They had short-cycled me on my shots again. I had cheated, last fall, so I’m at least a little to blame, really. I had cheated my way into getting stuck two weeks’ early, the first time, which played merry hell with the schedule. I won’t claim it’s not my fault - I love how they make me feel, and how much easier it is to get into the holiday spirit since we figured out that formula. I didn’t pay much attention to the testing regimen afterwords, since I was something like the last stop for the drug implant before public release, anyway, and if I just behaved naturally I gave much better data that way.
Two months after that, it was showtime, Black Friday, and the doors were wide open for Reindeer, new and old to come help us make the world a slightly better place. Perhaps I should have said “young and old”, since we were accepting our first full class of Fawns™ that day, too. Christmas came a month later, and the program was a smash hit. We had more Reindeer™ than ever before, and most of them that could have brought family this year, had - children and spouses, mostly. Once they’d had a little firsthand experience with the program, they were put at ease by interacting with the first Fawns™ to show up, and brought theirs in to join them. And at that point, there’s no reason to leave another parent at home to watch the kits, so this way they could have a shared memory together, maybe a new tradition of how to spend Christmas. We hit this one out of the park.
By February, it was shaping up to be a cool spring, and we were still doing brisk business in the dragon-drawn-sleigh industry. We had definitely done something right; lots more of our volunteers were sticking with us in the late season compared to last year. It was early on my birthday that the head of the cosmetic department called me to her office. Next to Marketing, Cosmetic had the most involvement in the Reindeer™ corps, and they’d taken up a lot of the slack this year. When I came into her office, I trotted around her desk and hopped up on her armrest. She scratched my brow ridge; I purred. I also noticed she had an autoinjector on her desk, but I didn’t pay it much mind. She pushed her chair back and sat down on the carpet in front of me, so I did my job and sprawled across her lap - but when she opened her mouth, I think she knew I had jumped the gun. She told me that the forecasts were going our way, and that they had some concerns about my dose wearing off ahead of schedule. Then I blushed, and she definitely knew. She told me that it was okay, though, and the decision had been made to re-up me again to keep anything untoward from happening. “Besides,” she said. “We’re supposed to do nice things for people on their birthday, right?” she said with a smile and a twinkle in her eye. Mine widened. “You didn’t - really?” I asked, my breath catching in my throat. “Ah-huh,” she said, and brought the autoinjector to her teeth, twisted off the cap, and brought the rubber bulb down to my hip.
I felt the thump of the bulb, and the pressure behind it - but not the needle, small mercies, and much credit to our engineering department - and blushed again. I had to say something - “You want me to keep doing this?” I asked as the spring-loaded syringe unloaded itself and retracted. “Absolutely,” she replied. “You’re leading our best year ever, after all. Even if a lot of the money goes away, the market effect is just fantastic.” She brought my head up and kissed my nose. “Just … Keep doing that thing you do.” I was thrilled, and still blushing like a high schooler on prom night. I had just been given permission and encouragement to push ahead, and while my leg might be sore tomorrow, I was on cloud nine - the reindeer drug made service with a smile easy, after all. She had apparently made some time for me, which felt flattering and amazing; we spent the next half hour or more like that, discussing the particulars of making dragons like me as adorable as possible to encourage adoption after the program wound down. That wasn’t to be the only time I spent behind her desk, being spoiled while I let her pick my brain. We talked about the subscriptions, for example, and I told her that it was a brilliant idea, and a great revenue source.
Next time she gave me a shot, though, it was late May. The subscriptions we talked about earlier had been announced, and the subscription fees were due. We had been mailing out syringes and autoinjectors for a few days now. I was called back into the office of our Cosmetic department head again. For a briefing, I was told. I had gotten used to coming around her desk and meeting her on the carpet, by that point, so I made my presence known with a warm chin on her knee. She smiled, and sat down next to me, and gave me a hug. “Your plan paid off,” she said. “We have enough subscriptions to put us in the black this quarter, if you ignore the entire transformation revenue stream. I was thrilled, of course. I had done well by my company, I’d kept faith with my comrades, and I felt pleased that my clients never had to lose this feeling of holiday spirit and enthusiasm. “Really?” I asked. “Yup.” she said. “I’ve got something you’ll enjoy…” she said, and pulled a syringe out of her pencil drawer.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“This is when all good reindeer get topped off…” she trailed off suggestively, flicked the syringe, and checked the dose for air in the needle.
“Wait, are you going to …?” I asked.
“It sends a better message if we put you on schedule with our clients.” she said, as if that was self-explanatory, and stuck the needle into my tail, and squeezed. I’d been trained not to move, comment, or resist when this sort of thing was happening, so I waited for her to finish her work. “That was half a dose, so you should be ready for your next dose on Black Friday, now.”
In my excitement, I blushed. I was just another reindeer, now - to be used when seasonally necessary, and put out to pasture for the rest of the year. And my power came from that, I realized - first among peers, bellwether to lead them back to my charity drive, but not necessarily the one to invent it every year. We had figured out how this would work, from now on; from now on, I was free to enjoy my own creation as a guest. We talked about next year’s events for a while, and after her assurances, I told her I wanted it to be the biggest event yet, and an even more popular family vacation destination, too. We talked about particulars and plans, and I left very close to prancing.
That was the second time they short-cycled my injections.
The next time I saw the head of cosmetics, it was actually in the head of Surgical’s office. They were talking about a big new contract, and while it was in Surgical’s department this time, the head wanted Cosmetic’s input, since they had the experience with processing the Reindeer. “What exactly was this contract?” I asked. They told me, clinically, that after last week’s Dateline, the unified school district had picked up a proposal from ALEC requiring proof of neuter/spay for dragon students before they’d be allowed back in next semester. I stiffened, and thought for a moment - that was a prodigious number of students, even if it was only a few percent of the student body. Still, what fortune - both for us, after the Boutique had gotten the privilege of introducing last year’s class to lapdragonhood - and for the class, who’d get a much better preview of it than the Boutique ever could give them. I was thrilled. This had the potential to be the best thing that ever happened to any of these students; we couldn’t afford to screw it up.