ALT

She began with a mondegreen.  This is not a unique origin among the small gods, although she is perhaps uniquely proud of it, as had the mishearing occurred under other circumstances, it might have turned out far less well for everyone involved.

“The boy thought that ‘is parents were telling ‘im as ‘is good old auntie would be coming on Christmas eve to leave presents for the good children,” she chortles, whenever given the opportunity and opening to do so.  (Her accent, too, is an artifact of the circumstances of her creation: the babysitter who first gave her voice had been deeply enamored of British television at the time, and had done her “very best” London accent for the friendliest bear she could imagine.  It wasn’t very good, but the god is stuck with it, at least for now.)

“Didn’t want the boy to be afraid, did she?  And so she spun—”

Spun the best story of her life, worth well more than the fifteen dollars an hour she was getting paid.  (Fifteen dollars and not even snacks, since his parents kept a close watch on the cupboards and had once docked her the price of a pack of Oreos.  Full price, even, when she knew full well they shopped the sales!)  Spun the tale of a warm and loving anthropomorphic polar bear whose only wish was that all the children of the world be safe and warm and fed and happy.  Who brought gifts for all those children, although she went first to the good ones, to reward them for all the opportunities for mischief and merriment they had allowed to pass them by.  That babysitter, long may she be remembered, didn’t believe in punishing children for having childhoods.

It is said by some gods that everyone has one true story in them, and somehow, on that hungry December night, the babysitter found hers.  A story so real, so true, that it became enough to call a god into being, small, yes, and specialized, but true, all the same.

So children, latch your windows loosely, and perhaps on the coldest morning of winter, you’ll wake to find claw marks on the windowsill and a polar fleece jacket folded at the foot of the bed.  Or perhaps you’ll have asked a bear into your room, and you’ll be eaten in the night.

It’s hard to say, with gods.