Gifts of the brownie

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

In Mort's big hands, the knife moved with lightning speed, paring and trimming. Had there been anyone there to see him, he would have worked at half the pace or less. A pile of woodchips gathered around his feet while the stack of finished parts grew beside him. The carving done, Mort moved to his pots of woodstain, carefully gathered and mixed from donations, the cast-off stock of bankrupt firms and homebrewed pigments.

Next came the difficult part, assembling the components in just the right order, adding pins and pegs of just the right size so that the pieces would move freely and as parts of the whole. Again the huge hands moved with incredible speed, fixing, pinning, trimming and touching up each item so that it was perfect, then wrapping each in coloured paper.

When at last he was done, Mort wrapped a tattered, green cloak around his shoulders, loaded the pieces into a sack and set out into the frosty night. He had a list in his mind and he stumped briskly from place to place, leaving his parcels where they would be found by the right eyes, the right hands. He knew that the toys he was capable of making would not be the ones to excite on Christmas morning, nor the ones that would be shown off at school in the new year, but he was making sure they would go to children who had little or nothing else, and perhaps just some of them would be kept and cherished, to be handed down and passed along, generation after generation, long after the electronic gizmos and gadgettry had failed.

As he left the last parcel, a window opened above him. Mort hurried away, not wishing to be caught, but a high voice called out from behind him: "Merry Christmas!"

Mort half-turned and raised a hand. "Merry Christmas to all, an' to all a good nigh'!"

Comments

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Oh bless! That is SO sweet.