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.|, COHERENT COMICS An ASH Universe Drabble --+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
'|` UNINCORPORATED PRESENTS "Long Sleep"
copyright 2025 by Dave Van Domelen ____________________________________________________________________________
[February 14, 2025 - Nunavut Sector]
The clockwork tin soldier was technically "normal" tech, commissioned through many intermediaries from a reformed supervillain. It emitted a faint tick once every several minutes, as it had for decades. Then there was a
faint SNAP as some mechanism which had become stuck came unstuck.
The soldier toddled across the lightless cave to a skeleton with a stake embedded in its ribs. One of many.
It removed the stake.
In a burst of winter winds, snow wrapped the bones and coalesced into a human-shaped figure, heavyset with a flowing white beard.
"Oh dear, I seem to have overslept," he muttered.
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Author's Notes:
After many years of putting it off, I'm finally reading Seanan McGuire's Velveteen stories. One of the aspects of that setting is that the various holiday figures really exist (Velveteen is on good terms with Santa, and the future queen of Halloween wants to recruit her as a holiday guardian). And I thought, hey, I have a (probably not canonical but you never know) actual holiday figure in ASH, why not do something with that? Not a big something, maybe a drabble. So here we are. Still not committing to this guy being
part of the "serious" ASH timeline, but if he was going to avoid going away with all the other supernaturals in 1998, this might be a way to do so.
Note, I counted only the words of story, not the datestamp, in the 100 word total. I probably should've made the same decision for Affiliated, so
I'd have a better idea now when I meant it to take place, thirteen years
after writing it.
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