1
COMET
“No, you have to slow down and look where you’re landing to hit the target, Rayne!”
The young reindeer was flying too fast, and I knew, even with the reminder, he’d never make it. Sure enough, he started to panic at the last minute and missed the bright red landing spot I’d marked in the snow to indicate his landing target. He hit the ground hard, then tumbled, antlers over hooves, across the icy clearing I’d set up for practice until he abruptly stopped in the safety snowbank I’d made just for this purpose. After shaking the snow off his barely there antlers, he shifted back to his human form with an embarrassed flush immediately covering his dusky cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Comet. I keep trying to slow down, but it’s hard to figure out everything all at once. It’s so frustrating.” He balled up his small fist and punched at the snow surrounding him. He hadn’t noticed where he hit was the only thing holding all the rest of the snow in place after his crash landing. The rest of the bank fell on top of him with the impact.
Running over to help extract my student, I tried to cover my laughter. These younger reindeer trainees weren’t old enough to join the real training, but the ambitious ones always wanted to start early. I loved helping them learn and train their bodies to reach their intimate potential. Someone else could teach them about books, history, math, and all the academic stuff I wasn’t great at. I wasn’t smart like that, but I could train them to be their best physically.
I watched Rayne fight with the snow for a few seconds, then reached in and pulled him free. He shook his head to get the powder out of his hair, then hung his head in defeat. “I’ll never be good enough for one of Santa’s sleighs.”
I gently touched his small head and ruffled his damp strands. “Rayne, you’ve got years before you can even go into the official training. You’re just starting. Lift your head and look at me.”
His head tipped up, and I bent down so we were eye to eye. “Never give up on a dream. You’re great for just starting out. We’ll keep working, and you’ll see. Okay?”
He gave a small lift of his lips and nodded. I smiled back, stood up, and clapped my hands. “Alright, now that we’ve got that settled, go ahead and shift back and run the course twice before you head home.”
“Can I just run it once, Mr. Comet? I’m supposed to be home early tonight because Mom might need to help with a delivery.”
Rayne’s mom was a part-time midwife for the village. I’d helped train Rayne’s older brother years ago, so working around her schedule was nothing new.
“Tell you what, promise to run home, and we’ll call it done for the day.”
Rayne jumped and gave a fist bump in his excitement for getting out of the course run. “Deal! I promise I’ll run all the way. Mom said if I got home early, she’d let me pick what we had for dinner before she left for Tundra’s house. I’m gonna choose veggie pasta!”
Shock rocked through me hearing Tundra’s name, but I masked it as well as I could. I watched Rayne shift, then run down the trail to his house. Rayne was my last lesson of the day, and even though I was tired, I decided to run my course myself instead of heading home. Hearing Tundra’s name and knowing his new mate was about to deliver, I needed the endorphins from a hard run. Besides, there might be limbs down from the winds we’d had last night.
I decided not to shift and just set off, running steadily while letting my mind run simultaneously. Even though my feet were moving me around the curves and hills of my training course, my mind stayed in one spot.
Tundra
I hadn’t thought about him for a long time, over a year, to be exact. We had been so close once. I’d thought it would last forever. Mates were hard to find, and there was no guarantee that we would findThe One.Hell, sometimes a reindeer would meet their mate and not even realize it at first. There were lots of happy relationships where they weren’t fated, but they were just as happy. But Tundra wasn’t one of those.
He’d met his mate.
One day, I’d kissed him goodbye before he’d gone on a supply run, then the next day, he’d come back to tell me he couldn’t see me anymore because he’d met his mate on the trip.
The devastation was still fresh. Remembering the heartbreak, the shattering of dreams I had about a life together, I ran faster and faster. My legs burned, and my reindeer warned me to slow down, but I didn’t listen. I hadn’t shifted specifically because I had known he’d stop me. I needed the oblivion of physical exhaustion. While the last words Tundra had said to me were seared into my memory, I pushed myself even harder.
“I’m sorry, but you had to have known it wouldn’t last. You’re all muscle and physicality. Sure, you’re gorgeous and strong, but I need someone with more than that.”
I was dumb. That was what he hadn’t said, but it was implied. He’d always laughed when I didn’t immediately understand one of hisintellectualjokes, but I thought he had been charmed that I was slightly naive. Nope. He could never be with someone who was pretty but dumb. A himbo that filled out a pair of pants perfectly but couldn’t tell you what a quadratic equation even was. My reindeer sniffed at that, and I knew he thought that was bullshit. But my human brain and its inner saboteur were in charge now.
The beating of my feet on the ground made a drum beat to accompany the self-loathing voice in my head. My reindeer tried to drown it out, but I was in a spiral, and all I heard was my heartbeat and the words I was convinced were true.
Thump, thump, thump.
You’re dumb. You’re dumb. You’re dumb.
The words circled my brain, drowning out the other voice, telling me not to listen and that it was a lie. But it was true. That was what Tundra had literally said to me.
When I was rounding back to the beginning of the course and nearing the exhaustion state I’d craved, I turned towards home and nearly plowed over one of the Santas. I caught him before he fell, then bent over, resting my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
“Comet, my boy, you nearly took me out.” With a jolly laugh, he straightened his coat and stomped his feet to get the snow off his boots. “There would have been a lot of disappointed kids in the Midwest this year if I’d been laid up from being stomped by one of our very own reindeer.”
Straightening up, I returned his smile as best I could, but I got the feeling he wasn’t fooled. His twinkling eyes grew sharper as he took in my exhausted form, still trying to catch my breath. Santa number three was a kindly man who didn’t speak much but noticed everything. To diffuse any suspicion, I responded with a laugh. “None of us could take y’all out. Every single one of you has powers we can only guess. I’m sure you could have just teleported yourself to safety in the blink of an eye and been alright.”
