Morning dawned with a pale blue breath, the kind that heralds the coldest days at the North Pole. Pipette stepped out of the workshop to breathe in the crisp air before the preparations resumed at full speed. That's when she stopped dead in her tracks. In the middle of the fresh, immaculate, and still silent snow, a perfectly round imprint stood out, as if delicately placed on the white ground.
She leaned over.
"It looks like a pompom that has...rolled?" she murmured, her eyes shining with a new curiosity.
Right next to it, a glimmer flickered faintly, a small golden spark that still vibrated, like a final sigh of magic. Pipette reached out without touching, feeling the familiar shiver that accompanies Santa's spells. This magic, however, seemed slightly different, almost… off-kilter.
Ludo immediately ran towards the stable. The reindeer raised their heads, intrigued, and Rudolf stepped forward, his red muzzle quivering in the icy air. He sniffed the track in the snow for a long time, then the golden spark still hanging there.
"It's not from here," he finally declared. "It smells... like the human world."
The elves' hearts leaped at once. The human world. The very thought made their ears perk up. They had never dealt with human technology. In the workshop, the last time an elf had touched a smartphone, he had tried to wrap it like a fragile gift, with a perfectly tied ribbon. Since then, everything from the outside world remained a profound mystery.
Yet, this imprint and this spark seemed to invite them to look beyond their familiar snow.
Quello's Christmas Calendar continues tomorrow, with a clue that could well turn their entire investigation upside down.