The Blue Fairy Dust Saga
Not Enough Time The Ticking Lab Five Days Later Time To Try Again The Longest Night
The Ticking Lab
March 1824 – Santa’s Village, Evela, Dondavar
The clocks were all wrong.
At least, that’s how it felt to Chris Kringle.
He stood alone in the quiet heart of the Workshop Annex, a special wing of the Toyworks that had been converted—at his request—into a place for “impossible thinking.” Clocks of every shape and size lined the walls: cuckoos, sun-dials (indoors), pocket watches dangling from strings, even a snowy hourglass filled with powdered candy glass.
And none of them agreed.
Chris turned slowly, arms folded behind his back, gazing at the ticking, tocking, clicking, clinking mess of it all. "One night," he muttered. "Just one night isn’t enough."
He had learned that the hard way. On Christmas Eve just three months earlier, he had tried delivering gifts to children across Earth for the first time. It was thrilling, breathtaking… and entirely impossible. In the end, he’d only managed to reach a handful of cities before sunrise tugged the curtain closed. The magic sleigh, boosted by Yellow Dust, could jump between continents. But even with the speed of the reindeer and clever gift bag tricks, there just wasn’t time.
Now, he needed to change that.
At a center table, stacked high with ledgers and fairy dust jars, sat Bernard—his Chief Elf Assistant, spectacles perched on the end of his nose. “You’re muttering again, Chris,” Bernard said without looking up.
again, Chris,” Bernard said without looking up.
“Muttering is thinking with sound,” Chris replied. “And I’m thinking very hard.”
He reached for a blue-glowing jar on the table—Blue Fairy Dust, newly isolated from fairy movements just weeks ago. Unlike Red or Yellow Dust, which crackled or shimmered, Blue Dust swirled like liquid sky in a jar, soft and slow, as if time itself was reluctant to leave it.
Bernard stood. “We’ve only ever recorded blue trails during deep-sleep fairy transits,” he said. “No one’s ever tried using it.”
Chris nodded. “Well… someone has to be the first.” He opened the jar.
The moment the lid popped free, a strange hush fell over the room. The ticking stopped—not just slowed, but stopped. Clocks froze mid-swing, pendulums stuck in midair. Even Bernard’s coat, caught in a draft, paused mid-flutter. Chris stared, wide-eyed.
“Well,” Bernard whispered. “That’s not ominous.”
Chris dipped the tip of a silver sleigh-bell into the dust. It shimmered, then pulsed once—tick. Every clock in the room jumped forward one second in unison, then stopped again.
“I think we’ve found the right path,” Chris murmured. “But it’s delicate.”
Very delicate.
Over the next three days, Chris and Bernard tested mixtures. A pinch of Yellow with Blue? Too unstable. A dash of Red? Everything got faster… including the elves. They brought in Merrit Cobbleknock, a nimble-fingered elf with a knack for precision, to keep records and monitor the trials.
They learned something important: Blue Dust could alter local time, but only if paired with strong intent and a physical anchor—a sleigh bell, a stopwatch, or even a peppermint stick (though that one was eaten mid-experiment).
On the fourth day, they tested the sleigh itself.
Chris placed a small blue-dusted time anchor beneath the seat and climbed aboard. The reindeer weren’t hitched—this was a test of flow, not flight. Bernard remained outside the lab with a stopwatch. “On your mark…” Bernard called.
Chris whispered a word to the dust.
Inside the sleigh, time bent. The walls of the lab blurred like melting sugar. Chris felt himself suspended in a bubble of stillness, where each heartbeat stretched like molasses. Five minutes passed for him—he sketched notes, sipped cocoa, even polished a runner.
Outside, Bernard’s stopwatch ticked two seconds.
Success.
But then, the clocks began to chime—off-tempo, out of order, ringing strange overlapping notes. One by one, the timepieces in the lab shuddered and cracked, overloading with misaligned minutes.
Chris jumped from the sleigh just as the last hourglass burst, sending a fine mist of candy-glass snow into the air.
Everyone froze.
“Well,” said Merrit, brushing sugar out of his hair. “Next time, maybe less Blue Dust?”
©Copyright 2025. All rights reserved.
We need your consent to load the translations
We use a third-party service to translate the website content that may collect data about your activity. Please review the details in the privacy policy and accept the service to view the translations.