Nico's Story: A Legacy in Motion
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 A Gift Within Circuits & Curiosity The Young Engineer The Midnight Workshop The Legacy Path
A Gift Within
Chapter 1 of Nico's Story
Santa's Village - March 1943
It was a quiet morning in the middle of spring when Merry Lou Jensen awoke with the unmistakable sense that something had changed. The sun filtered through the frosted windows of the Kringle cottage, casting dappled patterns across the quilt. The Village was just stirring—oven fires being kindled, bells at the Toyworks chiming their first call, reindeer snorting softly in their stalls.
Merry Lou sat upright, one hand drifting to her stomach as the warmth of understanding settled into her chest. A different sort of magic was stirring within her—life, not conjured or crafted, but gifted. A new beginning.
Later that day, she stood in the doorway of Santa’s Workshop, apron dusted with flour, eyes bright with wonder.
“Chris,” she said gently.
Santa looked up from the half-painted rocking horse in his hands. He had been experimenting with a faster-drying gingerbread lacquer, tongue between his teeth, deep in concentration.
“You may want to put that brush down,” she said, smiling.
He did.
“I’m going to need a new size of stocking,” she said.
Chris blinked. Then his eyes went wide, his hands still holding the horse mid-air.
“You mean—?”
She nodded.
For the first time in years, Chris Kringle was speechless.
News spread quickly through Santa’s Village, but not because anyone told. Joy has a way of snowballing in a place where magic lives, and the signs were everywhere: sleigh bells rang just a little brighter that morning, frosting on the candy shop window curled into hearts, and the Great Fir Tree let loose a single shimmering pinecone—a rare blessing among the elves.
At the Toyworks, True Elves paused mid-assembly to blink at one another, then smile knowingly.
“I thought I felt something in the air,” muttered Breezy Nell, tapping her hammer against a nutcracker’s jaw.
“I felt it in my knees,” groaned Tinsel McGinnis. “That always means big change.”
At the stables, Rudy Winters scratched his head. “A baby Claus, eh? Never wrangled one of those.”
Even the Fairies, who rarely paid attention to domestic matters, fluttered in a little closer to observe. “A Kringle child?” whispered Amella to Forlot, who tilted his translucent head in curiosity. “That hasn’t happened in centuries—not since the days of Neik Klass himself.”
Among the humans in Santa’s Village—those few visitors who stayed for long stretches of time or had settled near the base of the Great Fir—reaction was more reserved but no less intrigued.
“They say he’ll be half-human,” said Gorrell the carpenter. “Reckon he’ll like snowball fights?”
“He’d better,” muttered Tilly Frothwhip, wiping her glasses. “The other children will certainly test him.”
And in the Sleigh Yards, where engineering minds ticked as surely as the clocks inside the Hall of Records, the reaction was...calculating.
“Kringle family expansion means future sleighload adjustments,” mumbled Nolin Threespark, sketching a new weight distribution diagram.
“Additional milk and cookie stops,” added Len Thornley, already drafting a logistical addendum.
“But will he fly?” asked a young elfling named Sprig. “Will the new Claus fly with the reindeer?”
Rudy, leaning nearby, chuckled. “Only if he learns how to fall first.”
Nicholas Kringle was born on a windswept night in December, just days before Christmas—but not on the Eve itself, for as Merry Lou insisted, “One birthday a year for the Kringle family is quite enough.” They soon began calling him Nico, a cozy nickname that seemed to suit the small boy with the bright eyes and curious spirit.
He arrived red-cheeked and wide-eyed, with a puff of warmth even the Fairies noticed. The moment he cried, a ripple of red fairy dust sparkled briefly across the sky—just enough to send the reindeer into an excited prance.
From his earliest days, Nico was a child of two worlds. He had his father’s deep laugh and his mother’s calm steadiness, but also his own spark, uniquely his. The elves took turns watching him during festival prep hours, passing him from woolen lap to wooden bench, each offering a tiny handcrafted rattle or soft knit slipper.
His first steps came not inside the cottage, but in the snow outside Crumbelle’s Bakery. He had waddled after the scent of gingerbread, only to plop face-first into a drift with a delighted squeal. Crumbelle rushed out, Penny Trueleaf just behind, and all three ended up laughing with their faces dusted in powdered sugar and snowflakes.
From then on, Nico was everywhere. He peered into gears at the Toyworks, leaned dangerously close to the bellows in the blacksmith’s hut, and somehow managed to pull apart a music box just to see how the tune got in.
“Curious little snowball,” muttered Bernard fondly, after catching him nose-deep in the workshop’s sled mechanics. “If he learns to put things back together as fast as he takes them apart, we’re in for a bright future.”
Each night, he fell asleep beneath the Great Fir Tree, where Merry Lou read stories by starlight—tales of the first Santa, of elves who raced the wind, and of toys that changed the world one smile at a time. Nico listened with wide eyes, always asking what happened next, and why. His favorite story was the one where his father found Earth and crossed the great divide between Dondavar and the mortal world.
“Will I go there someday?” he once asked, nestled in a blanket of soft red wool.
Merry Lou kissed his brow. “If you wish to. Or if the world wishes for you.”
By age twelve, Nico Kringle could name every elf in the Sleigh Yard, every reindeer on the winter rotation, and every flavor of rootbeer Crumbelle had ever tested. He was lankier than most elflings but quick, strong, and always asking questions. The toys he crafted were crude but inventive—puzzle blocks with sliding panels, kazoos that doubled as flashlights (though they whined terribly), and once, a snowball cannon that left a dent in the back of the Reindeer Barn.
“Better he aims that curiosity toward something constructive,” grunted Rudy, brushing frost off his coat.
That spring, Nico asked to spend afternoons in the sleigh workshop. He was fascinated by the delicate interplay of fairy dust channels and reinforced runners, the way the sleigh's enchantments worked not just with magic, but with fine-tuned engineering.
One quiet evening, as the last echo of sleighbells faded into the distance, he sat cross-legged beside Bernard on the bench outside the Toyworks.
“How does it fly, really?” he asked. “I know about the red fairy dust, but why does it work? Why do the reindeer lift off at just the right moment?”
Bernard smiled. The question was not born of awe, but of true inquiry—the kind of wondering that builds futures.
“Because magic alone doesn’t choose the moment,” Bernard said. “The sleigh responds to trust. Reindeer fly when they know the world needs them to. And the sleigh lifts when the heart behind it believes the journey is worth taking.”
Nico sat with that, frowning just a little, absorbing it like snow on warm mittens.
“Then I’d better learn how to believe.”
Bernard chuckled and reached for a nearby sleigh bell. “That’s the first step. And perhaps the hardest.”
He handed it to Nico. It rang soft and clear in the still air—no fairy dust, no enchantment, just sound.
“But the next steps,” Bernard added, “involve a lot of trial and error... and a very good toolbox.”