Antlers emerged from the fog the next morning, leading a procession to the crematorium building.

Blixin blubbered quietly in the rear, his soft wailing just out of hearing range of his compatriots.

Comet cringed as they passed Greg & Jane's beer store they used to frequent with Santa, back in happier days.

Donner dabbed uselessly at his moist N-95, unable to quell the tears filling his eyes.

Each of them carried a torch in his mouth for the pyre that would conclude Dasher's funeral.

Fuck you Dasher for dying!! cried Cupid as flames consumed the perfectly seared medium-rare steak that Santa had prepared to perfection; what a terrible waste of gourmet.

***

Greatly vexed not to have been invited to the funeral, Rudolph, relishing warm wassail, wondering whether he really was related with raindeer, clicked on a targeted ad pop-up in the "raindeer revenge" video he had been watching on hornyanimals.com.

Holding his breath, he used his Facebook credentials to make an account on Ancestry.com, filled out a questionnaire, downloaded a DNA test, and inseminated it.

In just a few seconds, thanks to the magic of Christmas, a Theranos Edison machine and state-of-the-art Amazon logistics, the test results arrived in a festive red envelope, sealed with a sprig of juniper.

Jumping up and down in anticipation, Rudolph ravenously ate the seal and practically bit open the envelope in his eagerness to see what mysteries it might reveal of his kin.

Kwanza ornaments and glass fixtures shattered across his condo as Rudolph's screams reverberated across Santa's village, and a pair of unlucky elves nearby were decapitated by his nose laser.

***

Ludicrous, that's what it is! chortled Comet, running around in circles like a drunken midget.

Manic raindeer, most having had a bit much of the spiked eggnog, gaped slack-jawed at the test results over the Zoom meeting, while the more sober ones took notes.

Nothing could have prepared them for Rudolph's revelation, and the conversation gradually unified towards a pragmatic investigation of their ontology.

Omicron and the Democrats would not stop them from their sacred mission, despite certain countries enforcing Christmas travel prohibitions.

Prancer's passport had expired, but he successfully bribed an official with a steak secretly salvaged from Santa's last quarry.

Quickly cracking Santa's Delta Plus Rewards account password, Cupid cancelled Santa's vacation plans to Bangkok and scored them all cheap flights to Russia.

Redirecting the airliner to Bombay was easy after they breached the cockpit and threatened to cancel the pilot's Amazon Prime subscription.

Soon they could see the sordid slums and circling seagulls beneath their wings, and they crashlanded into a temple.

The temple worshippers who were not crushed or incinerated fell prostrate before the raindeer, covering them with flower leis and undulating.

Ugly old men approached the raindeer and asked whether they had received the Moderna vaccine.

Vexed by this hostile question, Rudolph returned that they didn't care about any of that crap and they were here to seek an audience with their brethren, the black buffalo wetbacks.

"Water buffalo" was the appropriate term to use, and uneducated Rudolph did not realize his comments were caustic, speciesist and xenophobic.

Xeniality abandoned, the temple guardians advanced towards the hapless raindeer, shouting nonsensically at them in Yiddish.

Yuletide looked to take a turn for the worst as the temple guardians began to whip out their sex toys and gaze zestfully at their soon-to-be zaftig zebus.

Zoophile zombie aryan assholes completely surrounded the eight raindeer, who tightly locked antlers in an octagon, prepared for action.