Longest Night

The ride through the tunnels to the North Pole went much faster than any of them had to have anticipated. They slid along at an astonishing pace, as if the rabbit running ahead of them were somehow pulling them along in his wake, and the journey from Pennsylvania to the North Pole took literally seconds.

Bunny emerged from the tunnel first, leaping onto the carpeted floor of the Globe Room overlooking the workshop, calling for assistance as he emerged.

Multiple hairy arms reached into the tunnel to pull the others out, and huge, hairy creatures with large, expressive eyes set in their shaggy faces crowded around as they helped the newcomers onto the thickly carpeted floor of a vast reception room, overlooking a workshop that was cathedral-like in its grandeur.

Before them, a huge globe, covered with small specks of light, spun slowly. Behind them, a roaring fire burned in a thirty-foot stone fireplace, underneath a portrait of a mountain of a man, an impressive figure in red, alternately fighting savage looking monsters and befriending the same peaceable, hairy creatures that had helped them from the tunnel, and were now looking at them curiously, babbling in a garbled inhuman language.

Bunny was addressing a large figure, a grey furry beast and some others gathered around him. "- so these are the new recruits. New recruits, Phil the Yeti. And . . . the other yetis."

There were far too many to name, but they all looked at the newcomers with wide eyes in their shaggy faces.

A number of things that looked like living hats scuttled around their feet, their little bells jangling. On closer inspection, the little hats were actually garments adorning tiny gremlinlike creatures, with largely blank expressions tinged with varying degrees of wonder and mischief. They gaped with childlike surprise at the newcomers for a moment before some authoritative garbles from the yetis sent them scurrying - and returning with refreshments. Plates of Christmas cookies. Goblets of eggnog. A whole fruitcake.

And all around the vast space, with tall windows showing sweeping arctic landscapes outside, were toys - toys, in various states of production. Yetis constructed and painted them on the tiers lining the workshop. Elves played with them wherever there was space. Many of them flew, circling the globe, wonderous works of art and play unlike any the new Guardians had ever seen - except those who had taken the time, as children, to imagine the wonders that must have come to life in Santa's workshop.

"Welcome to the North Pole, everyone," said Bunny, gesturing at the workshop with a hint of regret. "I'm not the right person to give you the tour, or even the welcome, but ah, maybe we'll get lucky and steal the old blowhard back soon."

"Old blowhard," he called North, but the insult was tinged with affection.

"This place really isn't the same without him."

[ooc: time to explore Santa's workshop! Make subthreads for your characters and tag away freely.]