(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6)
“Binnea!” I shouted. The morning was cold and dark, but I didn’t think it wise to be shouting for a potential traitor when the humans were awake and could hear us.
A rustling in the nearby bushes caught my attention, and I saw Binnea’s head pop up. “Over here!”
I crouched behind the bushes, noticing both our breaths forming mist in the winter air. Binnea’s eyes blinked a couple times as they glittered in the light of Renaux, our largest moon.
“I think I figured it out.” Binnea patted the human book. “The baby appears almost right in the middle, so it was hard to find, but I got to the passage with instructions. Apparently, we’re supposed to follow the brightest star in the sky. That will lead us to an inn with a food trough for farm animals.”
I squinted suspiciously. “That sounds vague and easy to mess up.”
“It’s foolproof. Two separate groups found the baby god – one a bunch of farmer hillbillies and another a bunch of scientists. It’s going to work.” Binnea turned its feet to their sides and pushed forward over the ice. “You coming or what?”
I didn’t argue further. We only had two days to stop this baby god, after all, before it hatched or was born.
We skated over miles and miles of terrain, following the star both of us agreed was the brightest. Daylight took away our guide, but we still had an idea of direction and could use the sun to keep our path straight. We ate some of the food we’d packed, supplemented with the red winter berries on bushes that erupted from the ice beneath. The afternoon sun turned the landscape orange, and the light glinted off the ice with perfect twinkles.
We grew tired by the time night fell, but we kept going, hoping to find the inn described by the instructions. I was the one who pointed through the fog to a bright light in the distance. “Is that one of those human lights?”
Binnea squinted. “Has to be. It’s too bright to be a candle.” It pushed forward on its blade-bone feet, skating closer. “Let’s go check it out.”
Let Me Tell You the Story of... 
Am liking where this Christmas story is going!
What a different sort of Christmas story. Can hardly wait to see what happens next!
I fear something terrible is going to happen to them.
I liked how the shepherds and wise men have been changed to hillbillies and scientists. I wonder if that’s how they interpret it, or as it’s sometime in the far future the story has changed over time by humanity itself.
On an unrelated note the line “We only had two days to stop this baby god, after all, before it hatched or was born.” made me think of the last lines of the Yeats poem The Second Coming. “That twenty centuries of stony sleep/Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle/And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” I don’t know why but those lines popped in my head when they mention the god being hatched or born.
Wow – nice comparison with the Yeats poem! Luckily, this isn’t a second coming story, haha.