’s Village twinkled invitingly. And just below the path, dozens of elves had gathered outside the Sleigh Garage, pointing skyward and muttering things Dexter could not hear, but could definitely feel.
He had a sinking suspicion that the phrase “Dexter Tinker” was being passed around a lot down there.
December 22, 2021 – 9:17 PM
The sleigh coasted down in a gentle arc, guided by Wink’s spiral descent. The reindeer, still brimming with energy, responded with crisp wingbeats of their hooves—barely brushing the snow as they touched down on the Sleigh Yard’s main runway. Runners skidded softly over the frost-glazed track, trailing faint golden sparks.
Dexter gripped the bench for dear life until the sleigh finally rolled to a stop in front of the barn.
Silence.
For one second.
Then the shouting began.
“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR ELFIN’ MIND?” Rendel Brightnose stormed across the snow, half-bundled in his coat, scarf flapping like battle flags. Behind him, several elves from the loading crew, two reindeer handlers, and at least three witnesses from the Peppermint Cocoa Stand were rapidly closing in.
Dexter opened his mouth to explain but couldn’t decide where to begin.
Rendel didn’t wait. “You launched the sleigh?! Without clearance? Without Santa? Without cargo?!”
“It was an accident!” Dexter said quickly, scrambling down the step-rungs. “I didn’t mean to. I just saw a smudge on the control panel and—”
“You what?”
“It was dirty! I was just going to wipe it!”
“Dirty?” Rendel blinked, then planted both mittened hands on his face. “You risked a full sleigh launch because of a smudge?!”
“I didn’t launch it! I just nudged a pedal, and then Blitzen got spooked, and the chain slipped—”
“Oh, wonderful! So the sleigh decided to take a joyride all on its own, did it?”
Wink zipped down beside them and landed on the sleigh's runner, arms folded, expression unreadable. For once, the Messenger Elf didn’t say a word—just jotted something on his tiny clipboard with maddening precision.
Dexter glanced around. The crowd of elves wasn’t dispersing. In fact, a few had pulled out gingerbread phones and were filming.
Great. Immortalized on the inter-village message board as the elf who launched Christmas early. Without presents. Or a plan.
“I’m sorry,” Dexter said quietly, ears drooping.
“Sorry doesn’t put the sleigh back in its slot,” Rendel grunted, rubbing his forehead. “Sorry doesn’t explain to the reindeer why they had to run a fifteen-minute loop off-schedule. And sorry doesn’t fix your employment record.”
Dexter’s heart sank.
He hadn’t meant to cause a scene. He’d just wanted to help. To impress someone. Anyone. To prove he wasn’t just a walking disaster with ideas too big for his mittens.
But maybe that’s what he was.
Wink tapped his clipboard and finally spoke. “Well… he did remember the dampener control. That’s something.”
Rendel gave Wink a sideways glare. “He remembered it after spiraling over the Rootbeer River and nearly slamming into the peppermint light tower.”
Wink shrugged. “Still. He stabilized. Sleigh’s in one piece. Reindeer are happy.”
“They’re always happy,” Rendel muttered. “They’re enchanted.”
Dexter looked up. “Does that mean I’m not fired?”
Rendel didn’t answer right away.
The snow creaked underfoot. Wind rustled across the yard. A single pinecone dropped from the barn roof and landed with a soft plunk.
“Not yet,” Rendel said at last. “But you are officially reassigned. Immediately.”
Dexter gulped. “To where?”
“To Nico Kringle’s workbench.”
Wink raised an eyebrow. “That’s bold.”
Rendel nodded. “If he’s gonna take apart the sleigh, he can learn what makes it tick. Every bolt. Every bracket. Every bypass valve.”
“I—I get to work with Nico?” Dexter asked, wide-eyed.
“Under him,” Rendel corrected. “And if you so much as sneeze near a propulsion pedal again, I will have you reassigned to the icicle sanding team. Clear?”
Dexter nodded vigorously. “Crystal clear, sir.”
“Good.” Rendel turned to the crowd. “Show’s over! Get back to your cocoa, or whatever shift you were supposed to be working!”
The crowd slowly began to disperse, though more than a few were still giggling behind mittens.
As the sleigh was rolled back into the barn, Wink hovered beside Dexter a moment longer.
“You’ve got the instincts,” the little elf said, almost grudgingly. “But you’re reckless.”
“I know,” Dexter said. “I’m working on that.”
Wink nodded once and took off into the dark, trailing blue sparkles behind him.
Dexter stood there for a minute more, watching the sleigh vanish into its bay. The smudge he’d tried to clean? It was gone. But in its place was a memory, carved into the dashboard of his mind like initials in bark:
He’d flown the sleigh.
Not well. Not by choice. But still.
He had flown it.
And he wasn’t fired.
A slow grin spread across Dexter’s face.
Maybe this wasn’t the start he’d imagined.
But maybe it was the start he needed.