And then a week later a guy in his early twenties with pointed ears like an elf appears in Mordred's bedroom.

"...who are you and why are you in my dorm," Mordred says. He's halfway through packing clothes for a month at not-home.

"...okay so I think this is all going to make more sense if I teleport you somewhere first. Do you want to go to the Moon?"

"....yes, but also, quick question, what the fuck." 

Well, now he can be like "what the fuck" on the Moon. 

They're in the middle of a crater with a half-full Earth below. Moon dust drifts onto Mordred's feet.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????

"I," Mordred says, staring at the half-lit Earth, "still have approximately infinity questions." 

"I... thought it would be better if I showed you magic existed first? The last guy thought we were making it up for a really long time."

"I -- guess I'll accept that claim. Who are you and why me and why this." 

"I'm Lev, I'm an elf, you killed Santa Claus and now you are the new Santa Claus."

".......no."

"...um. It's really not that bad once you get used to it?"

"No, I mean, none of that makes any fucking sense. Even if I accept the magic claim."

"I don't know which bit of it to try to explain unless you have a more specific question."

"I haven't killed anyone, ever. Am I supposed to accept that Christianity is true and that I'm going to have to kill God about it. What does being the new Santa Claus even mean." 

"I have no evidence that suggests that Christianity is true other than the evidence humans have, it's just that since St. Nicholas all Santas have been Christian. And you told the previous Santa to make a toy volcano out of vinegar and bleach. Being Santa means you have to spread joy, cheer, and the spirit of Christmas to children around the world."

"...............making an admittedly stupid joke about committing suicide rather than go home for the holidays is not murder, what the fuck."

Christianity not being true is good??? at least??? That bar is very low but it has been cleared.

"I would say it's less murder and more causal entanglement with his death."

"Thanks! I hate it!"

He is on the moon! The moon in the fucking sky! This should be the best day of his entire life! Or, okay, 'most confusing' is also a pretty reasonable thing for it to be, 'most confusing' is fair.

"So what things are... involved. In being Santa. Because apparently my stupid joke about wanting to die instead of seeing my mom got someone killed and now I'm Santa and have I mentioned how bullshit that is." 

"Reality is often kind of bullshit?" he tries. 

"Yeah. It is.

But seriously what do I have to do now because someone took my suicide joke way too literally, you said 'spreading Christmas cheer' but that was really vague."

"At absolute minimum you will have to get on the vehicle of your choice on the late-December day of your choice and bring presents to all the children of the world, exact details up to your specification. And the Christmas spirit will mutate based on your ideas about what it should be, but that happens naturally and you don't so much have to do it deliberately. You command all the elves"-- he touches his ears-- "as slaves but you don't really have to do anything with that if you don't want to, we can organize Christmas on our own."

"How do I stop having slaves. Also what happens if my idea of what Christmas should be is that I am ideologically opposed to Christmas as a concept." 

"You could... tell us we're not slaves anymore?"

"And will that actually change anything or -- actually, no, what I should be asking is 'what exactly do you mean by slavery' -- why does Santa have slaves in the first place --" 

"Uh, we said that we would do whatever would make Santa best able to spread the Christmas spirit and bring joy to children everywhere, and he asked if we would obey him and we said yes, and he said that made us a natural slave race like black people."