Slay

Congrats! You Lost Someone... Again...

Ivy's stomach dropped as they accelerated. Ice and snow blurred around them. The sleigh rushed forwards and upwards at a speed that would have killed both the passengers and the reindeer, were it not for the magic.

Two minutes of clutching-the-armrests-until-her-knuckles-turned-white later, they were there. The warm air was flecked with cooler raindrops. Deceleration flung Ivy forwards, making her catch her breath and intensifying her nausea. Around them, blurs of light and shadow coalesced into Durban's skyline; they flew over the pale oval of the Moses Mabhida stadium, a shining moon among a galaxy of city lights which curved away along the sweeping arc of the bay. The sea was dark, dotted with the occasional bobbing lights of ships, like lonely fireflies.

Beside her, the other elf, Eiden, leaned forward. "Look at the view! I love flying."

"I think I'm going to throw up," muttered Ivy.

"C'mon, I'm not that twee."

She clamped her hand over her mouth. "Travel sickness."

The sleigh took this as its cue to dive like a falcon, plummeting through the night towards Berry's GPS location. It hovered, invisible to human eyes, above Shell Avenue. Berry hailed them from the main sleigh, parked on a nearby rooftop. They glided in to land beside it.

Noel, relaxing in the back seat, next to the other elf, with his feet propped up on Berry's headrest, greeted Ivy with a casual wave. In the front, Berry picked up a walkie-talkie. "SLEIGH 01 TO SLEIGH 02, DO YOU READ ME?"

"Keep it down!" said Mrs Claus. "And you don't need that thing. I'm right here."

"POLICE ARE - Police are investigating the crime scene, ma'am!"

"Have they found anything?"

"They've taped off the area, ma'am!"

"Yes, I can see that! What have they found?"

"What I said before! Explosives, a fuse, and -" He swallowed. "They've found a body, ma'am."

"A - you mean -" 

"Someone died in the explosion, ma'am!"

"No," she whispered. Ivy and Eiden were the only ones close enough to hear. "No. Not Nick, no...," Raising her voice again, she asked "Any other updates?"

"News crews are on site, ma'am! This will make the papers tomorrow!"

Mrs Claus stared at the taped-off wreckage for a few moments longer, then took a deep breath and straightened up. She pulled off her thick jacket - even in the rain, Durban was a lot warmer than the North Pole - and called Mission Control on the touchscreen control panel of the sleigh. The elf who answered did so with a combination of terror and relief.

"Mrs Claus! Thank goodness! I was just about to call you, you know, I mean, you need to know, what with your being in charge and all-"

"Need to know what? What's happening?"

"Well, you see, there's been - Eve was on the computer, just keeping an eye on stuff, you know, and that's how she noticed that there's been, uh,  well, it's past one now, here, I mean, obviously, and -"

"Slow down, dear. What's going on? Has Robyn told people about our magic?"

"I - they - yes!" Even his voice quivered with nerves. "Everyone, it's all over the Internet, and on news networks, and some - some places say that several countries have already sent out their military to capture it, and, and they're coming here! And they're going to attack us, and take the magic, and use it as a superweapon and fight other countries, you know how powerful it really is, and they're going to start World War Three and use magic to destroy the world like an apocalypse or -"