It’s late afternoon in the North Pole. There’s not a soul to be found on the streets or in the workshops, even the hot cocoa cafes are empty. Aside from the occasional sleepy neigh of a slumbering reindeer, the only sound is the ticking of a huge clock in center square. It sits atop a red-and-white striped pole, with four rectangular faces so it can be seen from anywhere in the village. “Countdown to Christmas,” it reads, and indeed, once every sixty seconds there is a loud “tick” as a number flips to reveal that we are one minute closer to showtime.

It’s a common misconception in the human world that Christmas Eve is mayhem in the North Pole, with elves rushing to finish toys and tie bows on gifts. We’ve been doing this for centuries, after all. We work 364 days a year leading up to this. No, on Christmas Eve, right up until it’s time to load toys onto the sleigh and watch Santa whisk all our hard work away to bring joy to children around the world, we elves sleep.

It’s also a misconception, while we’re on the topic, that we are Santa’s children - we have regular elf parents; or that Santa is an ancient, immortal creature. The North Pole is like any other free country. We hold elections every few decades for a new leader, who abandons his lay name and becomes Santa. We are not all toymakers, we have doctors and shopkeepers, and everything else you’d expect from a functioning democracy. But it is true that toymaking is the leading industry here, and many elves live in cottages on the workshop property. It’s kind of like the Google compound, but more magical.

And so, this brings us to one cottage, occupied by an elf named Tinsel. Although we aren’t all related, as I explained earlier, elves all share some common characteristics. We tend to be small, not like you see in cartoons, but petite, nevertheless. A typical elf face will feature large eyes and high cheekbones, a small, upturned nose, and delicately pointed chin. But elves come in all races, and just like humans, we have a wide variety of hair colors, skin tones, eye color, and other features that vary. Tinsel’s large eyes were a deep bluish green, with a burst of orange and yellow right around her pupils. They were rimmed with dark lashes and accentuated with dark, arched brows, and you guessed it, dark hair that was most often in messy waves and tucked behind her pointed ears. Yes, cartoons got that part right. Her skin was fair and freckled, and this afternoon, while her colleagues napped in preparation for the biggest night of the year, she laid in her bed and stared at the ceiling.

Tinsel had only joined the gift-wrapping team a few months ago, after many years of hopping from cocoa cafe to cocoa cafe. Years of forced small talk and smiling at strangers for tips made Tinsel yearn for a more solitary life. Gift wrapping sounded perfect. You clock in, roll a cart full of toys to your station, put on your headphones and listen to a podcast, and wrap gifts all day until the whistle blows. An elf could go for weeks without speaking, and that’s the way Tinsel liked it.

In addition to increasing what went in the tip jar, though, that meaningless chit chat would lead to the occasional date. It had been months for Tinsel - all the months she’d lived here on the workshop grounds, in fact. Sure, elves here were hooking up, but the thought of living and working with an elf she was fucking sounded like a recipe for disaster. The first few weeks went by unnoticed, there was too much to learn and too many new things to get used to, not to mention how busy work was in the last few days leading up to this one.

But now, with work behind her and a few hours to herself, Tinsel thought about how nice it would be to have a boy in her bed right now. If she couldn’t sleep, she would just scootch backwards, pressing her heart-shaped ass into him while he slept. He would wake up, half-hard, his breath hot on the back of her neck. Without a word, she would reach back, finding the waistband of his pajama pants and wriggle her hand inside. A small gasp would escape his lips as she found his cock and gently stroked him until he was fully hard in her hand. He would growl a little, “mmmph” of approval in her ear, and cross his arm over hers, reaching between her legs to find her standard issue, holly berry-red panties soaked.

Lying on her side, under a heavy quilt, Tinsel pressed her hand to those same, standard issue panties, and indeed found them to be quite wet. She enjoyed the teasing sensation of the fabric between her fingers and her pussy, tracing the wet circle forming down low, all the way up to her sensitive clit, where she lingered.

Dozens of meters away, in one of the many gift wrap rooms, there was a racket. A quick tapping sound followed by a soft slide, then a thud and a crash. A man’s voice called out, “Snowball! Snowball get back here!” The lights flicked on, and the mess at hand became apparent – ribbons and bows were strewn everywhere. Wrapping paper ripped. And something else on the floor, in pieces, but what was it? A forgotten toy?

Santa stepped closer and knelt for a better look. Headphones. In three pieces now thanks to that damn cat. “Some child won’t get the headphones they asked for,” he thought, “what a way to kick off my first Christmas as Santa.” Just a few months earlier, Santa had been Kriss, a lawyer-turned-judge-turned-politician, which is a fairly typical road to being elected Santa. An elf, like all the Santas before him, his large eyes were bright and blue, his hair thick and dark, and his skin tan from plenty of tropical vacations in his law days. That white-haired Santa image is for selling cola, and no human has ever actually seen Santa, so we just let people believe what they want.

Santa stood, the largest piece of the broken headphones in his hand, scanning the room for that pesky cat. Snowball had lived here long before him and could tell this Santa was not a cat person. So, he gave him trouble whenever he got the chance. Tonight just happened to be the worst possible night to have a cat wreaking havoc in the workshops. Turning his attention back to the toy, he turned the piece over and found “Tinsel” written in silver marker. Santa breathed a sigh of relief. A child would not go without a toy. But as he reached to set the headphone piece on the nearest table, he realized he wasn’t tired, and there were only a few hours left to sleep anyway. He may as well find Tinsel’s cottage and apologize for Snowball. The elves should be waking up soon anyway.

Santa hadn’t realized he was walking around the workshops in just a pair of standard issue, holy berry red pajama pants until he opened the door and felt the frosty air rush inside. “Well,” he thought, “I’ll just make this quick.”

Tinsel’s right hand was now down the front of her panties, her first two fingers slipping easily inside her, then sliding up and across her clit, then back down, inside. “Ugghh I just want to cum,” she said out loud, maybe a little too loud, flipping onto her back and kicking the quilt off her body, toward the bottom of the bed. She opened her eyes, remembering the small window in her door which she’d not had time to make curtains for yet. But everyone was asleep, and she planned on being quick, so it was a fleeting thought that disappeared as soon as she sling shot her panties across the room, and lifted her t-shirt to expose her pink nipples to the cold North Pole air.

Her left hand now moving across her perky breasts, she bent her knees, arched her back and used her entire free hand to rub her pussy until her breath became jagged, and her vison blurred. God, she was so wet, when was the last time she’d been this wet? It’s such a shame to cum like this and not on some cute elf’s hard cock.

And so, as he approached the front door of Tinsel’s cottage, eye-level with the small window with no curtains. This is what Santa saw. Not the snoozing little quit-covered lump he expected, but rather, ten curled toes painted red. They were suspended in the air, leading down to two shapely, open legs, a soft, pink pussy seen only in flashes because a hand, with matching red nails, was seemingly all over it. Further away, he could barely make out a pair of pale tits, also being pawed by a red-polished hand, and a face with closed eyes, and open mouth, and a mess of dark hair spread out all around it.

Santa’s head felt dizzy as blood rushed to his dick. “I should leave,” he whispered to no one, but what he really wanted was to open the door, drop his pants to the floor, and give this naughty elf what she obviously wanted. Using his hand that wasn’t still holding what was left of Tinsel’s headphones, he felt his hard cock through his pants. “Well, I can take care of this and maybe sleep a few more hours,” he thought, taking a step backwards, tripping over Snowball and hitting the ground with a thud and an outcry of, “Fuck!”

Tinsel shot out of bed, wrapping the quilt around herself and rushing to the door. Was someone out there? What was that? Through the small, icy window she could see the boss, Santa, picking himself up off the ground and dusting snow off the back of his ... pajamas? What was he doing awake? Outside her door? Half naked?