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Heh, when Greta explained that "Elf magic" is what allowed her to do that – you know, the same way the elves in the shop could keep refilling Santa's sack – I imagined Rudy's cock popping out of some other elf girl's vagina; then maybe a third elf girl would tribb her so that Rudy had an elf-kabob thing going on. Yeah, I'm weird.

On an amusing note, @GeorgeGlass reviewed Moonlit Snow at almost the same moment I reviewed The Ninth Reindeer! Thank you so much! I did a lot of research for this, and by extension for the other stories that will feature Aldreda and Elis, and most of it centered on medieval and early Renaissance weapons, armor and combat, so learning about stuff like the different types of swords and armor and so forth. The sword training was based on stuff I learned there, including both Aldreda’s “hand behind your back” thing… ...and her advice about using shorter movements and not going for the big wide swing because it shows the enemy what you’re doing. the videos I watched referred to this as “telegraphing”, but since the telegraph obviously doesn’t exist in the setting, I had to explain it some other way. Finally, I also learned about both some swordplay (the bit where Aldreda alternates left-right-left-right-stab is an actual technique, meant to do just what it does in story: lock the enemy into a repetitive set of movements and leave him unprepared for when you change things up) and about how different weapons interact with different kinds of armor, such as how her plate armor would render Lady Aldreda pretty much immune to swords or axes, but weapons like maces and certain polearms could still really hurt her. Yeah, that was a joke that only emerged during research, with a number of medieval combat videos talking about it. Apparently it pops up in an old German treatise on sword fighting (starting with “to end thine opponent rightly...”), and since it, as you said, unbalances your sword and makes it more difficult to fight with, and since the pommel itself is unlikely to hurt someone wearing armor, pretty much everyone is certain it’s a joke. One video I watched suggested that this might have been, for all intents and purposes, trolling, an instructor giving his students a ridiculous idea because it would be freaking hilarious to see them try to do it during sparring. As you suspected, its inclusion here is Lady Aldreda playing a bit with Elis when he tries to rush his training, only for him to take it seriously and actually make it work! Thanks! I mention it during the overview of the dinner she goes to, but Lady Aldreda gets varying reactions to her condition, with one reaction being to make open, insulting jokes about her being a corpse or some sort of undead, and I imagine for that she tends to get bitingly sarcastic in her responses. That was definitely a challenge. Unlike After Party, which used the “like reality unless otherwise noted” idea, this took place in its own world. I could get away with certain things being similar to reality (a feudal system like medieval England, and hints of countries analogous to East Asia), but I had to craft a unique religion, and it was hard to figure out how much of that to explain. I should probably clarify that Lady Aldreda isn’t a vampire. That was just a mean-spirited jab Hopkin threw at her. I was trying to generate some level of mystery for the audience about what exactly her deal is, and I figured some people might assume she really is a vampire. I explained it to an extent during the dinner overview, stating that she was “born without color” and that her condition is rare, one out of tens of thousands of births. She’s not a vampire; she’s albino. The scientific term for this is “oculocutaneous albinism type 2.” OCA2 occurs in roughly 1 in 20,000 births, and the lack of pigmentation results in Aldreda’s distinct look as well as her problems. Her lack of melanin means that she sunburns at the drop of a hat, which is why she doesn’t really go outside during the day and covers her skin when she does. This also leads to her visual problem. Albino people often suffer from photophobia (sensitivity to bright lights) due to a phenomenon called ocular straylight, wherein light scatters inside the eyeball; it’s the biological equivalent of a lens flare in a camera (which even happens the same way, with light scattering inside the camera). Because of this, she operates better in softer light, like moonlight or starlight, and between the photophobia and the ease with which she sunburns, she does most of her work at night, and as a result has developed very good night vision. Thank you so much! Pretty much the entire story was written to lead up to that scene. I meant it to be sweet and romantic, and I’m really happy it seems to be working for people. Thank you for the review!

The idea for the story actually started with the thought...what is in it for santa’s helpers? The answer that they get to do scheduled visits to those on the naughty list that possibly could be persuaded to do sexual things seemed like the natural answer when thinking about it from a AFF perspective. As for points where the writing quality can be improved it would be miracle if there was not such considering that I don’t have any beta reader for this story and did not go through with my normal trick to write and leave it unpublished for a couple of months so I can read it myself with fresh eyes when I have sort of forgotten the text. Thank you for the encouraging review.

I left a review on ThunderCloud’s story then saw this’n! Shame the software doesn’t allow chapter specific review/notifications, but it’s not the end of the world. That’s scheduled for a week next Thursday. Thank you for your reivew! Until the end It reads much like my reviews of just about anything by James Joyce, with the obvious difference that he could write well! HP’s made too much money for them not to try a reboot of the movies at some point. It will happen. But it might happen with all the stuff JK Rowling revealed after the books included, like her regret of Ron and Hermione ending up together or eg the first scene is teenage Dumbledore tongue fucking Grindelwald’s arse beneath a warm summer’s sun. “The Rims of Grindelwald.” Thanks again, I appreciate it.