LilyBeth the Reindeer.

LilyBeth the Reindeer was a reindeer.  She was always impressed by Santa's select areosquadron who soared through the air every Christmas.  One day, while watching a test run, LilyBeth stepped into a hole and injured her foot.

Poor LilyBeth, she limped home as quickly as she could to avoid being shot at by the orange creatures who lived in the forest.  "Mama, Mama, Mama, I bust my foot!" LilyBeth said as she burst through the door.

"Put your foot up here and have something to eat," LilyBeth's mama said, head-butting a footstool towards her as she put the soup on.

After a few days of ice and elevation, LilyBeth's foot was feeling better, and so she took it outside to check out the new fallen snow.

Her eyes spotted something in the snow, and she scampered over to it.  "It smells like hope," she thought, admiring the steamy pile of what she thought were berries. After tasting just one, LilyBeth began to levitate into the air!

"Whee," thought LilyBeth as she ran over the tree tops, passing many confused Kung Fu masters on the way.

"Mama, Mama, Mama, I'm floating in the air!" LilyBeth called down to her mother, who was drying the laundry on her antlers.

LilyBeth's mama looked up and exclaimed, "Sweet Blitzen's butthair!"

"Have you been eating the areosquadron's droppings?" she asked her flying daughter.

LilyBeth was doing loops around the satellite dish.  "I found a patch of delicious berries growin' in the wild, mama! I don't need my foots up here!"

LilyBeth's mama walked back into the house and head-butted her huge bed out the front door.  She followed the bed with some blankies and threw those around.

"Now, LilyBeth, you just circle around your mama until that wears off," she said sternly.

LilyBeth was a dot in the sky.  "I can fly, Mama! I can fly!"

Her mama just stood there and shook her head.

Santa, meanwhile, was just returning from a run to the ice cream parlor and had Vixen and Comet with him. He spied LilyBeth overhead and told his pilots to pull up alongside.  "Ho Ho Ho," he said to LilyBeth.

"Oh, I'm not for sale," LilyBeth told him, soaring past.

"No, no, no, you silly girl," Santa said with a jolly laugh.  "Santa can get plenty of that at home, I'm wondering what you're doing so high on a night like this," he explained.

LilyBeth told Santa about the magical berries, and he laughed.  "Would you like to guide my sleigh home?" he asked LilyBeth.  Vixen and Comet looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

LilyBeth was thrilled.  "Ooh! I'd love to do that! C'mon, follow me," she said, and hung in the air for a moment before plummeting straight down.

Comet shrugged and he and Vixen shot after her.  Santa grappled with his ice cream all the way down, saying, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!"

When they broke through the trees, Santa and his pilots could see LilyBeth hovering over her house with a huge grin on her face.  "Mama, Mama, Mama!" she shouted to the distraught deer on the porch, "Santa's come with ice cream!"

Santa laughed heartily, and jumped out of his sleigh.  "Can't deny that!" he said, whipping out an ice cream scoop and fixing up cones for LilyBeth, her mama, Comet, Vixen, and some cats that came out of the house when they heard the vacuum seal open on the tub of ice cream.

"You been eating the poop with the magic dust again?" Chester the cat asked when he noticed LilyBeth three feet above the ground.  His brother Jimmy, meanwhile, was pawing at the empty air under LilyBeth, trying to get her out of his personal space.

"Uh-huh!" LilyBeth declared, licking her ice cream cone happily.

"I'll be back with some waffles," LilyBeth's mama said, disappearing into the house momentarily.

"LilyBeth," Santa said, putting an arm around his little friend.  "Any time you feel like some magic dust, you come see me.  Don't eat second-hand magic."

"Okay!" she replied, nuzzling Santa's ear.

Everybody laughed and ate waffles.  It was a good day.



Hope your day's as good, everybody!

LilyBeth the Reindeer.