Hey all! This is my first time submitting for a contest, so I'm excited to start with the
WINTER HOLIDAY 2024 contest
! While I started this last year, the contest made it so that it was the first story I ever finished on a deadline, since I'd not picked it up again until a few days ago. Hope you like it!
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"SAMMI THE SHELF ELF GETS HER STOCKING STUFFED"
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It was the start of the Christmas season, and everyone at the North Pole was excited. No one, however, was as excited as Sammi was. Because only Sammi had a Tommy.
---
"Tommy, are you home from college yet?" Sammi asked as she slipped into Tommy's room via the hidden way.
"I know you said the fourteenth, but you also don't always tell the truth," she said, flickering over to his desk to look over his calendar. Her calendar, really, at this point.
Around the fourteenth she'd drawn a big heart. She'd written the words "Tommy comes Home!" on the date itself. Sammi knew that that was too much, that it was almost begging for attention from the farsiders, but she couldn't resist. Tommy was hers, and she didn't care who knew it. From a certain point of view, he was just one of the many boys and girls she watched for Santa. From Sammi's point of view, which is the one that mattered, he had ALWAYS been hers, ever since her beginning.
---
Sammi was a Christmas elf. A Scout elf, to be specific. She was NOT a "shelf elf," no matter how many times Tommy called her that. Her job was to watch over the boys and girls who believed in Santa and Christmas to make sure that they were being properly nice. It was in the story, after all, and Sammi knew how the story went. It was bound into her being, her very essence.
Like the story said, at the start of December, Santa sent them out, from the North Pole to the farside lands on the other side of the veil. Out into the world, the real world.
Like the story said, they would listen to the children, never responding, never saying anything, but always remaining alert, smiles plastered to their faces and painted on their souls.
Like the story said, they went back each night, telling Santa what the children had done, and Santa listened, then sent them back out again.
Santa didn't like it, because he thought it was too invasive, but there wasn't much he could do to stop it now the story existed. He could only control how it functioned. So Sammi, and Stanley, and Suzi, and Skippy, and Siobhan, and Reginald Fitzpatrick the Third, and all the other Scout Elves, did the job Santa gave them, and only went to places that had their visage in doll-shape, and nowhere else.
Sammi knew how the story went. It was bound into her elf-self, her very core as a spirit of Christmas. Once she arrived, and took up habitation in her visage, like the story said-- at least, how it was supposed to go, is that, well, Tommy, as her first child, got to name her. She didn't like that part of the story. Hated it, actually. She was Sammi. She was who she was. Even if that meant she was, otherwise, just like everyone else, she was at least going to be just like everyone else in her way.
Maybe that was the difference. Or maybe the difference was with Tommy. Regardless, that first night, after having been at her post all day, but before she reported back to Santa, and just as she'd left her visage to stretch after having been in the same pose for many hours, Tommy, then all of five years old, saw her. Really, truly saw her.
In both of their defenses, their respective screams weren't that loud, and they were more from surprise than fear.
---
"You're alive!" Tommy had shouted.
"You can see me!" Sammi had shouted at the same time.
"This is so amazing!" he'd said, excitement filling his voice.
"I am going to get in so much trouble," she'd said, dread filling hers.
"You must be the real Rex!" Tommy said, his eyes wide.
Like the book said, he was the one who named her.
And he'd chosen to name her 'Rex'.
"No. I'm Sammi," she replied. "Just because the book says you can name me doesn't mean you can." That was ... wrong. She could feel the magic pushing back at her as she spoke. Everything about this was wrong, really, but that was REALLY wrong.
But Santa hated the book. Hated the idea of sending 'spies' out, hated the idea that kids thought of him as 'some sort of magical CIA Spook'. His words. So she stood her ground, and, eventually, the magic stopped pushing.
Tommy was more straightforward. "That makes sense. Sorry," said Tommy, apologizing.
"It's ok," she said, accepting it.
"Well, it's nice to meet you, Sammi. I'm Tommy," he said, smiling now.
"I know. I've been watching you all day. But it's nice to really meet you," Sammi replied, smiling back at him.
At that moment, Sammi's world seemed to tilt, like she'd not been a person until then. She was still herself, still Sammi, like she'd always been, but now she was Sammi to Tommy too. And he wasn't just another elf, or North Poler, or even a veilsider. He was a human. A farsider human. A curious farsider human at that.
He had questions, and she had answers. Mostly. Sometimes she didn't have an answer because she didn't know what the answer really was, and she didn't want to lie. Lying was bad.
Sometimes she'd never thought about the question before. And he had answers for her, too. He told her about humans, about life on the farside, about his family. They were up until late talking about everything and nothing, almost until it was too late for her to be on time. Not quite, but almost. It was one of the happiest nights of her life, even if she did get in trouble for it from the other elves for it.
Not from Santa. He was quiet about it, and just took the report she gave. But she thought she saw Santa smiling and laughing as she left.
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In the Christmas seasons that followed, Sammi found that she was drawn to the homes of other children, too. Sometimes they'd catch sight of her, but usually not. In each one, however, she was Sammi, or Sammy, or Sami, or Sam, or any number of variants of that, and never anything else. She was Sammi, and that was that.
But Tommy was always her first visit of the season. Her closest visit. Her longest visit. Her most special visit. He was hers, and no one else's. And she was--
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"Is that me?" she'd asked when she first saw the picture.
Tommy, eleven years old, just like her, blushed crimson. "It's ... kinda, yeah. I just was looking at-- well, and I thought of-- I mean, yeah. It's you. It's supposed to be you, at least. A bigger you. Taller, I mean."
Sammi laughed. "A you-sized me, you mean."
Tommy nodded and looked away. "What I think you'd look like my size, I mean."
Sammi didn't know what came over her when she announced "I bet we could find out, if you want. What I'd be like big. I think I can do that."
She didn't feel red and hot in her cheeks, like he did, since she wasn't really alive like he was, being a Christmas scout efl, but she knew that if she looked in a mirror, her cheeks would be bright red. Tommy's had certainly gone red again.
That night was the first time Sammi ever wondered what being Tommy-sized would be like. What being Tommy-sized would feel like. It wouldn't be the last time she wondered.
---
As they got older, it seemed as if their lives were determined to take them further and further in different directions. But still, they made time for each other and supported each other's interests and obsessions, no matter how odd they might be.
For a while, it was all about trying to prank each other. As a magical being, Sammi should have been able to beat Tommy every time. Should have been, that is, because Tommy turned out to be a master of surprise. Be that with popping out of nowhere, zings, or even jokes. Never hurtful, or mean, but Sammi wanted to beat him.
She wished she could fart on his head, or give him a wet willy, or any number of silly biological things that he could do, but she had as many bodily functions as a Barbie doll did. She didn't, couldn't, eat. She didn't need to use the restroom. She certainly knew that she didn't smell like anything, no matter how many times Tommy told her that she smelled like winter and love and christmas.
She'd used the shower, Tommy's shower, and Tommy's shampoo, once, because he'd gotten her really dirty, but that was dirt. Dirt was different. That it had been a delicious, almost forbidden treat was just frosting on the cookie.
Once, when they were in their late teens, Sammi had the chance to surprise him. She'd gone farside early, just before Halloween, a hair before the season really turned in her favor. She'd had to work really hard to get strong enough to pass over before her time, but she managed it, all without sending any signs of her progress to Tommy. He was good at picking up on her progress at getting better at Christmas magic, which was wonderful, albeit unhelpful when it came to out-pranking him.
She flickered and fluttered over to his house in stealth, never leaving a hint of Christmas as she went. More progress, which she was also proud of. When she arrived, she was able to climb, not fly, up to his room on the second floor, another thing she was proud of. She peeked into his room.
Tommy was busy at his computer, looking at something he'd made using a digital art program he had. His hand was moving, hiding something she couldn't see.
"Oh, Sammi," she heard him say. "Oh, god, Sammi."
She blushed crimson, in her way, as she realized what he was doing, and what he was probably looking at. Past crimson, really; she was almost violet.
She didn't end up surprising him that day. She sometimes wished she still had.
---
Today wasn't a day for regrets, though, because today was when Tommy came home from college.
Even if he wasn't actually home yet.
Sammi took one last look at the heart on the calendar, then flickered around Tommy's room again.
She'd arrived wearing the same thing that every other scout elf wore: a red onesie, a red Christmas hat, white mittens, and a white pleated collar, her hair cut into a pixie cut. Or an "elf cut" as Tommy called it.
