[Gift] The 11th Hour | Mistletoe

Ansel was abuzz.

The wagons were stabled, Kaz didn’t need him, so he’d swanned off at a moment’s notice towards the distant sensation of chaos pulling at his chest. He wasn’t surprised to find a small town nestled among a forest of pine trees, but he was interested to find that even with the sun going down, it was far from sleepy.

Instead, there were irregular but frequent outbursts that brought him lower to the snow-covered ground, golden earrings batting against his large ears which perked and listened as he landed and sidled closer.

It seemed to be some sort of festival. Across the mantle of many homes were strewn boughs of pine trees, laden with mistletoe. People crept in the early twilight from one to the next, slipping in through the doors, the windows, the cellars, and performing some minor mischief until they were caught, and thrown out the front door with laughter.

It was jolly trickery and perfectly up Ansel’s alley. But where was the fun when there was no challenge?

He started small: freezing the cellar doors closed, frost breath winding through locks and hinges and sealing tight one possible entrance.

Then, he found the back streets, and he froze the snow over, making it crunch harshly under feet, and slide if one tried to retrace steps already taken.

Lastly, to make things fair, he reached into the houses, and pulled just a touch of their luck away, and filled the shapes moving in the growing dark. A little peril was all good fun, but only so long as they continued to succeed, and the game continued to be played, after all.

Ansel stayed only a while longer to be sure his deeds were done, clicking the thumbs of his wings together, before he wheeled off into the forest to look for some mistletoe to take back to camp. Kaz probably wouldn’t appreciate the game, but maybe some of the other dragons would.