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
Circuits and Curiosity
Chapter 2 of Nico's Story
Santa's Village - February, 1955
The snow had barely melted off the windowpanes of Santa’s Village when a bright-eyed twelve-year-old Nico Kringle began his apprenticeship with a Shoe Elf named Rendel Brightnose. Rendel was a tinker of the old school—part inventor, part philosopher, and part hazard to himself. His workshop smelled of peppermint solder and leather polish, and his ideas were as unpredictable as a jack-in-the-box after too many rewinds.
“You see, Nico,” Rendel said one morning, holding up a copper coil shaped like a snowflake, “a good invention should always surprise you. If it doesn't, you’re just making furniture.”
Nico took that to heart.
Though still short for his age, Nico's hands were steady and sure, and his mind sparked with questions. He spent mornings in Rendel’s cluttered workshop, afternoons in the Sleigh Yard studying sleigh systems with the methodical Jorbin Gearstripe, and evenings curled up by the Great Hearth with a mug of cocoa and a pencil, sketching blueprints into the foam.
The snow had barely melted off the windowpanes of Santa’s Village when a bright-eyed twelve-year-old Nico Kringle began his apprenticeship with a Shoe Elf named Rendel Brightnose. Rendel was a tinker of the old school—part inventor, part philosopher, and part hazard to himself. His workshop smelled of peppermint solder and leather polish, and his ideas were as unpredictable as a jack-in-the-box after too many rewinds.
“You see, Nico,” Rendel said one morning, holding up a copper coil shaped like a snowflake, “a good invention should always surprise you. If it doesn't, you’re just making furniture.”
Nico took that to heart.
Though still short for his age, Nico's hands were steady and sure, and his mind sparked with questions. He spent mornings in Rendel’s cluttered workshop, afternoons in the Sleigh Yard studying sleigh systems with the methodical Jorbin Gearstripe, and evenings curled up by the Great Hearth with a mug of cocoa and a pencil, sketching blueprints into the foam.
Rendel Brightnose was the first to laugh. “Well, at least it surprises me!” he shouted as he ducked a flailing ribbon loop.
Bernard grunted, trying to free himself, but even he smiled through the chaos. Santa simply clapped Nico on the back and said, “You’ve got the spirit, son. Now let’s teach it restraint.”
Despite the mishap, the invention earned Nico a new nickname around the Village: “The Ribbon Wrangler.”
By sixteen, Nico’s curiosity was deeper than ever. He’d outgrown Rendel’s small workbench and now had a corner of the Sleigh Yard Lab to himself—a privilege few elves, let alone humans, had earned. Jorbin Gearstripe, meticulous and no-nonsense, quietly approved. He never said much, but once, while watching Nico recalibrate a fairy dust flow meter, he murmured, “Your calculations are only off by .0037. That’s... impressive.”
It was the closest thing to praise Jorbin had given anyone in twenty years.
In time, Nico began helping design a newer, more efficient sleigh coupling harness—a harness that could self-adjust depending on reindeer size and gait. Rudy Winters and the Reindeer Team were skeptical at first. But when Nico's prototype allowed a young reindeer to break into full flight without a single stumble, Rudy tipped his cap. “You’re onto something, kid,” he said. “Next time, try making one that warms their hooves.”
Evenings remained Nico’s most productive time. He could often be found at the far end of the Sleigh Yard workshop, chalking numbers on the board or bent over open schematics. One memorable night, Bernard found him fast asleep beneath the sleigh frame of Comet Runner, a half-drawn dashboard sketch crumpled beneath his fingers.
The design proposed something radically new—an integrated panel that combined navigation, weather, speed, and fairy dust levels into one glowing interface. A whisper-lantern at the corner would allow Santa to murmur commands to the reindeer mid-flight, and a hidden lever would release tethered parachutes in case of sudden deceleration. The idea was so advanced it looked like something out of a fairy’s dream.
Santa picked up the drawing and smiled.
“He’s dreaming of the future,” he said softly to Bernard, who was wrapping a blanket around Nico’s shoulders.
“He always does,” Bernard replied, voice quiet with admiration. “And sometimes... I think he sees it more clearly than we do.”
The elves weren’t the only ones noticing.
By age seventeen, Nico had received a letter from the Council of Toy Engineers in Peppermint Village, inviting him to share notes at the Winter Conclave. He declined—the event conflicted with his scheduled upgrades to the toy sorting levers in the Workshop—but he sent along a full set of annotated schematics, and a cocoa recipe “for brainstorming.”
They framed the recipe.
At eighteen, Nico took on his first team project, coordinating with Thistle Lemmabean and Penny Trueleaf to design a carousel that could disassemble itself for easy chimney transport. The mechanism worked flawlessly—until the central spring wound too tight and launched the carousel top into the cookie room ceiling.
“Next time,” Penny noted, brushing gingerbread crumbs from her sleeve, “maybe not during lunch hour.”
Still, the carousel was quickly fixed, and Santa declared it the “most fun delivery blooper I’ve ever seen.”
By age twenty-one, Nico’s world was no longer confined to blueprints and benches. He had become part of a long tradition—an unspoken line of thinkers and tinkerers stretching from Neik Klass himself to the modern-day engineers of Evela. And yet, Nico remained distinctly himself. Humble. Curious. Intent on listening more than talking.
But as the Village admired Nico’s growing talents, things were also changing at home.
In the spring of 1963, the Kringle family welcomed a new member—baby Clara. The news was joyful, but it also came with creaky floorboards and crowded mornings. The Kringles had long occupied a cozy corner suite on the second floor of the Village Inn, and while it had suited a family of three, it now felt increasingly cramped.
Clara’s cradle took up half the sitting nook. Her midnight wails echoed down the hallway. Nico began keeping his blueprints under his bed and tiptoeing through pre-dawn routines so as not to wake the baby—or his parents.
One evening, after Clara had finally fallen asleep and the Inn had gone still, Nico sat on the stairwell with his cocoa mug cooling in his hands. He looked around at the worn bannisters, the elbowed corners, the way his father's boots crowded the coat rack, and thought: *We need a house.*
It wasn’t a complaint. Just a quiet idea, tucked beside a dozen others in Nico’s always-whirring mind. But that idea would take shape soon enough. And when it did, it would grow into something more than just a house—it would become a symbol of belonging.
The sleigh dashboard prototype was complete. The fairy dust meters in the Sleigh Yard now hummed with calibrated precision. And still, at the end of most nights, you could find him by the fire, stirring his cocoa, eyes distant, as another blueprint took shape in the foam.
Sometimes, he would smile and whisper, “Not furniture.”
And then he’d get to work.