Content 

The elves are hopping drunk on elderberry, circling the campfire in an arm-over-arm embrace, slurring lyrics to limericks they’d learned from a stranger, something about a man from Nantucket or Sinatra’s My Way, when the stampede hits like cannon fire, deer, bear, madcap squirrels, snow leopards, crazed lemurs and fox, all frantic and flying by at the speed of sound as the horizon begins to crackle and smolder, each elf burping or slapping the other on the back, woozy and content as ever.