Saturday's Storyteller: "And that's when I noticed, deep within the fragrant branches of the bedecked fir, pair after pair of tiny eyes glinting back at me."
by Belinda Roddie And that's when I noticed, deep within the fragrant branches of the bedecked fir, pair after pair of tiny eyes glinting back at me. For anyone else, that could have been the beginning of a holiday horror film - perhaps evil gremlins had been feasting on the needles and were ready to pounce, or malicious spirits sent by Krampus himself had begun to swarm around the lights and ornaments. Amber, yellow, green, and even blue glinted from these perhaps disembodied eyes, and despite the glow of the hearth and the glinting of the tinsel, from a distance, you couldn't tell what they were. Of course, I knew better. I laughed, and I stood up from where I had been nursing a glass of butterscotch schnapps and listening to Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas album. My feet gave off little heat as each toe skipped off the wooden floor, and once I got to my tree, I shook it a bit, smiling as I heard the skittering and the whining. "That's right, y