The Yellow Fairy Dust Saga
The Vanishing Teacup Where Dust Takes Us Crossing Worlds The Eve Begins Scaling Up
Crossing Worlds
Part 3 of the Yellow Fairy Dust Saga (August, 1821)
Sleigh in Flight
Reindeer Team: Glimmer & Nettle
The air was crisp and high, the sort of thin cold that made the inside of your nose tingle. Chris Kringle guided his explorer sleigh through the cloudbank, a glimmer of yellow trailing behind the runners as they slid effortlessly across the upper sky. The Yellow Fairy Dust had worked better than expected this time—far better.
He didn’t know how far he’d gone. The stars were familiar, and yet... skewed, as though someone had nudged the sky’s canvas just a little to the right. Still, Glimmer and Nettle flew strong, their strides steady, the Red Fairy Dust woven into their flight harnesses keeping them aloft. But something tugged at Chris’s senses—a subtle shift in weight, in distance, in feel. He adjusted the pressure on the reins and slowed.
"Steady now," he murmured.
Below, the clouds parted. What he saw made his heart skip.
There was a city beneath them. A real one. Not the carved-into-tree-hollows of Elven villages or the cottage circles of Dondavar’s human towns. This was stone, and brick, and lanternlight. Tall, narrow houses stood shoulder-to-shoulder beside ribbons of water. A windmill turned lazily near a riverside. The rooftops slanted in patterns he hadn’t seen since—
“No…” he breathed. “It can’t be.”
But it was.
Amsterdam.
He brought the sleigh lower, cautiously, skimming above a quiet canal. The moon’s reflection trembled in the water. A cyclist—a cyclist!—pedaled across a narrow bridge and disappeared into the lamplight.
Chris pulled up and looped once more, just to be sure. The signs were written in Dutch. The church bells rang with the same pitch he remembered from another life—distant, like a song half-forgotten. He had lived here once, long ago, before the Spirit of Christmas called him north and Fenric found him by candlelight. Before the trials, before the sleigh
The memories hadn’t vanished. They’d simply been waiting—for a moment like this.
He had come home.
Except it wasn’t home anymore. Not really. Not after decades in another world. But the streets below were still part of him, like a lullaby half-forgotten.
Into the Fog
Chris turned the sleigh west. The reindeer, perhaps sensing the depth of his thoughts, moved quietly. Yellow Dust shimmered again beneath the sleigh’s runners as they gained speed. No push, no pull—just shift. Reality gave way like paper turning in a book.
The next sky was darker, the clouds heavier.
Below lay another city—older, grander, sprawling along a winding river. The rooftops here were grayer, more soot-stained, but the lights burned warm. A massive clock tower stood sentinel above it all. The Thames curled through the land like a dark ribbon of ink.
London.
He passed over the spires of Westminster, then along streets teeming with late-night traffic—horse-drawn carts and flickering gas lamps. Someone on a rooftop glanced up and pointed. Chris instinctively ducked.
“Still not ready to be seen,” he muttered.
But the recognition grew stronger in his chest. These were places he’d only dreamed of in his decades in Dondavar. The names had faded, but the shapes remained. The crossing had opened a door to what he had thought forever lost.
He flew out beyond the city and set the sleigh down in a grove of trees on a quiet hillside. The moon crested above the leafless branches. The reindeer pawed at the ground, unbothered by the foreign soil.
Chris pulled off his gloves and took a pinch of Yellow Fairy Dust from the small velvet pouch stitched into his sleeve. He held it up to the light.
"So," he said softly, "it doesn’t just make us faster. It takes us through."
Echoes from Before
At the time, Chris thought it was a dream. But the memory never faded. Twenty winters
later, as he worked in a quiet toy shop deep in the pines, a messenger cloaked in crimson and holly appeared at his door. The same figure from the square. The same quiet light. The tree that blinked like stars on a sugar high.
It had not been a dream, but a summons—planted long before he understood what it meant. A signal from beyond the veil.
Now, as he sat beside his sleigh, breath curling into the night, Chris let the truth settle in:
He had come full circle. From Earth to Dondavar and now, at last, back again.
The signs in Dutch. The bells. The rooftops of Amsterdam.
And more haunting still—the knowledge that someone, or something, had seen him long before he ever laid hands on the sleigh.
Had the elves known of Earth all along? Had the Spirit of Christmas always watched both realms?
His gloved hands tightened on his knees. The questions would come—perhaps not tonight, but soon. The implications were vast.
But one truth glowed brighter than any star:
He was here. On Earth.
And Yellow Fairy Dust had made it possible.He remembered a snow-covered night long ago, back in Amsterdam. He was very young—no older than ten. He had seen a tree appear in the square, one that hadn’t been there the day before. Its lights blinked oddly, like stars on a sugar high.
And beside it, a tall figure in red, only visible for a moment, had tipped his hat and vanished in a flash of gold and red.
A New Kind of List
By morning, frost clung to the edges of the sleigh. Chris unfurled his leather-bound travel ledger and flipped past pages filled with names, routes, and altitudes across Dondavar. He opened to a blank sheet and wrote carefully:
New Territories: Earth – Initial Survey
Priority Locations for Christmas Eve Flight
- Amsterdam – December 24, Nightfall
- London – December 24, Midnigh
He looked over the page, then added beneath:
Objective: Confirm feasibility of interdimensional gift delivery.
Criteria: Child presence, belief resonance, temporal alignment.
Resources Required: Expanded Yellow Dust reserve, temporal dampers, localized delivery magic.
He closed the book and tucked it back into the sleigh compartment.
The reindeer, resting nearby, watched with expectant eyes.
Chris stood, stretched, and looked to the rising sun.
“This is just the beginning,” he said. “Two cities this year. More, perhaps, next.”He placed his hand gently on Glimmer’s withers. “Think of it: children across two worlds, waking to find a gift they never expected. A spark of wonder where there was only routine.”
Nettle snorted softly in approval.
Chris smiled. “Yes. Let’s go home.”
Return to Dondavar
The Yellow Dust shimmered one last time that morning, and in a blink of golden light, the sleigh vanished from Earth’s sky. A young boy in a park near London looked up and pointed, wide-eyed, as a streak of yellow fire cut across the dawn. His father said it was a comet.
But the boy wasn’t so sure.
Back in Dondavar, the sleigh touched down in the Sleigh Yard. Rudy Winters and Fenrick Redgleam were already waiting, brows furrowed, eyes scanning for signs of misfire or injury.
“Well?” Fenrick barked, before Chris had even dismounted. “Did it work?”
Chris stepped down, his boots crunching the frost. “Oh, it worked.”
Rudy tilted his head. “You’re grinning like a snow sprite, Santa.”
Chris leaned in and whispered, “Get the cartographers. We’re adding two new cities to the Eve run.”
Rudy blinked. “From where?”
Chris just smiled. “From a place with cobblestone streets and belief in its bones.”
To Be Continued…
Next: “The Eve Begins” – Santa’s first Christmas deliveries on Earth begin with two cities, and one unexpected stowaway…
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