#because it now has its own custom christmas carol

[too-antigonish]

Had to reblog with the new "O Christmas Tree" lyrics by our very own poet laureate @season-77.

A Tuxmas Tree

Image quality horrendous, but you get the idea...

[rosevanhelsing]

FANFIC. LORD OF CHRISTMASLAND

Chapter 5

Despite Abe's prognosis, the Wraith brought Manx to Christmasland once again. Charlie gave the meat he had bought to Millie who devoured it voraciously.

- Are you feeling better, my sugar plum?

-Something better. But I'm still very hungry ... and I also feel  very lonely. I have no friends to play with in Christmasland.

- Do not worry honey. Dad already knows what he has to do, thanks to Uncle Abe. - Charlie said leaning on the Wraith

- Who is Uncle Abe?

"Someone who took care of Dad when I was your age… and taught him everything he knows…" he said as he hugged his daughter and pressed her against him. – “Beside, you will soon have many friends with whom you can play and they won't just be your friends, they'll be like brothers

- Really? - Millie said excitedly

-You know, Millie? Not all parents are like me. There are very bad parents, parents who do not love their children ... and hurt them

- It is awful. ..

-True. That's why, from now on, Dad will rescue those children from the clutches of those bad parents ... they enjoy Christmasland with you ... but their parents ... will be punished.

Millie hugged her adored father and kissed his cheek, Charlie reciprocated with a kiss on her forehead and his hand combing her long black hair gently.

Have a little more patience, Millie ... You know that Papa will not disappoint you ...

- I know Dad… I never doubted you.

Charlie put the new license plates he had acquired on the Wraith and decided that the first girl he would rescue would be Lorrie. He made a stop on the way and bought rope, duct tape, and some binoculars. For a few days Charlie exists at a distance the routine of Lorraine and her mother and realized that, surprisingly, nobody noticed him or the Wraith. One night Lorrie's mother took her to the coffee shop where she worked and:

- Don't move from here, until mom finishes work.

Charlie watched from afar with fury and disgust. Samantha, Lorrie's mother, reminded him too much of his own mother, Fanny. She also let Charlie roam the tavern while she went about "serving" her customers.

Charlie got out of the car and the Wraith began to work its dark magic. The interior was lit up, filled with presents, and Christmas carols began to play. Lorrie looked through the glass when she heard the music although strangely the other customers did not seem to notice the music or pay attention. Lorrie couldn't resist the temptation and went outside to see the car, her face lighting up as she recognized the vehicle. As she approached, the Wraith invited the door open and a thought flashed through Lorrie's mind.

- "Come up, darling, these gifts are for you."

Lorrie didn't think twice and got into the car, in a few seconds the door was closed, the locks were lowered, the music stopped and the lights went out. Lorrie started to panic and tried to open the door but it was like trying to force the door of a strong box.

- Mom ... - Lorrie moaned

Samantha had a bad feeling, she peeked out from the kitchen and didn't see her daughter at the table where she had left her. She scared she left the restaurant to the parking lot, there was only car long and as dark as the night that surrounded it. She ran to the car and saw her daughter inside

- Mom, I can't go out ...

-Honey, don't tease me… come on now

- Mom, I can't ... the car won't let me out ... Help me.

Samantha was scared. Her daughter looked very pale ... she reached for the door handle but the Wraith opened the door, beating her brutally and knocking her down. Samantha got up, half stunned after a few minutes from the blow, staring at the car in shock. When she turned around she saw a man who seemed to be watching her from the darkness.

- Sir, is that car yours? I do not know how my daughter has been locked in it ... - Samantha said, hopeful that everything would be resolved and remain an anecdote

- Yes, the car is mine... - Charlie answered chuckling. - But her daughter is not going out, since she has to make a long journey with me.

-But what are you saying? Get my daughter out of there immediately or I'll call the police… Samantha said facing Manx and getting within reach of him.

Taking advantage of the fact that Lorrie was not looking, because she had fallen asleep due to the influence of the Wraith, Charlie broke Samantha's neck with his own hands with ease, then Charlie looked at his hands in surprise, he had never had so much strength. He concluded that the Wraith had strengthened him to superhuman strength and satisfied, loaded Samantha into the trunk of the Wraith, got behind the wheel and started on his way to Christmasland.

[onlineindus23]

ONLINEINDUS - Pakistan English News, Latest Pakistan News

Maybe the biggest and most inescapable issue in a specialized curriculum, just as my own excursion in schooling, is specialized curriculum's relationship to general instruction. History has demonstrated that this has never been a simple obvious connection between the two. There has been a ton of giving and taking or perhaps I should state pulling and pushing with regards to instructive arrangement, and the instructive practices and administrations of schooling and custom curriculum by the human instructors who convey those administrations on the two sides of the isle, similar to me.

In the course of the last 20+ years I have been on the two sides of training. I have seen and felt what it resembled to be a customary standard instructor managing specialized curriculum strategy, custom curriculum understudies and their specific educators. I have likewise been on the specialized curriculum side attempting to get normal schooling educators to work all the more viably with my specialized curriculum understudies through altering their guidance and materials and having somewhat more tolerance and compassion.

Moreover, I have been standard normal instruction educator who trained ordinary schooling consideration classes attempting to sort out some way to best work with some new custom curriculum instructor in my group and their custom curriculum understudies too. What's more, conversely, I have been a specialized curriculum incorporation instructor barging in on the region of some standard training educators with my specialized curriculum understudies and the alterations I figured these educators should actualize. I can disclose to you direct that none of this give and take between a custom curriculum and normal training has been simple. Nor do I see this pushing and pulling turning out to be simple at any point in the near future.

All in all, what is custom curriculum? What's more, what makes it so exceptional but then so unpredictable and questionable here and there? Indeed, custom curriculum, as its name proposes, is a particular part of training. It asserts its heredity to such individuals as Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (1775-1838), the doctor who "subdued" the "wild kid of Aveyron," and Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936), the instructor who "worked supernatural occurrences" with Helen Keller.

Extraordinary instructors show understudies who have physical, psychological, language, learning, tangible, and additionally passionate capacities that go amiss from those of everyone. Unique teachers give guidance explicitly customized to address individualized issues. These instructors fundamentally make training more accessible and available to understudies who in any case would have restricted admittance to schooling because of whatever inability they are battling with.

It's not simply the instructors however who assume a job throughout the entire existence of a specialized curriculum in this nation. Doctors and ministry, including Itard-referenced above, Edouard O. Seguin (1812-1880), Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851), needed to enhance the careless, frequently harsh treatment of people with handicaps. Unfortunately, instruction in this nation was, as a general rule, careless and oppressive when managing understudies that are distinctive in some way or another.

There is even a rich writing in our country that depicts the treatment gave to people handicaps during the 1800s and mid 1900s. Tragically, in these accounts, just as in reality, the fragment of our populace with handicaps were regularly restricted in prisons and almshouses without respectable food, attire, individual cleanliness, and exercise.

For an illustration of this diverse treatment in our writing one requirements to look no farther than Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843). Furthermore, commonly individuals with inabilities were frequently depicted as scoundrels, for example, in the book Captain Hook in J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan" in 1911.

The overarching perspective on the creators of this time span was that one ought to submit to setbacks, both as a type of submission to God's will, and in light of the fact that these appearing mishaps are at last planned to one's benefit. Progress for our kin with handicaps was rare as of now with this perspective pervading our general public, writing and thinking.

All in all, what was society to do about these individuals of adversity? Indeed, during a significant part of the nineteenth century, and from the get-go in the 20th, experts accepted people with inabilities were best treated in private offices in provincial conditions. An out of the picture and therefore irrelevant sort of thing, maybe...

Notwithstanding, before the finish of the nineteenth century the size of these establishments had expanded so significantly that the objective of recovery for individuals with incapacities simply wasn't working. Foundations became instruments for lasting isolation.

I have some involvement in these isolation approaches of schooling. Some of it is acceptable and some of it is slightly below average. I have been an independent instructor on and off over time in numerous conditions in independent homerooms out in the open secondary schools, center schools and grade schools. I have likewise instructed in various specialized curriculum social independent schools that completely isolated these grieved understudies with inabilities in dealing with their conduct from their standard companions by placing them in totally various structures that were in some cases even in various towns from their homes, companions and friends.

Throughout the long term numerous specialized curriculum experts became pundits of these organizations referenced over that isolated and isolated our kids with incapacities from their companions. Irvine Howe was one of the first to advocate removing our childhood from these gigantic foundations and to put out occupants into families. Lamentably this training turned into a calculated and down to earth issue and it required some investment before it could turn into a practical option in contrast to systematization for our understudies with incapacities.

Presently on the positive side, you may be keen on knowing anyway that in 1817 the primary specialized curriculum school in the United States, the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (presently called the American School for the Deaf), was set up in Hartford, Connecticut, by Gallaudet. That school is still there today and is one of the top schools in the nation for understudies with hear-able inabilities. A genuine progress story!

Be that as it may, as you would already be able to envision, the enduring accomplishment of the American School for the Deaf was the special case and not the standard during this time-frame. What's more, to add to this, in the late nineteenth century, social Darwinism supplanted environmentalism as the essential causal clarification for those people with handicaps who digressed from those of everybody.

Unfortunately, Darwinism made the way for the genetic counseling development of the mid 20th century. This at that point prompted much further isolation and even sanitization of people with inabilities, for example, mental hindrance. Sounds like something Hitler was doing in Germany additionally being done well here in our own nation, to our own kin, by our own kin. Sort of alarming and unfeeling, wouldn't you concur?

Today, this sort of treatment is clearly unsatisfactory. Furthermore, in the early piece of the twentieth Century it was likewise inadmissible to a portion of the grown-ups, particularly the guardians of these debilitated youngsters. Hence, concerned and furious guardians framed support gatherings to help carry the instructive necessities of youngsters with incapacities into the public eye. General society needed to see firsthand how wrong this selective breeding and disinfection development was for our understudies that were unique in the event that it was truly going to be halted.

Gradually, grassroots associations gained ground that even prompted a few states making laws to ensure their residents with incapacities. For instance, in 1930, in Peoria, Illinois, the primary white stick law gave people with visual deficiency the option to proceed when going across the road. This was a beginning, and different states did in the long run go with the same pattern. As expected, this nearby grassroots' development and states' development prompted enough tension on our chosen authorities for something to be done on the public level for our kin with inabilities.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy made the President's Panel on Mental Retardation. Furthermore, in 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson marked the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which gave subsidizing to essential training, and is seen by backing bunches as extending admittance to state funded schooling for kids with handicaps.

At the point when one ponders Kennedy's and Johnson's record on social equality, at that point it most likely isn't such an unexpected discovering that these two presidents likewise initiated this public development for our kin with incapacities.

This government development prompted segment 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. This ensures social equality for the handicapped with regards to governmentally subsidized establishments or any program or movement accepting Federal monetary help. Every one of these years after the fact as an instructor, I for one arrangement with 504 cases each and every day.

In 1975 Congress authorized Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA), which sets up a privilege to state funded training for all youngsters paying little heed to inability. This was another beneficial thing in light of the fact that before government enactment, guardians needed to generally teach their youngsters at home or pay for costly private schooling.

The development continued developing. In the 1982 the instance of the Board of Education of the Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley, the U.S. High Court explained the degree of administrations to be managed the cost of understudies with exceptional necessities. The Court decided that custom curriculum administrations need just give some "instructive advantage" to understudies. Government funded schools were not needed to amplify the instructive advancement of understudies with incapacities.

Today, this decision may not appear to be a triumph, and actually, this equivalent inquiry is indeed coursing through our courts today in 2017. Be that as it may, since its getting late period it was made

[mitsoftware541]

IT,BSIT,BSIT in Hyderabad,BSIT 4 years program,BSIT 4 year program, BSIT in Hyderabad sindh

Maybe the biggest and most unavoidable issue in a specialized curriculum, just as my own excursion in instruction, is custom curriculum's relationship to general schooling. History has demonstrated that this has never been a simple obvious connection between the two. There has been a ton of giving and taking or perhaps I should state pulling and pushing with regards to instructive strategy, and the instructive practices and administrations of schooling and specialized curriculum by the human instructors who convey those administrations on the two sides of the isle, similar to me.

Throughout the last 20+ years I have been on the two sides of instruction. I have seen and felt what it resembled to be an ordinary standard instructor managing custom curriculum strategy, specialized curriculum understudies and their particular educators. I have likewise been on the specialized curriculum side attempting to get ordinary schooling instructors to work all the more adequately with my custom curriculum understudies through changing their guidance and materials and having somewhat more persistence and sympathy.

Besides, I have been standard normal training educator who instructed customary schooling consideration classes attempting to sort out some way to best work with some new specialized curriculum instructor in my group and their specialized curriculum understudies also. Furthermore, interestingly, I have been a specialized curriculum consideration educator barging in on the region of some standard training instructors with my custom curriculum understudies and the alterations I figured these instructors should execute. I can disclose to you direct that none of this give and take between a custom curriculum and normal instruction has been simple. Nor do I see this pushing and pulling turning out to be simple at any point in the near future.

Anyway, what is custom curriculum? Furthermore, what makes it so extraordinary but so intricate and disputable in some cases? Indeed, custom curriculum, as its name recommends, is a particular part of instruction. It guarantees its heredity to such individuals as Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (1775-1838), the doctor who "restrained" the "wild kid of Aveyron," and Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936), the instructor who "worked supernatural occurrences" with Helen Keller.

Extraordinary instructors show understudies who have physical, intellectual, language, learning, tactile, as well as passionate capacities that stray from those of everyone. Unique instructors give guidance explicitly custom-made to address individualized issues. These instructors fundamentally make training more accessible and available to understudies who in any case would have restricted admittance to schooling because of whatever handicap they are battling with.

It's not simply the instructors however who assume a job throughout the entire existence of a specialized curriculum in this nation. Doctors and church, including Itard-referenced above, Edouard O. Seguin (1812-1880), Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851), needed to enhance the careless, regularly harsh treatment of people with handicaps. Unfortunately, training in this nation was, usually, careless and oppressive when managing understudies that are distinctive by one way or another.

There is even a rich writing in our country that depicts the treatment gave to people handicaps during the 1800s and mid 1900s. Unfortunately, in these accounts, just as in reality, the portion of our populace with handicaps were frequently bound in correctional facilities and almshouses without fair food, apparel, individual cleanliness, and exercise.

For an illustration of this distinctive treatment in our writing one necessities to look no farther than Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843). Likewise, ordinarily individuals with incapacities were regularly depicted as scoundrels, for example, in the book Captain Hook in J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan" in 1911.

The overarching perspective on the creators of this time-frame was that one ought to submit to setbacks, both as a type of dutifulness to God's will, and on the grounds that these appearing disasters are eventually proposed to one's benefit. Progress for our kin with incapacities was difficult to find right now with this perspective saturating our general public, writing and thinking.

Anyway, what was society to do about these individuals of incident? All things considered, during a large part of the nineteenth century, and from the get-go in the 20th, experts accepted people with handicaps were best treated in private offices in country conditions. A no longer of any concern sort of thing, maybe...

Notwithstanding, before the finish of the nineteenth century the size of these organizations had expanded so significantly that the objective of restoration for individuals with incapacities simply wasn't working. Establishments became instruments for perpetual isolation.

I have some involvement in these isolation approaches of training. Some of it is acceptable and some of it isn't all that great. I have been an independent instructor on and off over time in different conditions in independent study halls openly secondary schools, center schools and grade schools. I have likewise instructed in numerous specialized curriculum conduct independent schools that completely isolated these disturbed understudies with inabilities in dealing with their conduct from their standard companions by placing them in totally various structures that were here and there even in various towns from their homes, companions and friends.

Throughout the long term numerous custom curriculum experts became pundits of these establishments referenced over that isolated and isolated our youngsters with incapacities from their companions. Irvine Howe was one of the first to advocate removing our childhood from these immense organizations and to put out occupants into families. Sadly this training turned into a strategic and commonsense issue and it required some investment before it could turn into a reasonable option in contrast to regulation for our understudies with inabilities.

Presently on the positive side, you may be keen on knowing anyway that in 1817 the main specialized curriculum school in the United States, the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (presently called the American School for the Deaf), was set up in Hartford, Connecticut, by Gallaudet. That school is still there today and is one of the top schools in the nation for understudies with hear-able handicaps. A genuine progress story!

In any case, as you would already be able to envision, the enduring achievement of the American School for the Deaf was the exemption and not the standard during this time-frame. Furthermore, to add to this, in the late nineteenth century, social Darwinism supplanted environmentalism as the essential causal clarification for those people with inabilities who digressed from those of everyone.

Tragically, Darwinism made the way for the selective breeding development of the mid 20th century. This at that point prompted considerably further isolation and even disinfection of people with incapacities, for example, mental impediment. Sounds like something Hitler was doing in Germany additionally being done well here in our own nation, to our own kin, by our own kin. Sort of unnerving and unfeeling, wouldn't you concur?

Today, this sort of treatment is clearly unsatisfactory. What's more, in the early piece of the twentieth Century it was additionally unsuitable to a portion of the grown-ups, particularly the guardians of these crippled kids. In this way, concerned and furious guardians shaped promotion gatherings to help carry the instructive necessities of kids with incapacities into the public eye. General society needed to see firsthand how wrong this selective breeding and disinfection development was for our understudies that were unique in the event that it was truly going to be halted.

Gradually, grassroots associations gained ground that even prompted a few states making laws to ensure their residents with incapacities. For instance, in 1930, in Peoria, Illinois, the primary white stick statute gave people with visual deficiency the option to proceed when going across the road. This was a beginning, and different states did at last go with the same pattern. As expected, this neighborhood grassroots' development and states' development prompted enough tension on our chosen authorities for something to be done on the public level for our kin with handicaps.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy made the President's Panel on Mental Retardation. Furthermore, in 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson marked the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which gave subsidizing to essential instruction, and is seen by backing bunches as extending admittance to state funded schooling for kids with incapacities.

At the point when one contemplates Kennedy's and Johnson's record on social liberties, at that point it most likely isn't such an unexpected discovering that these two presidents likewise led this public development for our kin with incapacities.

This government development prompted area 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. This ensures social equality for the impaired with regards to governmentally supported organizations or any program or movement getting Federal monetary help. Every one of these years after the fact as a teacher, I for one arrangement with 504 cases each and every day.

In 1975 Congress authorized Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA), which sets up a privilege to state funded instruction for all kids paying little heed to incapacity. This was another beneficial thing on the grounds that preceding government enactment, guardians needed to generally instruct their kids at home or pay for costly private schooling.

The development continued developing. In the 1982 the instance of the Board of Education of the Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley, the U.S. High Court explained the degree of administrations to be managed the cost of understudies with uncommon necessities. The Court decided that specialized curriculum administrations need just give some "instructive advantage" to understudies. Government funded schools were not needed to boost the instructive advancement of understudies with inabilities.

Today, this decision may not appear to be a triumph, and in actuality, this equivalent inquiry is indeed circling through our courts today in 2017. In any case, since its getting late period it was made

[dailyaudiobible]

12/20/2020 DAB Transcript

Haggai 1:1-2:23, Revelation 11:1-19, Psalms 139:1-24, Proverbs 30:15-16

Today is the 20th day of December the fourth Sunday in the season of Advent and the beginning of Christmas week. So, here we are. And it's a joy to be here with you in fellowship and move through this week together. And even though we have travel maybe and festivities and just and trying to figure it all out, we have each other and we move through Christmas week together and celebrate together. And, so, let's dive into our reading for today. And it's become a custom that we’re gonna read a book a day. That’s not like all across the board true but that's kinda how it feels as the year speeds up at the end and move through the minor prophets. And we’ll be reading a complete book of the minor prophets and the tenth of the minor prophets. And by the way, there's only 12. So, we’re right at the end. And the book that we’ll read today in its entirety is the book of Haggai.

Introduction to the book of Haggai:

And like I mentioned many times, like these, the minor prophets, we don't have a lot of biography to go on. There’s some traditions and we've mentioned those, but we don't exactly know who these people were or where they were in society. And, so, reconstruction kind of happens based on the text and the time. And, so, we know that Haggai was among the first to return from the Babylonian exile. So to kind of put this in perspective, we have Jeremiah prophesying, right? “Behold I know the plans that I have for you.” And we talked about all that. And he's sending a letter to the people who are in exile telling them to “settle down, prosper. Prosper where you are. Even if you don't want to be there, prosper. Thrive where you are because I have plans and they're gonna take 70 years. So, a generations gonna go by and then I'm gonna begin bringing people back.” Well, Haggai is on the other side of that and it seems like he's the first…one of the first wave of people to return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile. So, right there that makes him compelling since we spent so much…so much time in exile because the Bible spends so much time on it. We also know that Haggai must've had access to people in power because it's indicated in the…in the text itself that his message was to be delivered to Zerubbabel, which is a name that we should recognize. He was the governor of Judah and we learned about him when we were reading the book of Ezra in the book of Nehemiah. And…and also this message from Haggai was to be given to Joshua, the high priest. So, he had access to people who had authority, both a spiritual authority as well as civil authority. And Haggai’s message is generally to get the people moving. And to begin to see why, we just have to add some time, we have to add some dates. So, Babylon conquered Jerusalem. We went through all of that in the Scriptures, lead Jerusalem's people into exile. This happened around 586 B.C. Babylon then was conquered by the Persian Empire in 539 B.C. And later, subsequently under the Persian king Cyrus the first of the exiles began to return to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel's leadership. This happened around 538 B.C. Okay. So, Haggai’s message, the one that we’re about to read comes 18 years later, 18 years after the first wave of exiles has come back, around 520 B.C. Actually in 520 B.C. Actually, Haggai’s prophecies are…are…are actually dated…maybe most precisely dated utterances in all of the Bible. August 29th through December 18th 520 B.C. Okay. So, let's like pause our timeline for a second and remember when the temple was built. Remember when Solomon built that first temple and we were at the apex of ancient Israel's civilization? Well, the temple was to be the center, the heart, the center of society, the centerpiece of the culture. Well, now these exiles have come back, and they have permission to restore the centerpiece of their culture, but 18 years have gone by and the temple remained incomplete. The people and rebuilt their own lives, rebuilt their own homes. They began their culture, but the centerpiece was missing. And, so, Haggai, his message is essentially “we gotta get moving here. God has some things to do and God has some things to say.” And, so, with that we’ll move into the two-chapter book of Haggai and we will read from the New English Translation this week.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for all of the nuances and complexions that it brings out in us as we meditate upon it. We are grateful for the Psalm today that reminds us once again there is no where we can go that You are not, and that brings profound comfort because we can never again say where are You. You are here wherever we are. You are everywhere. We cannot flee from Your Spirit - in heaven, in the grave, on the far side of the earth - no matter where we go You are with us, which means You have been with us every step of the way through this crazy year. And as we move forward into this week celebrating Your arrival, Your Advent, we are again reminded You will never leave us, You will never forsake us. And we need that encouragement now as much as we have ever needed it at any point in our lives. And, so, we rest in that, we relax in that, we lean back into it and find a cozy place in the fact that we will never be away from You. You will always be here, and You have come for us, which is what Christmas reminds us of, which is what it represents, that Your arrived, that You came in person to make things right again. And, so, help us to lean back and relax and then lean into that as we move forward, we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and that's a website. If…if the .com didn't give it away, it's the website, it’s home base for the global community that we have together that we…the Global Campfire. So, check it out. Stay tuned and stay connected to it.

Check out the community section. That's where to get connected. That's where the Prayer Wall is.

And then of course, you know, the things that are going on right now are related to the holiday season, the Christmas season because it's just days away. Like we’re less than a week. I mean a week from now Christmas will be over. It just comes and goes doesn't it? But isn’t it the buildup? Isn’t it the Advent season, the season of longing, that desire for Christ's arrival, the hope of the world? Like isn't that the buildup? And then it happens and then it's over. And, so, this is the week to really press in and enjoy and really experience the story that's going on underneath it all, which is the story of the arrival of the Savior of the world. And, so, let's press into that.

Reminding you of the Family Christmas album that can be streamed anywhere you stream music. It can be bought anywhere you buy music. So, check that out. Also reminding you new this…well…actually like a week ago we released Jill and a new Christmas single, O Holy Night, which is a classic Christmas Carol that is so deeply inspiring. Reminding you that she will be performing it at a virtual….I was just gonna say New Year's Eve party…but a Christmas Eve service and we’ll post that out on our social media channels. So, those of you who aren't able or can't participate in a candlelight service that you could do that virtually. So, we’ll put that on our social media channels. But she’ll be singing O holy night. And, so, we decided to really go for it and…and actually do it right. And it turned out well. She's a great singer. And, so, we released that and get that. You can stream it anywhere or you can buy it anywhere. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link. It lives on the homepage. And I thank you…I…I mean I can't thank you enough. Everyone's who’s clicked that link over the years that's…I mean we wouldn't be in this if we weren’t in it together. I mean, I say that 100 times a year probably. It's true. It's a fact. It's real. And, so, thank you for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button up at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Oh Lord as I sit at your feet with your hand on my head teach me, guide me, show me how to let the things of this world drift away. One by one I see them leave. I physically cough out any anxiety, any pain, any held on hurt. Lord you are my healer. Breathe into me your breath of life. As I breathe in and expand my lungs I slowly exhale with another deep breath. I hold you in Lord as I do not want to let go. One more deep breath. This breath is feeding every healthy cell in my body as I exhale you Holy Spirit, I ask that you run out of this temple my body all of my pain, all of my unhealthy cells. I see them under your authority Lord marching out of me. Thank you, Lord for making me whole, for making me strong, for living in me. Where you dwell, all things are possible in Jesus’ name I pray. This is joyful J sending my love your way.

Hi DAB family Tony from Germany for a praise report. And I just want to thank everyone for prayers on this whole semester of mine. It’s been very challenging. You know that I lost my mom in April and my dad in October and health problems and it’s like I…I really feel like the Lord was telling me I’ve been in the wilderness. But, you know, that’s formation, right? That’s…I’m studying ministry, and that’s part of our formation, you know, what can God teach us. And of interest as I was reading in my one class was all on the profits where the people were in exile, And, so, it’s like I journeyed with them. But it feels as though I came out maybe of it and you know when you are coming out of a wilder…wilderness when…which is the Lord trying to get us to see things in a new way or to have a new attitude or new approach and then He shows that we’ve arrived at what He’s been trying to teach us. And…and usually, it’s by blessings. It’s so amazing because this is grad school and all of my…everything I do for assignments and write exams are all essays and papers. And my last three I got 100 in each, which is like unheard of. Like how do you…how does that happen? But I felt that was the Lord just showing, “well done”, you know because just because it’s about faith and obedience. And believe me I have failed too. But I wanted to just to thank you and I hope this serves to bless you and I am remembering you guys all in prayers. God bless.

Hey DAB fans this is me Carter my mom Jennifer. We just wanted to say we been wanting to pray for our uncle. He isn’t right with the Lord and we just want him to be right with him. Please pray. Thank you for joining together with us and believing in his salvation. We come together each morning and pray with you guys. We love you guys and appreciate all…

Hi this is AFE calling in for four MA. Just I…I just stopped midway into the prayers just to call in a prayer for…for Byron who is asking for prayers for his son Nehemiah and really just wanting to bring his concerns about treatment that insurance would cover and just asking God for a way through. And just praying with them that just…that, you know, praying with him that, you know, trusting that his decision to go forth with…with this treatment is one that God will just justify by showing a means and showing a solution even though he doesn’t know how it will all happen. I’m just praying that these treatments will be just beneficial Lord and that Nehemiah would just be able to take advantage and just…just grow, just grow through this. Also praying for…I…I forget the man’s name now, but he was asking for prayer for his…his mom, Catherine who’s in the hospital in New Jersey from Covid and for his dad as well, just talking about some of his mom’s fears and her worries. And we just pray that God you just give her comfort, you give her rest Lord you let her trust in you, that Lord though she lay down at night to sleep Lord she will rise in the morning, and Lord that this…this ailment, this Covid, this disease will be behind her Lord as she is able to give a testimony and testify to Your goodness and Your glory. All these we pray in Jesus mighty name. Amen.

[castielslostwings]

All I Want For Christmas (Are Earplugs)

Ficlet: 3k of fluffy, explicit (at the end) Christmas-y DeanCas. 

The challenge: "Write something about Cas being stuck in the gas n sip where "All I Want For Christmas is You" plays on an endless loop for 3 months until he's nearly homicidal 😂 ...and then dean shows up and they bang in the storeroom while it's playing and the song is still awful and plays every 45 minutes but at least Cas has a positive memory to associate with it now!"

Read it on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21656614

Or check out this excerpt (cut because Tumblr will eat my smut):

Corporate doesn’t even hold off until Thanksgiving is over to move onto Christmas, not anymore. In the age of instant gratification and having everything a person could possibly want only a finger swipe away, waiting until after Thanksgiving to break out the Christmas theming would render it all relatively pointless. Thus, the day after Halloween, that’s when it starts these days. Castiel doesn’t get it, not really, especially considering the Gas’n’Sip is, well, a gas station. No one is looking to their shelves for holiday sales and the opportunity to grab this season’s hottest items before they sell out. Not unless one considers snack cakes and travel-sized tubes of toothpaste to be the perfect holiday gifts. Not that Castiel’s judging.

It’s just that those realities make the auditory horror Castiel’s subjected to for nearly three months straight all the more baffling. Why he has to suffer so the Gas’n’Sip can claw uselessly at retail relevance is beyond his understanding. It’s not as if they’re succeeding. That little “Last Minute Gifts!” display doesn’t get any sort of play at all until the twenty-third, and even then people have to grimace their way through choosing between cheap shower product sets and crappy mugs with teddy bears holding chocolates stuffed inside them. By November first, Castiel’s already practicing the most tactful ways to interrupt those poor procrastinating saps and suggest simply buying lottery scratch-off tickets.

The thing is, the decorations aren’t so bad. A little tinsel here, a few red glittery signs there, couple of candy-filled endcaps with Santa theming, whatever. Even the little Christmas tree that sits next to the register and Castiel can’t stop knocking into with his elbow every time he goes to make change is more festive than frustrating. None of those things are particularly bothersome at all. In fact, Castiel barely even notices them (aside from diving to catch the tree and keep it from crashing to the ground every ten minutes). And the twinkling, color-changing string lights that Castiel spent the better part of a day stapling around the top of the store, along the windows, and over the register are actually fairly enjoyable to look at. So much so that he strung a set around the shelves of the storeroom for when he’s stuck back there organizing or doing inventory. Very cheery.

But the songs. The songs are the worst. Well, no, that’s not exactly it either. The holiday songs on the corporate-provided CD that loops endlessly on a forty-five minute spiral in the background definitely still play in Castiel’s head long after he’s dumped the coffee, turned out the lights, and locked the gas station doors. They infiltrate his quiet moments in the evening after he’s returned home, dance across his mind obnoxiously when he should be enjoying his free time away. It’s only the beginning of December and already Castiel’s starting to lose his mind. Last night, full of a spectacular dinner and tucked warm and snug in bed with Dean squirming underneath him, Castiel was screwed out of an actual orgasm by the painfully catchy crooning of Mariah Carey relentlessly belting out those high notes in his head.

Because really, at the end of the day, it’s not all the holiday songs, it’s that holiday song. The bane of retail workers everywhere, Castiel’s sure of it, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is single-handedly making his holiday season as un-merry as it could possibly get. A grating earworm that’s starting to feel more “nails on a chalkboard” than singing at all, Castiel’s forced to enjoy it on a repeat cycle every forty-two-point-five minutes of every single workday. And now, it’s messing with his off-time, his intimate evenings with Dean, those relax and reset moments that Castiel counts on to get him through the next day and the one after that. Retail is hard enough on a regular old Tuesday, never mind during the holiday season when everyone’s so desperate to squeeze in as much merriment as possible that they’re willing to steamroll right over people like Castiel to do it.

Most of the time, Castiel doesn’t mind being a faceless cog in the machine, hell, he enjoys it some days. There’s a quiet dignity in his job, in providing food and fuel for weary travelers just trying to get from Point A to Point B. Keeping the coffee pot full, the hot dogs warm, the cigarette cartons stacked. Perhaps other people might look down on him for being satisfied with that type of work, that type of life, but Castiel has no interest in what other people think of him. Well, anyone besides Dean, of course. And Dean loves him, is proud of him, and that’s more than enough to make his days, every single one of them, merry and bright.

So it would be Castiel’s preference that he subsists through the rest of the Christmas season without murdering the one man who makes his existence tolerable, and that fucking song is beginning to threaten that theoretically simple wish.

Today, for instance, it’s four in the afternoon and Castiel is working a double. Which means that since the Gas’n’Sip opened its doors at six AM, Mariah Carey’s syrupy-sweet caroling has set his teeth on edge going on fourteen times. Fourteen. Chinese water torture would be kinder. Two hours and two more rounds of the nightmare in G Major later, Castiel texts Nora, his manager, and begs her to let him change the music. “ Just for the today, just for the rest of my shift”, he pleads, even going so far as to say he’ll tune the radio to their local Christmas music station.

Nora sends back, “ LOL, Castiel you’re so funny”, and Castiel dies a little bit inside. Business is slow and the lackluster trickle of customers comes to a stop completely around ten PM, leaving an entire hour for Castiel to count down the minutes to the next time that awful song is going to play without any kind of distraction. When the bells tied to the doors finally jingle signaling a customer around ten forty-five, relief doesn’t even come close to what Castiel feels. That doubles when the face that appears across his countertop is Dean’s.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says warmly, and he’s not exaggerating when he thinks he may never have been happier to see the man. Although, it’s never unpleasant to see Dean.

“I'll have some beef jerky and a pack of menthols,” Dean replies cheekily, leaning across the counter for a kiss which Castiel gladly provides. Not the menthols, though.

“Funny,” he murmurs and then sighs heavily. “Dean, I’m going to lose my mind if I have to put up with this—” Castiel jams his finger in the direction of the ceiling speaker above his head, “ Horror show for another three weeks.”

Dean looks up from where he’s fingering the different flavors of Bubble Yum and slides a pack across the smooth surface, reaching for his wallet to pay. Castiel waves him off, grabs a couple of singles from his own pocket and runs the transaction absently. “It can’t be that bad,” Dean says and Castiel’s fingers halt mid-button-push.

“My ears feel like they’re bleeding, Dean,” he protests with a glare. “Every forty-two-point-five minutes exactly it comes on and I’m in hell.” Clocking Dean’s badly-suppressed smirk, Castiel works his jaw and folds his arms across his chest. “Perhaps I’ll call Bobby and offer him a free month of advertising in the Gas’n’Sip window. All he’ll have to do is play a particular CD on repeat in the auto-repair bay from tomorrow until Christmas.” Satisfied with the way Dean’s face pales and the smirk disappears, Castiel feels absolutely no need to remind him that approving free advertising isn’t remotely in his job description. Honestly, if Dean can’t figure that out from the knowledge that he isn’t so much as allowed to change the store’s chosen music, that’s on him.

“Don’t mess with my classic rock, Cas,” Dean warns him. “Some shit is sacred, you know.” Annoyed again, Castiel raises his hands and gestures around him emphatically. “Alright, alright,” Dean relents. “I see your point, it sucks.” Sucking his lip distractedly in between his teeth, Dean glances around the store. “So, where are your security cameras at?”

Rolling his eyes, Castiel points to several different corners and just above his head behind the register. “There, there, there, and there. Don’t you think if I could have moved them, I would have? Changing their direction sends a notification straight to Nora’s phone.”

“That’s not what I—what about the storeroom? There any cameras there?”

Castiel narrows his eyes and regards Dean curiously. “No… There was one, but it broke weeks ago and Corporate hasn’t yet responded to Nora’s service request.” With a mild hum and another glance around that includes a sweep of the deserted parking lot outside, Dean wanders over to the doors and locks them. “Dean?” Castiel doesn’t protest, just watches as Dean flips the sign that says, “Back in 5 minutes!” Castiel rarely uses it himself, but every so often nature calls and the store has to be locked in the meantime. It’s interesting that Dean remembers that.

“C’mon,” is all Dean says on his pass back through the store, reaching out to grab Castiel’s arm and tug him out from his little alcove and across the floor to the storeroom.

“Dean, what—”

“How long until that song plays again?” Dean asks as he pulls Castiel inside and shuts the door behind them.

Checking his watch, Castiel does some quick mental math as well as cocks his head to listen for whatever song is playing now. “It’s next,” he groans, but Dean just grins.

“Awesome timing,” he replies, grabbing Castiel’s waist and manhandling him around until his back is up against some stable-looking shelving. “We’re gonna play a game, alright?” Dean’s bright green eyes are sparkling and shining and Castiel definitely knows that face. He also knows he should stop him, should tell Dean no to whatever mischievous thing he’s plotting, but it is only minutes to closing time and hell, Castiel’s day has been pure, undiluted shit.

“What sort of game?” Castiel asks, unable to keep the note of amusement out of his voice as he watches Dean’s eyes dart down to his own lips. Without answering, Dean leans in, kisses Castiel’s bottom lip and then his top, pulls back just far enough to look down and slot their groins together in a way that won’t have anyone’s belts causing unwanted, painful havoc. Then he’s back, tongue poking at the seam of Castiel’s mouth, and despite everything, Castiel recognizes that this is Dean asking for permission. If he really doesn’t want to do this, in his store or at all, he need only close his mouth.

As much as he appreciates the asking, though, Castiel knew what he was getting into when he stepped inside the storeroom. Dean has a bit of an exhibitionist side, and this isn’t their first rodeo in a semi-public space. Though the likelihood of being walked in on is extremely low, there’s still a bit of a thrill Castiel gets over doing something naughty, and maybe he’s more into it than he lets on. The whole concept has him hardening up nicely and Dean’s grinding isn’t hurting either, but just as they’re setting a pretty nice pace, the first notes of The Song come on.

Growling into Dean’s mouth, Castiel reluctantly pushes him back. “I can’t,” he says, frustrated. “I don’t want to associate having sex with you with this demonic lullaby.”

Read the rest on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21656614

[prince-ampora]

One Happy Christmas

INFO -dave focused -semi sadstuck -dave is ftm and june and jade are mtf -dave is mute so he signs  -dave is going to school for a paleontology degree. you dont need to know that for this oneshot but its my headcanon so i wanted to share.

TRIGGER WARNINGS -abuse -bro and mom

***

"Dave! What are you doing for Christmas?" Dave shrugs at June's inquiry and flips another page in his textbook. "The Strilonde family was not very interested in holidays, not only because Mother was Jewish." Jade turns to Rose, "So are you and Dave Jewish?" Rose reads while talking, "By blood yes but we don't follow the religion or holidays." June smiles, "Then you two should come with me and Jade to Dad's house over Christmas break! He'd be happy to have more people to cook for." "I wouldn't mind that. Strider?" Dave shrugs and signs, "Sure I guess, as long as he's okay with having a guy like me over." June rolls her eyes, "You know he loves you, Dave." "Yeah, Dave! He even wanted to pay for your testosterone!" "I'm more than happy to use Bro's money for that." June laughs, I know.

Christmas break finally starts and June piles everyone into her car. The drive to Washington took a couple of hours, mostly spent listening to music and joking around. When they pull into the driveway, Dad Egbert is waiting for them. He waves to them as they pile out of the car and helps them unload their bags. "It's great to see you all again. Dave, Rose! How has everything been away from your parents?" "Amazing," They both say at the same time. Dad Egbert shows them to the kitchen and talks about what he'll make for Christmas dinner. "Would any of you like to help me with this tomorrow?" June and Jade offer to help but Rose says she'll be working. Dave decides to help too. "For now, let's put up the tree. I wanted my daughters here to help and having you two here as well is even better." Rose smiles and thanks him, and the group makes their way to the living room.

They get the tree up by an empty wall in between the door and stairs and have fun going through the ornaments, a lot of which were made by June and Jade in grade school. Dave teases June about her baby picture ornament and she laughs, "As if I haven't seen any of your embarrassing baby pictures Dave." They wrap lights around the tree in a speed competition and try their best to make the ornaments look evenly placed. Rose loses her mind. Jade eats popcorn off the strings. Typical Christmas things. Dave is smiling the entire time, which is so nice for a change. He even takes off his shades. He's safe here, he doesn't need to hide his emotions behind them. Dad Egbert put on Christmas music and June wraps some tinsel around her neck as a scarf and takes turns dancing with everyone. Rose plays her violin along to Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy and Carol of the Bells. June joins in on piano and Jade even gets out her bass. Dave doesn't have an instrument so he just beatboxes a little and does meme dances.

After they get back on track and actually put the star on the top of the tree, as well as some photos of each other ("You're an angel Dave, you need to be on the top of the tree." "Only if you're there too June."), they sit down to watch Christmas movies. Rose and Dave recommend Nightmare Before Christmas, June insists on seeing Home Alone, and Jade brought one of her copies of The Grinch, appalled that Dave and Rose had never seen it. Dad Egbert, June, and Dave fit on the couch. Rose happily shifts from the back of the couch, to the arm, to the floor, and Jade is content to curl up on the floor. Jade is the first to fall asleep, and Rose retires to Jade and June's room to work after Home Alone 3. Dad Egbert eventually gets tired and retires to his room, telling them that there are cookies in the fridge and to go to bed at a good time. They do because 3 am is totally a good time. Rose is already asleep on the top bunk with Jade, who had gone to her room at 2 am. June and Dave squeeze into the bottom bunk and fall asleep quickly.

In the morning, Rose works on her novel as June, Jade, and Dave try their best to be useful in the kitchen. Jade gets plants to chop up from the garden she started that summer, June helps her dad prep the meat and Dave tries to be useful where he can by getting out and putting away ingredients, handing out utensils, and washing dishes. After the main courses are started, Dad Egbert ushers everyone out of the kitchen so he can bake pies, cakes, and cookies for after. June "Bluh"'s at the Betty Crocker products on the counter and happily leaves to eat gushers on the couch. Neither Jade or Dave could bring themselves to tell her that those are Crocker products also. "Are you having fun, Dave?" Dave smiles and nods, "Yeah. I am." Dave and Jade compete in Mario Kart, with Jade coming out victorious. Rose eventually joins them and watches their match with occasional quips.

Today is Christmas. Dad Egbert had somehow found the time to wrap a bunch of presents in secret and place them all neatly under the tree, as well as fill stockings and hang them on the fireplace. He wakes the four of them up with cookies and hot chocolate and they groggily make their way downstairs. "It's a good thing I didn't wait to buy your presents. I was going to have June and Jade take them to you after the break." They sit in a half-circle and Rose is baited into putting on a Christmas hat and passing the presents out. Dad Egbert films the kids' reactions as they open their presents. He got June a nice blue dress and some other new outfits, a bra with good quality inserts, and some movie sets. Jade unwraps custom made dog ears and tail, some exotic plant seeds, a bra with good quality inserts, and some outfits as well. Dave, after hesitating, unwraps his presents to reveal some stuff for his turntables, a new binder, a book on weird preserved dead things, and a trans pride flag. Rose happily unwraps her presents of a violin care kit, some wizard cat-themed pajamas, and a hard drive and printer ink.

They each present Dad Egbert with their own present as well, cheap because College Students, which they bought before leaving for break. June got him some icing in a shaving cream themed bottle. Jade got him a book of Betty Crocker's secret recipes. Dave got his hand on a new pipe, and Rose came through with some really cool Dad™ hats. He cries while holding his presents and thanking them, pulling them into a hug. Dave doesn't start crying at all, what are you talking about, Shut Up Lalonde. After the hug ends he signs to everyone, "This was the best Christmas ever. Best day ever. I love you all." June smiles, "Y'know how we can make it even better?" Dave raises an eyebrow, "Let's mail your parents coal." Dave and Rose smile, "Hell. Yes."

A couple of days later, Dave gets an angry call from Bro, and Rose gets one from Mom. After they were done getting yelled at they hung up without a word. "What was yours about?" "'Elizabeth Strider you little bitch I will maim you. Your lucky I'm busy here or I'd go there and stab you.' Yours?" "Rose Lalonde, what the hell is this? I was gonna send you alcohol from my personal stash or maybe even some candy but not now. I'm gonna go drink this headache away and if I still remember this later, you'll see what happens when you cross me." They laugh at their terrible parent's predictable reactions and go down to join the others for breakfast. This is their family. Not an alcoholic and a weird puppet sword guy. Their family is the two girls and their father sitting at the table offering them food and smiling. They chose their family.

[tipsycad147]

50+ Fun Family-Oriented Pagan Activities for Winter

Winter is a time of inner reflection, but it’s also a time of family, feasting, and fun. Here are my favourite fun, family-oriented pagan activities for winter. Time to get out the mittens, mugs, and mistletoe! Whether you celebrate Yule, the Winter Solstice, or Christmas, these pagan activities may become traditions for your family. Keep in mind, you’ll see Christmas mentioned in this article, because many of us grew up celebrating Christmas and have blended the Winter holidays to meet our family’s needs and traditions. Just because the term Christmas is used, doesn’t make a tradition any less pagan. In fact, most of the Christmas traditions originate from older pagan traditions! Feel free to adapt each tradition and name to fit your beliefs and preferences.

DISCLOSURE: I may earn a small commission for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products or services from this website. Your purchase helps support my work in bringing you information about the paranormal and paganism.

50+ Fun, Family Pagan Activities for Winter!

1. Candles in the Window

An Irish custom for centuries, placing candles in the windows guides your loved ones home in the winter months. It also invites the sun’s return. My grandmother did this every Christmas and it was a tradition I always loved.

2. Cloves in Oranges

Who doesn’t love the clove and cinnamon scents of the winter holidays? There’s a winter tradition of sticking cloves into oranges which is called pomanders. Pomanders date back to Medieval times and were used to ward off infection and bad odours. Hang cloved oranges around the house to scent your home and also draw in abundance. Cloves represent success and the oranges summon the sun’s return.

3. Bake Cookies

Whether you call them Yule or Christmas cookies is up to you, but baking cookies is a tradition for any family who loves sweets during the winter holidays. Let your kids decorate gingerbread and sugar cookies. Use cookie cutters in the shapes of stars, Santa, and his reindeer to represent the night sky, Odin, and his steed.

4. Advent Calendar

Advent Calendars are a fun way to countdown to Yule and/or Christmas. Instead of using candies for each day’s gift, replace with natural items like crystals. Advent means “coming” in Latin. Christians think of it as the coming of Jesus, while Pagans think of it as the coming of the sun.

5. Christmas Lights

The winter nights are long and dark, hence the tradition of Christmas lights. They light the way plus work sympathetic magic in inviting the sun’s return. Hang them up on the house and around the interior of your house. And don’t forget to go on a car ride around the neighbourhood to see all the beautiful light displays!

6. Cider or Mulled Wine

A cold night can always be warmed up with a hot cup of cider or mulled wine. Give the kids the hot apple cider with a stick of cinnamon and an orange slice, and let the adults partake in mulled wine with cloves, star anise, cinnamon and oranges. The Norse peoples used to refer to Yule as “Drinking Yule”, so why not let it live up to its name?

7. Women’s Christmas

The Feast of the Epiphany (January 6th) is also called Women’s Christmas in Ireland. Its tradition in County Kerry and County Cork to allow the women to have a day out on the town, while the men do the housework and cooking! Honour the women in your life, as you do the Goddess, and give them a day off for Women’s Christmas this winter. It’s also tradition on this day to take down Christmas decorations and the Christmas tree.

8. Gingerbread House

Gingerbread originated in Germany in the fifteen hundreds. If you have German ancestry, honour their memory by making a gingerbread house with your family.

9. Reindeer Food

Odin was known to ride his steed, Sleipnir, through the skies on winter nights. Sleipnir is thought to be the original “Santa’s reindeer”. Reindeer were sacred animals to Siberian shamans. Make reindeer food with the kids and leave it out for the reindeer on Christmas or Sleipnir on Yule.

10. Cookies for Odin & Santa

Whether you celebrate Yule or Christmas (or both), leave out a cookie offering for Odin on Yule and/or for Santa on Christmas Eve. The tradition of leaving cookies and milk for Santa clearly originated in leaving sweet offerings to appease the winter gods in the old days.

11. Caroling

Caroling has ancient roots that go back further than we know. “We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!” Going from door to door, singing blessings to the people inside in exchange for a cup of hot cocoa or a round of applause? Sounds like you’re bestowing good luck and abundance in exchange for offerings to me! Caroling is the newer version of traditions called mumming and wassailing.

12. Offerings to the Winter Fairies

They say there are a different set of fairies for each season. In the winter season, wouldn’t it be nice to set out offerings for the winter fairies? Frosted cookies and hot beverages would be greatly appreciated by the wee folk. This makes for a fun tradition with the whole family. Set the offerings outside on a tree trunk or somewhere in the garden. This is one of those purely pagan activities

13. Holly & Ivy

Decorate your house and hearth with holly and ivy. Holly and ivy as Christmas decorations predates Christianity. Our pagan ancestors used evergreens to decorate hearth and home for a couple reasons: to keep the ��warmth” of the earth alive in their home and hearts, to ward off evil spirits in the winter, and to bring abundance in the new year. In new pagan traditions, the Holly King and Oak King battle it out on the Winter Solstice and the Oak King wins! He represents the return of the sun/earth/summer.

14. Gaze at the Winter Sky

Sometimes the sky looks so clear on a winter’s night. Spend a minute or two gazing up into the sky – notice the brilliance of the stars and the darkness of the black space between. If the moon is out – praise her for her light and glory. Wish upon the north star.

15. Wassailing

A similar/same tradition as caroling, yet wassailing in apple orchards is believed to provide a good harvest in the coming year. Wassailing is basically singing to the trees, honouring the spirits in the trees, and ensuring a plentiful bounty of apples in the coming year.

16.  Yule Herbal Sachets

Make herbal sachets full of Yule and Christmas spices to hang around the house. Cinnamon, clove, star anise, and apple serve to sweeten the air, plus bring abundance in the coming year to your home. Choose herbal sachet bags of red, green, silver, and gold.

17. Sun Bread

The Winter Solstice is the longest night of the year. But the following day brings hope with the sun’s glorious return. Bake bread in the shape of the sun to celebrate the sun’s return to the earth. Recipes and instructions can be found online. Eat and partake in the sun’s warmth and abundance for the year to come.

18. Pinecones

The pinecones have dropped. Hopefully you collected some last Fall! Now you and the family can decorate them with silver and gold spray paint and glitter OR decorate them like Christmas trees and hang them on the tree!

19. Winter Solstice Spiral

The spiral symbol represents the never-ending cycle of life, death, and rebirth and did so for our ancient Celtic ancestors. On a snowy day, go outside and create a spiral made of evergreens and stones to honour our ancestors and the great cycle of life. It also makes for gorgeous photos and a lovely offering to the winter spirits.

20. Resurrection Flower

The Resurrection flower is also known as the Rose of Jericho. It is a tumbleweed and desert plant that seems dead, until soaked in a bit of water then springs back to life! It’s used in hoodoo tradition to bring abundance if 5 coins are placed in the water along with the resurrection flower then the water is used to wash one’s front door. Keep the resurrection flower all year, then add water in the winter to represent the return of the sun and renewal of the earth.

21. Yule Altar

Clean, consecrate, and re-decorate your altar to honor the Winter sabbats, gods, and spirits. Choose evergreen garland, red and green candles, and silver candle holders to name a few.

22. Yule Log

The Yule log is steeped in ancient tradition. Choose a log and decorate it with greenery. You can even carve out holes to use as candle holders until it’s time to burn the yule log. Traditionally, it was burnt slowly over the course of the 12 days of Christmas then a piece was saved to light the next year’s yule log. That piece of the yule log was thought to ward off misfortune in the coming year.

23. Yule / Christmas Tree

The true origins of the Christmas or Yule tree are heavily debated, but I think its clear bringing an evergreen tree into one’s home is an ancient pagan thing to do. Whether to preserve the tree’s spirit through the winter or to bring life into the home, the Yule tree is a popular tradition during the winter holidays for many people, religious or not.

24. Books on Xmas Eve

In Iceland it’s called Jolabokaflod or “Christmas Book Flood.” This tradition is about giving each other books as presents on Christmas Eve and then staying up late that night to read them. Give your family books this year and read them together as the Icelanders do!

25. Yule Bock

A Northern European tradition that dates back centuries is the Yule Bock (Yule Goat). Scholars believe it is tied to ancient Germanic paganism, the Harvest, and/or the Norse god Thor. Make your own yule bock out of hay and red ribbon. If it’s small – hang it on your tree. If it’s large – place in random places around the home.

26. Christmas Wreaths

Make your own Christmas wreath out of evergreens like holly or spruce. Hang on the front door for good luck and Christmas cheer. The Christmas wreath is thought to date back to ancient times as a symbol of eternity or divinity (circular shape and evergreen).

27. Hot Cocoa

Drinking hot cocoa is a sweet tradition that all kids love…and many adults. This sweet treat has surprising pagan origins. Sources say the ancient Mayans or Aztecs invented hot cocoa as a drink for royalty.

The ancient Mayans invented hot cocoa…make and drink it as one of the sweetest pagan activities in the winter!

28. Gifts

Without falling into the cycle of mindless consumerism, giving gifts to loved ones during the winter is a time-honoured tradition. During a season of cold, bleak days, gifts can cheer us up and bring us closer together. Choose to give gifts with meaning. Special framed photographs, experiences, etc. instead of useless objects that will end up at a thrift store or at the dump.

29. Fruit & Cinnamon Garland

Another fun seasonal craft is making your own garland out of fruits and herbs. String together dried orange or apple slices along with star anise and cinnamon as a beautiful, rustic piece to hang on the mantle or around your home. This is a simple craft the whole family can do!

30. Simmering Potpourri

Want to make your house smell like Yule? Try making a simmering pot of potpourri on the stove this year. Its as simple as adding cinnamon sticks, orange slices, star anise, and cloves to a simmering pot of water.

31. Sun Decor

Bring back the sun by decorating your altar and home with sun decor. Find sun plaques online, or make your own from felt and hot glue.

32. Oranges in Stockings

My grandmother used to add oranges to our stockings at Christmas. This tradition is said by some to be a Christian representation of the gold thrown down the chimney by St. Nicholas; however, pagans know it as a nod to the end of winter and the sun’s return (think citrus – sun).

33. New Winter Holidays

Add a different winter holiday to your winter repertoire. Depending on your culture, there may be a holiday you’ve never celebrated with pagan roots.

34. Bonfires

Not only does a bonfire keep us warm on winter nights, it also reminds us of the same element our ancestors used to survive the winter months. Without fire, we might not be here. Roast marshmallows and sing Christmas songs together this winter.

35. St. Stephen’s Day

One of those “other” winter holidays we discussed previously, St. Stephen’s Day is celebrated the day after Christmas Day. In Canada, it’s called Boxing Day. Whatever you want to call it, make your own tradition of celebrating this winter holiday in your own pagan way.

36. St. Lucia’s Day

St. Lucia’s Day is celebrated in Scandinavia and is thought to be a more modern Christian celebration of St. Lucia who was once a pagan goddess. Perhaps she had another name, perhaps not. The Grimm Brothers say St. Lucia as another representation of the ancient goddess Berchta. It was originally celebrated on the Winter Solstice, giving it a clear pagan foundation.

37. Dough Ornaments

Another craft tradition centred around the Yule tree – try making dough ornaments with your kids and family members. Stars and suns add a perfect pagan touch to the tree.

38. Ghost Stories

Traditionally, winter was thought to be the season following Samhain (Summer’s end) where spirits roamed the earth…particularly dangerous spirits. Ghost stories were once told around the fire. Bring back the ghost story tradition this winter!

39. Oak King and Holly King

If you have a family of thespians, assign roles to your family members, print out a script, and put on a play of the battle between the Oak King and the Holly King. You could even make special costumes for the event! The winter solstice is when the Oak King takes over rule of the earth, winning against the Holly King in battle.

40. Feast on Yule

What’s one thing we love to do as human beings? Eat, of course! Feasting during the winter holidays has been going on for thousands of years. Long before the church’s rise, our pagan ancestors feasted during the winter as a way to “lighten the mood”, bring the tribe together, and thank the gods for a bountiful harvest. So feast on Yule!

41. Feast on Christmas

See above. Already had a feast on Yule? Throw another feast on Christmas!

42. 12 Days of Christmas

Once upon a time, Christmas was celebrated over a span of twelve whole days! Where do you think the song comes from? Also called Christmastide, the celebration of a holiday lasting more than a few days is said to originate before the rise of the church but was adapted by the church to make conversion easier. Who doesn’t want to celebrate Christmas longer? Do something simple for each of the 12 days of Christmas starting Christmas Day and lasting until January 5th.

43. Charity

Nevermind religion, giving of your time or goods to those in need feels good during the holidays and teaches kids a wonderful morality lesson of compassion and kindness. The holidays are about community and giving.

44. Story of the Baker’s Dozen

There’s an old tale about where the baker’s dozen comes from. It involves Saint Nicholas, an old witch, and a baker in New Amsterdam (NYC). Read it to your kids by the fireside.

45. Story of La Befana

Continuing on the lesser known Christmas stories, children in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world might have never heard the story of the Christmas witch – La Befana. If you live in Italy, you will know the story. La Befana is a witch who gives presents to children on Christmas Eve. Read the story and add the tradition to your home!

46. Story of the Perchten

Does your family like scary stories? Read and tell the story of the Perchten, a horde of scary monsters that parade through the streets of Germany, Hungary, and other countries during the winter holidays, scaring off evil winter spirits. The Perchten are named after the germanic goddess Berchta – read their story here.

47. Christmas Movies

One of the best things about the Winter season is all the family-oriented Christmas movies on TV. Watch a different winter movie each weekend together. Our pagan ancestors put a huge emphasis on family. Elf, Rudolph, and The Santa Clause are just a few of my family’s favourites.

48. Cuddle

More emphasis on family, but also to keep warm, make time to cuddle up with your favorite person this winter.

49. Letters

Have the kids write letters to Santa or Odin and send them “up the chimney” (aka leave it on the fireplace/mantle) or send in the “mailbox”.

50. Mistletoe

Mistletoe is steeped in pagan history. The Druids found mistletoe to be a sacred plant because it grew on their holy tree – the oak. Mistletoe was banned from the church because of its pagan associations for many years. Hang mistletoe in the house and when two people are caught under it together – they’re supposed to kiss so goes the old custom.

51. Goddess Ritual

With Santa, the elves, and Odin getting all the attention during the winter holidays, don’t forget to include the Goddess in your holiday fun. Write and perform a ritual dedicated solely to the Mother Goddess. Perform on the Winter Solstice or on the Full Cold Moon.

52. Snow Fun

If you live in a region that gets snow in the winter, why not get outside in warm clothes and enjoy the winter landscape? Go sledding, build a snowman, have a snowball fight, and make snow angels! Bundle up and enjoy Mother Earth in her glistening, snowy glory!

https://otherworldlyoracle.com/50-fun-family-oriented-pagan-activities-for-winter/

[awfully-sadistic]

Having a holly, jolly Christmas

Because it’s the best time of the year!

I don’t know if there’ll be snow,

But have a cup of cheer!

Silent Night Vector Hyllus did not know what Christmas was and even less about what it stood for. Coming from a time where the galaxy and everything that happened in it happened a very “long time ago” and “far, far away” one could argue that he didn’t have to. It wasn’t like it was celebrated in any of the planets he had known and it made less sense to try to understand it since joining the hive mind and becoming Dawn Herald for an alien race that looked like giant ants known as Killiks. It just seemed so insignificant given the race had no use for human holidays and thus, Vector remained in ignorance for a very long time as he remained as one with the hive. 

Each and every Killik were in mental contact with one another, however, far away from the hive mind now, far away from any duties where he had nearly nothing to do but learn about different cultures and customs, Vector had gotten curious. The Haushold provided so many new experiences, rich, that he thought even exploring the galaxy couldn’t prepare him for the things he had seen in the Family. He was a silent observer, noting things, taking in everything with those seemingly lifeless blackened eyes and almost stoic expression.

Right now, those black eyes were trained on Dot. She was opening a gift that had been offered to her despite sitting in a wealth of presents from others who have known her longer, more intimately.

Yet, she was opening a gift from him.

The concept of gift exchanging was not as foreign as the concept of Christmas. Killiks had their own customs but he didn’t think she’d appreciate rubbing their forearms together. Or appreciate what others had called his “bug milk”, he hadn’t wanted to make a bad impression on her.

“We had hoped you liked it.” Vector finally spoke in that peculiar way that he does; when he speaks, he speaks in a soothing tone and for the hive he has joined with. Even far away.

Dot pulled an intricately designed necklace from the box, stunned by the exotic beauty of something she knew had to come from another galaxy. There were stones on it she’s never seen before and couldn’t even begin to describe. “It’s... beautiful,” she admired, unable to take her eyes off the way the gems glittered, shifted, twinkled. It sounds like a song, almost.

“We are glad.” Vector replied. It might have sounded like an ordinary statement but the way his shoulders relaxed showed Dot he had been holding onto tension based on her reaction. “We think the sound reminds us of The Song of the Universe; more specifically, we think it reminds us of your part.”

“Song?” Dot asked, looking up in a startled expression. “My? Wait, what does that mean?”

And Vector smiled softly, anxious in his own way to talk to her about this mysterious melody that was created by all living things with a part to play. He especially wanted to share what he thought about hers.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

“Your name is Carol. How can you not know Christmas carols?”

“I’m going to give you ten seconds to get out of my face before I send you to another dimension like I did with Tony.” 

Carol Danvers and Jason Todd were staring down at each other; both with big personalities and headstrong stubbornness that could out-mule any jackass in the Haus. This wasn’t anything mean-spirited but more that everyone had a lot to drink and manners were becoming unhinged.

Unfortunately, with huge personalities and clashing egos, a lot of manners would be unhinged. It was also an interesting mix considering the Marvel side and the DC side mingled quite well with one another. Too many people were like two sides on the same coin. It was nuts but it would also take a charging rhino to break up anyone (or these two) when they got going. 

Most of the time, it would end up with Carol as the victor because... she really was incredibly stronger than Jason (or nearly anyone else for that matter). Yet Jason was as stubborn as Ripley had been during the first merging month with Atamu, trying to get the jump on him.

Dot sat in her booth staring at the two with her mouth posed around a straw. She was drinking a milkshake and there was no way she was going to be stepping into that argument.

Well, at least until Carol made the first attempt to send Jason Todd bam, pow, straight to the moon. So, she decided to step in with a harmless statement.

“What carols do you know, Jason?” she smiled around the straw as Jason’s head whipped around, searching the crowd before they settled on Dot. Immediately, he got a lazy grin on his face and it seemed like he forgot he was talking to Carol. He came strolling over, sliding into the booth next to her.

Unfortunately for him, Carol followed. She slid in on Dot’s other side, effectively trapping the girl between the two; something... she really didn’t think through despite only a few moments ago deciding not to... be in the middle of them.

“I know lots,” he boasted.

Carol wasn’t buying it. “You do, do ya? Then how come you were makin’ a big fucking stink about me singing carols?” she asked, wrapping an arm around Dot’s shoulders and tugging her onto her side (of the argument). “Why didn’t you just sing somethin’?”

Jason’s expression deadpanned; one, he knew what Carol was doing and two, who invited her?! But as Jason was going to find out, no one invited Carol. She came because she wanted to, IF she wanted to. And Dot was around so duh, of course she was here.

“JARVIS, give me a Christmas carol.” Jason stated before the A.I. asked, “And what would you like to listen to, sir?”

Carol wasn’t even trying to hide the grin splitting her face. It was apparent Jason had just expected JARVIS to just play a carol over the loud speaker. Dot was trying to be a lot more polite though, clearing her throat and glancing up at her Mommy.

“...Any... one of them,” Jason said through grit teeth.

“Yeah, but which one?” Carol asked before JARVIS could play something, thus bailing Jason out. She was giving Dot a wink, one that Jason caught and Dot giggled at. They both knew he was more or less had--Jason didn’t know a damn carol even if it bit him in the butt... or sent him into another dimension.

“SOMETHING SOMETHING, OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS, DAMN.”

Carol burst out laughing and Dot found herself doing the same. JARVIS, sounding like an unappreciated Alfred sighed and played a random carol that did, in fact, talk about Jesus.

O Come All Ye Faithful

“He’s... where and doing what?” Dot asked, unbelieving but at the same time, not surprised. It was a weird combination considering she had tried to be optimistic about it and figured it would be the one time Wesker wasn’t hiding down in the lab basements missing all the festivities and mingling with Family on Christmas. He’s been with everyone for HOW long and he’s still acting like an anti-social butthead?!

Jake rubbed a hand on his closely shaven head; at least he had been in the festive mood, wearing an “ugly” sweater that matched with his younger siblings; notably Flash, Petey, and Miles. He was grinning and looking down at his Ma, before his hand dropped to his side and then back towards the general direction of the Lab entrance.

“You know how that old bastard is. It’s probably better without him, scowling at everyone. Being the Grinch while we’re all trying to have a good time.”

“He’s still part of this Family!” she said though she knew Jake wasn’t the one who needed to hear this. She sighed and reached up--which still wasn’t enough and Jake, used to the gesture, bent his large frame so that Dot could cup his cheek. “Thank you for telling me. Now I’m going to give your father a piece of my mind and you can expect him to be up here, wearing a sweater of his own.”

Jake grinned again, leaning into his Ma’s hand. “I can’t wait to see that,” he said, pressing a kiss to the center of her palm. “That’d be a merry fucking Christmas for me!”

Dot had did her best to assure Jake that Wesker wasn’t going to get away with just an ugly sweater but he was going to give each and every one he usually hassled a Christmas present--with love, and personally delivered. Even if she had to lead him by the ear to do it.

The lab doors opened to its elevator and Dot stepped in, jabbing her thumb at the console, hitting the Basement sublevels. She had her arms crossed and ready to go OFF--

But then the elevator doors opened and the scenery before her stole her breath away. The lights were dimmed as she stepped out of the elevator and hanging above her head were strings of lights with a delicate lighting setting. It cast the usually harsh fluorescent scene of the labs in a soft glow reminiscent of a snow fall during the night. Quiet, serene, personal, private.

Standing at the other end of the hallway was Wesker. By now, Dot figured she was... set up. Jake working with Wesker? Well, she never expected that. And that was probably how she was lured to the labs without a second thought about being set up and all worked up about it, too.

Now the air was let out of her balloon and she felt entirely aware of walking towards the mastermind behind.. whatever this was.

It took her a little bit to actually reach Wesker considering she was still admiring the time and effort it took to string up the lights. Sure, the servants must have done it but the thought had been no doubt Wesker’s own. When she stood in front of him, he was already staring down at her. That stupid smug grin on his face was in place and the sensation flared up to smack the glasses off his face. But he surprised her by presenting her with a small box.

Slowly, she took it, giving him a quizzical glance. “Why couldn’t you have given this to me upstairs. You know, with everyone else?” she jabbed, only half-serious. It was more so being a brat out of anything.

“That is precisely the reason,” Wesker replied with a sigh, slightly only serious himself. “there were too many people.” Dot was going to further push it by mentioning that was the point of being Family but Wesker cut her off and added, “It’s not a crime to steal a little of your time. Everyone else does it.”

Dot didn’t point out that he has, on more than one occasion, has committed crimes on securing some quality time well spent with Dot but dropped it as soon as the lid to the box had been pulled off. She wasn’t aware that Wesker had placed his hands over hers, helping her open her present in an attempt to steer her attention away from scolding him or otherwise giving him a “hard” time. Hardly a hard time; he loved their little verbal spars. It kept him sharp and on his toes--but he didn’t want to sully this, their, moment with something like that. He wanted to show her that she was special.

“...This is...” 

“Mm hm. It is.”

Dot laughed a little, staring down at the gigantic heart shaped diamond. “...You’re surprisingly sentimental.”

Wesker made a thoughtful sound at the back of his throat. He looked a little uncomfortable, perhaps having to share more than a thimble of emotion. But he managed to do it because Dot was worth much more than that and she had the right to know and had all his attempts on ...opening up. Despite how hard it was for someone like Wesker to. 

“Only with the right person.” Wesker replied, “and you are the right person.” He enclosed the giant jewel in Dot’s tiny little hand. It didn’t even fit but it felt like a good example of how his heart was held in her small hand. It might be a little cold and harder than any precious metal on earth but it was precious to her and she would keep it safe.

[* I’m sorry there’s not a lot! I wrote until I had to sleep for tomorrow and this was all I managed to get done! @.@;  ]

[jimhenson-themuppetmaster]

Michael Caine and the Muppets The Muppets Christmas Carol

[bashfulgnome]

Seasonal

Happy New Year! I’ve been working on this WIR fic idea for a while and thought it’d be fitting for this holiday. Enjoy!

Felix sat atop Niceland Apartments and looked out over the arcade from his game's screen. Mr. Litwak had draped some colorful strands of lights over a few game cabinets and around the building's front windows, and they cast a cozy glow over his neighbors' homes. The sights and sounds of their celebrations filled the arcade with mirth, and below him his own game's annual party was well underway. Through the open windows he could hear Ralph belting out "Deck the Halls" with Tamora, her men, and Zangief joining in, the Nicelanders and racers barely audible over the festive bellowing. Their New Year's Eve celebration retained some Christmas cheer for the sake of friends who couldn't make it the previous week.

Originally Felix had come up to the roof for some fresh air, but as he sat there alone with his thoughts, he found it far too easy to venture into bittersweet mental territory. His gaze drifted to the one remaining Sugar Rush cabinet and its new steering wheel; its border lights blended seamlessly with the other blinking bulbs around the room.

Its twin has been unplugged quite a while ago now. Most gamers tended to play Sugar Rush by themselves for the glory of setting a new best time without distractions. Litwak decided to sell the second cabinet to a collector who was well-off enough to give him several times what he'd always thought it was worth. It was the last piece she needed for her TobiKomi collection – ever since the company announced its impending closure, she'd explained, the value of their games had started climbing, and she was willing to pay extra then to avoid ridiculous levels of price-gouging later.

As beneficial as it had been to the arcade, all of this did little to reassure Felix. If it wasn't for Ralph getting the steering wheel on time, the remaining cabinet – the racers’ home – would've gone the way of Centipede. Naturally they all knew how precarious their way of life happened to be, but with so many games in the arcade, it wasn't often that such an event would hit so close to home. And right at this time of the year, as well.

"Hey babe, you okay?"

"Oh my land!" He startled a bit before turning around with a hand on his chest. "Ah...'m sorry for leaving the party like that, darlin'. I shouldn't'a had that cheesecake...but I'll be fine."

"I know damn well something's bothering you. C'mon, tell me. You never take leave of a holiday party this long." Tamora's eyes narrowed but her tone was soft, almost as if she was afraid of scaring him away. She took a seat next to him on the ledge.

"I was just...thinkin'. 'Bout the arcade back in the day, and– and all of us."

She wrapped an arm around her little husband. They both wore the sweaters she knitted for them years ago: classic oversized, ugly Christmas sweaters adorned with trees, snowflakes, and gaudy argyle patterns. She'd deliberately made them as ridiculous-looking as possible, but of course he loved them anyway. So much that he wore them for Christmas and New Year's – Why pass up the chance if you took the time to make ‘em? he’d said. Felix leaned into her side and took her free hand in both of his.

"I wish you could've been here back then, Tamora. Everyone was so close-knit because there weren't that many sprites in each game in those days. It was a real special time." He smiled warmly at the memory.

"The fellas over in Berzerk, they had the best laser tag maze you've ever laid eyes on. Whenever we had a day off they'd get everything set up and let folks come in to play." Felix laughed and shook his head. That game afforded him a welcome break from the Nicelanders as they never ventured inside; its disembodied, mechanistic droning of “DESTROY THE HUMANOID KILL THE INTRUDER” terrified them. "That Otto, he was always so happy to have company..."

Tamora's gaze softened; she could sense that her husband was going to take her for a long stroll down memory lane.

"On Saturday nights, Pauline would come down to Tapper's and take song requests. There'd be jazz playin', people dancin'...around the holidays she'd even put up a stage in Game Central Station. She sang carols and we'd all count down to the new year together."

"Imagine Surge Protector getting in on that, huh?" She grinned. "Surprised when I found out that he's the one who decorates the place."

"Oh he loved it! It was really busy every day back then, so he appreciated havin' a break. Some days we had so many visitors that Mr. Litwak set up a TV over by the change machine. That way, all the little siblings who got dragged along and crowded away from the games had something to do when it was rainin' out and they couldn't go mini-golfing. He always said he'd rather have them safe in here than wanderin' around in the streets, even if they weren't customers. Then when they got bigger, they'd come runnin' in, just so excited to finally be able to play with us."

He sighed happily.

"It was just wonderful, gettin' to watch children grow up and knowing that you brighten their day. Some of 'em even told us stories while they were playing."

His smile faltered as he recalled some of what he'd heard from the less fortunate ones – how they'd startle at the slightest noise, the marks on their faces; things that had been lost in the rosy haze of nostalgia until that moment.

"And a few of them...oh, Tammy, I think this arcade might've been the only real home they had. Ralph always did go a bit easier on them, bless his heart."

Tamora squeezed her husband's hand a little tighter. She'd seen a couple of children like that in her six years at Litwak's.

Excited, but quiet and timid. Always looking over their shoulders with their hands in their pockets, clenched around a fistful of precious quarters. They usually entered alone or with a group of similarly-nervous friends. Some days they left the same way. Other days they would be yanked out by the elbow mid-game, heads down, by a seething, red-faced adult who kept up a strained illusion of courtesy with the arcade owner – their facade betrayed only by their visibly-tightening grip on the child's arm – until stepping out the door.

The size of the Hero's Duty console usually resulted in these children ducking behind it to hide if they spotted a parent's car outside while playing. The best the sergeant could do to help was point the FPS bot towards something uninteresting in the hopes that her game wouldn't attract attention.

She glanced down at the worried handyman and he met her gaze with a concerned one of his own. He shuffled closer to her before continuing.

"A few months after we got plugged in, Berzerk was taken away for a couple weeks and came back as Frenzy.” He shuddered at the memory of seeing what looked like a new cabinet rolling through the doors, until he realized what it really was, underneath the blinding orange paint job.

“I thought we’d pick up right where we left off. Everyone looked the same and they were friendly enough but...it wasn't them. We heard later that the joystick kept getting jammed and the game wasn't bringin’ in enough quarters, so Mr. Litwak decided to have his repair people do a conversion kit while they were at it, since he was able to get a discount anyway. They lasted a few more years, but eventually they got swapped for RoadBlasters..." He pointed towards a spot on the floor currently occupied by nothing more than a few singed stains on the patterned carpet.

She let out a low whistle. "Hell of a way to go."

Felix nodded sadly.

"What about Pauline, isn't she still around?" The sergeant pulled up one leg and crossed it under her knee. She knew that woman was lucky enough to hail from a classic game that no arcade owner unplugged nowadays unless there were dire circumstances. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong were among the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, along with Fix-It Felix Jr. – if it ever came to the point where one of them got sold for parts instead of repaired, the arcade was in dire straits.

"Oh she's still here...but a lot of her old hangouts aren't. Her game's a bit lonely, so she went around with Mario and DK and they got to know most everyone who was plugged in back then. Most of those folks' games didn't stay here past 1999 or so – insides burned out, drinks spilled, quarters stopped comin' in. A few didn't make it out in time.”

Tamora winced at the blank expression that briefly crossed his face.

“The arcade really changed quickly in just a couple months. We got a whole bunch of new games to replace the unplugged ones, and the neighborhood that Pauline loved just wasn't the same. She had a tough time with it and didn't feel like singing as much anymore. Not in public, at least."

His voice hitched and he swallowed a lump in his throat.

"This– This time of year just gets me thinkin' sometimes...there's just so much that goes on out there and we can't do a thing about it. I hope those little ones turned out okay. We invited Pauline to the party tonight but she's over havin' a quiet night at Ms. Pac-Man's...I think she's doing a little better now, tryin' to make some new friends. And I hope Mr. Litwak is doin’ all right, too. He's been at this even longer than we have, and...well..."

"I know." She noticed the worry in his features and pulled him closer, planting a kiss on his forehead. The owner wasn't exactly getting any younger, and no sprite in the arcade knew if he had plans to retire or pass down the establishment. He'd never mentioned having any next-of-kin – blood-related or otherwise – either way, and it seemed he planned to run the business he loved for as long as he was physically able.

After that...they had the Wi-Fi router as a last resort if evacuation was inevitable, but from there, nobody really mapped it out any further. Sure, they had plans for who they'd turn to if their own games got unplugged, but the idea of all the games in the arcade suddenly being scattered to the four winds, futures uncertain...it was too much to think about.

"It just feels...wrong for me to even be gettin' so misty over it anyway. I have a home, and a wonderful wife," – he kissed her hand and ran his thumb over her fingers – "and a real swell brother and little Vanny, and so many healthy, happy children who got their home game back, and the last six years have been the best of my life...I'm doing better than ever but I just can't shake this feeling. All those years in the arcade's heyday weren't fun for Ralph. And half that time Turbo was keepin' Vanellope miserable. Q*bert was homeless..."

Felix's voice strained, and his speaking tempo turned frantic. "I-I know that's all in the past, and we worked everything out with Ralph, and the family's all doing great now, but...but what if this is someone's last year? What if I didn't do enough? Even if the motherboard’s good to run another thirty years their screen could still burn out, or gamers could lose interest in them, or someone could get into a fight near the cabinet and damage something, or...or…"

He shook his head, choking back a sob. "I don't know how you do this every day in the military, honeybadger. Keeping it together even if everyone you love could be gone tomorrow and–"

She leaned down and hushed him with a fierce kiss that nearly pinned him to the concrete ledge. He needed to be needed; to worry and help and fix. Tamora knew this well. She'd come down with the occasional virus or two and observed him doting on her in his every spare minute until she recovered. He'd checked in with Ralph each day for the past month in case he was missing Vanellope even more than usual and needed to vent. He made sure to give a hug and word of praise to every single one of the Sugar Rush racers whenever the two of them departed the game after the Random Roster Race to retire for the night. She loved him for it, how much he cared and wanted everyone to be happy – sprite and gamer alike – but at times like these it wore his physical and emotional faculties to the bone.

"Alright, you'd better listen here, shortstack." Pulling away, she held his cherry-red face in her hands, his expression still dazed and eyes wide. He clung to her arms to keep from swaying off the building. Her tone was gentle but firm as she blotted away a tear from his cheek.

"I get it. You know how I feel about regrets and– and being helpless. Hurts like the ugliest slap in the face, the...biggest shot in the chest. It's a self-inflicted wound like nothing else." She inhaled a sharp breath before continuing.

"But take it from me – you do more than enough. You did enough to help the most stubborn ass in this arcade start healing and living outside her backstory." The corner of her mouth twitched into a lopsided smile.

"Tammy Jean–"

"–You showed me that there's always gonna be something to look forward to, even if you have to make it with your own hands. Every year you run yourself into the ground setting up these shindigs. You built a town for the gameless sprites. You've been trying to keep everyone's spirits up whenever anything bad's happened these past six years. You even convinced that miserable carouser to start treating Wreck-It with some respect. But you can't fix everything. Nobody's gonna pull that off. Said it yourself – at the end of the day, what goes on outside here is beyond our control."

She sighed in frustration, and he placed his hands over hers.

"Look, I know I'm not the best at being the optimist in the room. But all we can do is suit up and keep taking our best shot at a moving target. And you can do a lot better at that if you're down in there at the party. If it is someone's last year, make it a good one."

From downstairs, a familiar, sprightly voice suddenly cut through a wave of static.

"SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT AND NEVER BROUGHT TO MIND! SHOULD…wait, Ralph, how does it go again?"

"It– huh. Good question, kid. I usually just hum that part. Hey! Does anyone here actually know this song?"

Felix hesitated, then nodded, and that familiar, cheesy look of pure adoration spread across his face. "Thank you, love."

Tamora pulled him into a hug, running her fingers through his hair, and the last traces of abrasion dropped out of her voice.

"And take care of yourself first, Felix. Never thought I’d say this, but take a cue from Wreck-It and the prez. Just enjoy tonight. Still got the singing, the countdown and the fireworks comin’ up. And you know I’m looking forward to what we’re gonna do at midnight." She pulled back to look him in the eyes with that unique tenderness that was reserved only for the little handyman. "Everyone's safe and we're not goin’ anywhere."

Felix beamed as he recognized those soothing words that had passed between them on so many nights. It made him start to tear up again, realizing how much his words of comfort meant to his wife that she'd reciprocate with them at a moment like this.

"Can do," he replied with a gentle peck on her lips, eliciting a light blush from the sergeant. She laughed softly and smiled.

"Good. Let's go teach those two how it's done."

Hand-in-hand, the couple returned to the penthouse to rejoin the merriment. For that night's celebration, as long as they were all together, all was calm and bright. 

–

Tagging my WIR buddies: @ask-icancraft-it @ashleybenlove @sgtcalhouns @allthefixins @coneygoil @kittysfigurines24 @cy-bug

Let me know if you would like your name added to the tags for future fics!

[mercurygray]

Because I'm feeling difficult, Fantastic Beasts and "wassail"

[send me a holiday word and a character/fandom and I’ll write you a fic!]

Theseus had lied.

His brother had assured him at the start of term that in a few weeks, Hogwarts would feel like home, but it was now December, and the magical castle with its endless hallways and trick staircases and suits of armor felt no more home-like to Newt Scamander than a rocky cave. In fact, a cave might have been preferable, for a cave would have supplied rocks to turn over and creatures to find and would not have been filled with people he had to talk to and homework that had to be finished.

But it was now Christmas, and Newt, who had been so looking forward to going home to the predictable confines of his room and his mother’s hippogriff barns was once more disappointed. 

Not only had his brother’s promise of home-like comfort failed to materialize, but just the other day the owl from their mother had come  - a last-minute trip, clients very focused on a particular bloodline, hate to change plans…but the boys would be staying on at Hogwarts this Christmas.

This did not seem to bother Theseus at all, and why should it? He had friends who would be staying. This was his home, or something near to it. But for Newt? What was Christmas without a trip to the hippogriff barn to feed them, and laugh at the new foals, and decorate the tree, and eat cake by the fire while listening to his father read? Someone had already decorated the trees in the Great Hall, and no one would tell him where Professor Kettleburn stabled the Hogwarts teaching collection of beasts for Care of Magical Creatures, which Newt could not take until his third year.

So Theseus was outside building a snowfort and enchanting snowballs to knock his friends’ hats off, and Newt was inside the Hufflepuff common room, reading in lonely and somewhat bitter silence. It was Christmas Eve, and they had been promised caroling later, but it would not be the same as at home.

“Would master like something to drink?”

Newt looked down from his well-thumbed copy of Dewey Dewhurst Finds a Troll (he’d brought the whole series with him, and they were providing a little comfort as the term had gone on) to see a large, steaming mug, swaying precariously next to his seat. Leaning forward, a change of perspective produced a small house-elf underneath the mug, teetering under the weight of it, smiling expectantly as she struggled with her load. He took the mug, much to the relief of the house-elf, who let her arms drop in gratitude and looked up with interest at Newt. “Is it to your taste, sir?”

Newt had never met one of the Hogwarts elves before. Theseus had told him they usually stayed in the kitchens, and prided themselves on not being seen, but this one was obviously young, and still learning her trade. “Master Theseus gave Milpy the recipe,” she shared happily. “He says he is getting worried about his brother, who is sad they is not going home for Christmas. He is sneaking into the kitchens and asking elves to make it for him - so Milpy is doing as he asks, sir! Does Master Newt like it?”

Newt looked down at the mug, and took a deep breath in, inhaling the fragrant steam and closing his eyes. Clove and cinnamon, apple and pear - and a dash of Ogden’s Firewhiskey, just like Ma -

A tear peeked at his eye, and he sniffled, raising the cup to his lips for an experimental sip, the hot drink sliding into his mouth and filling his whole body with warmth. Just like Ma’s. How many cups of this has he drunk over the years, and ladled out to caroling neighbors as they went through another verse of “God Rest Ye Merry, Hippogryffs”? And how many times had he helped his mother make it, saying, as she always did -

“It’s not Christmas without wassail.”

Newt looked up, opening his eyes. In his head, he’d heard his mother’s voice, but someone else had said it, too.

Theseus was peeking out from the other side of the room, a mug of his own in hand. “I asked Ma for the recipe,” he offered, crossing to Newt’s chair. “I know you were looking forward to going home, and I…wanted to make it feel a little like Christmas.”

Newt nodded, trying hard not to cry. He had longed for a return to the familiar, after these first three months at school - but here was the familiar for him, in a mug that smelled exactly like home. “How did you get in?” he asked weakly, trying to cover up the sudden rush of emotion welling up in the wake of the wassail.

“Told the door I was here to cheer you up.”

“Milpy hopes you like it, young sirs!” the house elf said happily, taking Newt’s tears for an expression of joy. “There is plenty more downstairs if you wants! And Merry Christmas!” And, with a pop, she was gone, doubtless back to the kitchens.

Theseus smiled, taking a sip of his own mug and looking decorously away as his younger brother hastily wiped his eyes and tried to compose himself. “Professor Kettleburn said we could go feed the school hippogriffs, after dinner, if we liked,” he offered, tentatively. “I asked him special. And Ma sent me some Floo Powder, so we can read with them tomorrow night - I told everyone the Gryffindor common room fire was taken.”

Newt sniffled again, feeling suddenly humbled at this extravagant show of Theseus’ goodwill. His brother had obviously given this a lot of thought, in between snowball fights.  

“Can we…build a snow creature tomorrow?” he asked, wondering if it would press his luck to ask for such a thing. “And play gobstones?” That was his brother’s favorite game, which Newt usually hated to play, but there must be some concession made, in recognition of all of Theseus’ hard work. Besides, it would be nice to spend some time with him. That was part of Christmas, too  - putting up with your brother.

His brother grinned. “Of course.”

Newt looked around the Hufflepuff common room, finding, suddenly, that the fire was a little brighter, the chair a little more comfortable, and the whole room felt much more…like home.

–

One of the things I liked about CoG was the establishment of the idea that Theseus is fundamentally a brother who looks out for his sibling when he can - which is where this story came from! I think Hogwarts would have been hard for Newt, especially if he’s on the spectrum a little bit, as many people read him to be.

The custom of Wassailing is a very old Anglo-Saxon practice, which takes its name from the toast Wes tu hal, Be thou well. Traditionally, it is made with ale or cider, heated with spices and served from a great big bowl to passerby. In some regions of England, the bowl is taken out to the orchard so the trees that have supplied the cider can be saluted and celebrated.

[scaplivingtogether]

~A Evillious Christmas Carol~ Act 1

By: TomboyJessie13

Act 1

Act 1

A long time ago, there was a old Victorian city covered in a blanket of snow, a lot of people residing there are as happy as they can be because it's Christmas Eve, they were singing carols, decorating, buying presents, and collecting charity to give to the poor...except for one person, a old man with cold blue eyes and short blueish-gray hair with bangs, he was carrying a large bag on his bag that make a cling sound whenever he makes a step, he also carries a cane around. The man crosses the street when he was stopped by a impoverish man.

"Care to give some to the poor, Governor?" He asked. "A hay penny perhaps?" The old man just looked at the other man, sneering at him before walking away.

"Bah! The poor are so bothersome." He said under his breath, soon enough he reached his the location; his place of business: "Marlon and Marly's". Well technically it's just "Marlon's", as his business partner, Cheru Marly, past away 7 years ago. The old man entered the building only to find a younger spectacled man with brunette hair, round shaped glasses, and old tattered clothing in the process of putting coal in the oven. "Cratchit!" He called out, surprising the spectacled man.

"AH! Oh! Whew, g-good morning Mr. Marlon." The young man said, recovering from the shock.

"What are you planning on doing with that coal?" He asked him sternly.

"Oh um, I was trying to thaw out the ink." He answered as he shook a bottle of ink. "It's hard to write if its frozen...ACK!" The older man slapped the coal out of his hand while scolding:

"You used that coal last week! Now get back to work, Cratchit!"

Cratchit sat back down in his chair to write things, his job was to be Marlon's clerk. "Speaking of work, tomorrow is Christmas, sir." He said sheepishly.

"So what?" Marlon said as he sat down by his desk.

"Well, I was wondering if I can take a day off tomorrow, y'know, to spend time with my family."

"Bah! Humbug." He scoffed, emptying bags of money on his desk.

"But sir, I have a sick little girl at home who's expecting me, it's only just one day." He begged. Marlon only brushed his chin with his forefinger, contemplating on the words his employee said.

"Mmmmmmm, very well, I will grant you a day off...but, under the condition that I dock half of your pay...which was 15 shillings, correct?"

"15 shillings and a hay penny, sir." Cratchit corrected him.

"Ah yes, thank you, I believe that was three years ago. But anyways, if you can excuse me I'm gonna go over my books."

"Yes sir." He said, rather gleefully due to the day off he's given, even though his pay would be halved, it would be worth it. Meanwhile, Marlon was counting the money he earned in the back, smiling over his unbridled avarice, this was surly his favorite thing in the world. But his thoughts were interrupted by the door opening, he looked up thinking it was a customer, but frowned upon realizing who he was.

"Merry Christmas, everyone!" The young man at the door said cheerfully, holding a reef, he has shirt green hair with matching eyes.

"And a Merry Christmas to you too, Master Ayn." Cratchit said. Marlon was the only one not thrilled, not only he hates Christmas, he hasn't been close to Ayn despite being his Nephew, mostly due to not being close to his mother Nem, Marlon's younger sister whom died years earlier.

"Bah! Humbag." Marlon scoffed again as he went back to work.

"Hey, Uncle Marlon!" Ayn said, walking to the old man.

"What?" He groan.

"I thought it be nice if you can come to tomorrow's Christmas feast, we have a bunch of good stuff made such as turkey and pies." Marlon sat there there for a moment upon hearing that, but then looked up at his Nephew smiling, he then proceeded to say:

"Here's something you may already heard, but just in case you forget I'll say it again: NO!" He yelled at him. Ayn cringed from the yelling. "You know damn well that I don't partake in feasts, I've been telling you this year after year. Christmas-this, Christmas-that, I say bah! Humbug."

"But Uncle Marlon, a lot of your relatives wanted to get to know you, my mother could rest in peace knowing you'd come."

"Out!" He yelled as he pointed at the door, Ayn got freaked out and ran out, dropping his reef.

"Do you have to be that rough, sir? He is your Nephew, right?" Keel pointed out.

"True, but that doesn't mean I have to do what anyone says, especially when it comes to Christmas." He said, just then he heard the door open. "I thought I told you to-". He was about to finish his sentience when he realizes that it wasn't his Nephew Ayn, it was just a pair of men wearing former suits, one with Green hair and matching eyes and glasses, and the other with platinum hair and red eyes. "Ooooh customers!" He called out gleefully before giggling, "Welcome gentlemen, welcome, how can I help you two?"

"Ah yes." The Green headed one starts. "We're hear to collect for charity and thought you'd participate."

"Wait what?" Marlon asked.

"We're collecting for the poor." The platinum headed one answered, holding a bucket. Marlon look at the bucket in his hand, making a awkward expression as he knew that collecting for the poor means his money's walking out the door. Quickly he made an excuse.

"I see, but you do realize that if you give money to the poor, then they wouldn't be poor anymore." Marlon said, feigning concern in his voice.

"Uhh well..." The platinum headed man was conflicted now.

"And if they're not poor anymore, you don't have to raise money for them anymore." He said as he walked over to the donators.

"I suppose but that's-" The green headed man said, but was cut off.

"And if you don't raise money for them anymore, then you'd be out of the job." He opens the door for them. "Oh please gentlemen, don't ask me to put you out of a job, not on Christmas Eve." He was acting all dramatic.

"Oh no, we wouldn't do that, Mr. Marlon." The Green headed man exclaimed.

"Well it's settled then." Marlon gave them his Nephew's reef and said: "You can give this reef to the poor and beat it!" He slammed the door in their faces. "Aye, people just want to give all your money away after working all your life to get it." He complained while walking back to his desk to continue his work. Hours went by, it was already nightfall and Cratchit is still working to the bone in his work as clerk, he was about to doze off but was awoken by the sound of the grandfather clock. It was 7 at night, his shift is done, happily, he finishes what he was writing and closes the book. Marlon took notice of this and looked at the clock, he then looked at his pocket watch to compare. "Mmmmmmmm...2 minutes fast." Cratchit stopped in his tracks in surprise and went back to work. "Bah! Never mind about those 2 minutes, you can go now." He said, motioning his hand to him.

"Thank, Mr. Marlon!" Cratchit said happily. "You're very generous."

"Enough with the mushy stuff, just remember to return on the day after Christmas first thing in the morning." Marlon warned. "And take my bundle of shirts by the doorway before you go."

"Understood sir," He said as he put on his coat and hat. "And a Bah Hum-I mean Merry Christmas." He stuttered as he grabbed the said bundle and and left. Marlon only rolled his eyes before continuing with his work. 2 hours later, he is done for the night, so he decides to bundle up, pack up, and lock up for the night, he walks back to his home all alone. It was dark and cold, the streets were desolate, meaning that everyone is indoors possibly asleep. Soon he reached his home, it was a large house that any rich person can own. He was about to open the door until...

...Clink...Clink...Clink...

Marlon hears something clinking from a distance, it almost sounded like chains. He turned around, but there was nothing that was making a noise. "Huh, I must be tired...*Yawn*." He yawned as he entered his home, just as he did though...

...Ebenezer...Ebenezer...Ebenezer...

He heard more noises, only this time it was calling his name, and it was coming from inside the house. Thinking that there was a break-in, Marlon took his cane and gripped it like a weapon, there was nothing and no one. "This fatigue is really getting to me." He said again while lowering his cane, he then proceeding to settle down. He removed his coat and hat and placed his cane down, which was under a painting of someone familiar, a portrait of his late-partner Cheru Marley, he is seen in his trademark purple suit that matches his eyes and his long hair tied into a ponytail, he also seems to be smirking in the painting. "Ah Cheru, having to pass away on Christmas Eve 7 years ago, you were quite the playboy back then, were you?" He was conversing with the painting with no reply, no surprise there. He then went to a hallway mirror opposite of the painting to check the bags under his eyes, he's not as young as he used to be, he will eventually pass away like his young partner.

...Ebenezer Marlon...

He heard that voice again, was he really going crazy? It almost seems to be the case because in the mirror, he could've sworn that the picture of Cheru was blinking, he also seems to be frowning now. Marlon rubs his eyes in disbelief, was his portrait alive? Just then he sees Cheru crawling out of the portrait, this time covered in heavy chains making the same clinking sound from earlier. In horror, Marlon turned to see if its actually happening...and it is, something that looks like Cheru is practically crawling out of the painting.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Marlon screamed in horror and ran upstairs, he stumbles a couple of times before finally running to his room, he locked his bedroom door, he leaned against the door painting. He ran to his chair and hid behind it.

...Ebenezer...

"GO AWAY!" Marlon yelled at the ghost, he was sitting in a fatal possession. Much to his horror however, the ghost started to float from the floor in front of Marlon. "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!" Marlon was panicking, thinking he's going to be possessed or murdered. Instead however, he felt a huge slap across the face which got him to stop.

"A man your age shouldn't be acting like this..." The ghost said to him sternly, Marlon was still shaking. "...I say...have you forgotten me already, Ebenezer?" Marlon, still shaking, put on his reading glasses to see the ghost. Once he did, he stopped shaking upon realizing who the ghost is.

"...Cheru Marley...Is it really you?" He was baffled to his former partner there, covered in heavy chains that are dragging old boxes.

"Indeed I am, you remember the days that I was a Playboy who robbed from the widows and swindled the poor?" Cheru asked his older companion.

"Ah yes, and all in just one day too." Marlon elatedly responded. "You have class, my friend." Cheru smiled, but more sadly.

"Yes I did...but that was a long time ago, and during my time in the Afterlife, I learned that all that things I did was wrong." He explained. "Every little thing I did was criminal, an embodiment of the Deadly Sin of Greed...and as punishment..." He grabbed his chains. "I am forced to carry these chains for all eternity, never to be forgiven!" He started to sound pained, Marlon was starting to worry. "I'm doomed! Doomed! Doomed I tell ya!...And the same will happen to YOU, Ebenezer Marlon!" He pointed at him.

"Wh-what!?" Marlon stuttered. "Th-that can't be."

"You dare deny the truth?" Cheru sneered at him, offended by his friend's ignorance, he grabbed him by the collar and walked to the window. "If you continue on the path of Avarice like I have, you'll end up suffering like me..." He opens the window. "And them!" Marlon looks down and sees more ghost walking around in suffering, covered in heavy chains and letting out cries of anguish. The old miser became horrified by the site before that he pushed away from his partner and fell to the ground.

"Oh god! I don't want to be like them! I don't want to suffer like them!" Marlon cried out in fear.

"Exactly."

"Please Cheru! You gotta get me out of this! I'll do anything to avoid this!" He was on his knees, begging.

"There is one way..." The ghost explained. "...Tonight, you will be visited by three spirits, each representing the Past, Present, and Future of Christmas." Cheru began to float down through the floor slowly. "You must listen to them and do as they say, otherwise you'll suffer the same fate as I have, but with heavier chains." He completely submerged himself through the floorboards. "Farewell old friend, and good luck." Marlon just sat there, scared out of his mind from what he experienced. After what felt like hours, he finally stood up to get ready for bed.

End of Act 1

[justhereforthesherlock]

“Mr. Went, if you could visit anyone in the world, any time, any place, who would you go see? Oh, not for a long time. Long visits are never permitted. But just for a moment, just for an embrace, a long look, no longer?”

His words were not in English, and I did not speak any modern Romance tongues, but he must have been a priest or a scholar, because he and I could make ourselves understood to each other in Latin and in Greek, two living men with two dead languages in common.

I was not sure where I was. The streets in these ancient cities are narrow and crooked, and they don’t put the names on street signs.

The stranger in the top hat and long coat did not linger to hear an answer. Now he paused to listen to some children singing carols — I remember they sang O Come Emmanuel, but the words were not in English — while waiting for me to climb the alley. I had stopped.

It was not that I was tired, it was just that I was used to the broad and flat streets of the Midwest, so, to me, the sight of a cobblestone street turning into broad stairs for part of its climb was a novelty. It was, no doubt, a street older than my whole nation.

I wanted to make a comment to my wife, but she, of course, was not there. In my pocket was a small Christmas gift for her, wrapped in gold paper. I had put it in the pocket of the dark and formal coat I donned for the funeral. I had intended to leave it at the grave, but the idea of bright, cheery, frivolous colors of wrapping paper beneath the granite headstone, on the darkness of the newly-turned earth, seemed unbearably hateful to me.

And I still wanted to make a comment to her, share my thoughts, share my life. And I could not. So I had paused, wrestling with the aching emptiness inside me.

I turned my eyes outward. Between the narrow and dark houses looming to either side, the gap of the alley fell like a stone waterfall (as if the stair were the broken rapids) and in that gap I could see the famous city spread below me, adorned for Christmas. I could see the festive lights in the distance.

The stranger came up next to me, offering me a handful of the roast chestnuts he had just bought from a street vendor. The children singing he had shooed away by passing out the brightly colored banknotes which looked like Monopoly money to me.

I gestured to the view below. We were halfway up one of the seven hills. “There are more Christmas trees than there were years ago.”

He said, “You have been to the Eternal City before?”

“My wife is from here. Was. She—excuse me.”

He passed me a handkerchief, and turned as if to look at the city. “The Christmas tree is a Germanic custom. Such things travel south to the more civilized nations somewhat slowly. It is in the nativity scene where the Italian genius is manifested! You should see the one was displayed at the Church of Saints Cosma and Damiano. It was commissioned by Charles III of Naples. Six master woodcarvers labored on the scene for forty years, adding new figures each year! And in the Santa Maria Maggiore, where the first Christmas Mass was said, is a presepe, or permanent display of the crib. The reliquary below the altar is said to contain pieces of the original manger. History is fascinating, is it not? Are you ready to go?”

I nodded. The stranger walked a short way up the alley, took out with an enormous key and bent over the lock of intricately wrought black iron gates. The iron gates were decorated with images of roses and winged skulls. With a groaning clang they opened. Beyond was a courtyard shaped like an “L”, closed in on each side by windowless brick walls, and in the midst of the court was a dry well, filled with leaves and dust, rusting midmost under a tiny roof.

Around the corner of the courtyard, up the shorter arm of the “L”, were more stairs guarded by worn winged lions, gaping mouths filled with grit and dust, and the grime of their faces made them seem to weep.

To my surprise, the front door to the old house was not locked. He opened the door and stood in the doorway, fumbling with something on a small table set immediately by the door. There was the click of an electric striker, a flicker of flame, and the stranger lit a candle, which he carefully placed in a black iron candlestick. Inside he went, lighting his way with the candle, beckoning me to follow.

“The power is out?” I said. I could hear the singing of the children in the street below clearly enough, but the door was so heavy and so well fitted to the frame that all noise was cut off when I shut it.

“There is power here,” said the stranger, smiling crookedly. “More than enough to shatter the cosmos. But the site has never been electrified. It would identify the era too closely, and disturb the anachronic echo effect. Come. The machine is in the attic.”

I followed him. A narrow wooden stairway led upward and upward. The walls to either side were painted with figures of satyrs chasing nymphs through patterns of grape leaves, but in the dim light, the figures seemed distorted, and the lolling tongues and goat-horned heads of the satyrs gave them sadistic, blank-eyed expressions.

The attic was brighter than the house, because large and narrow skylights admitted the colored hues of the festively-lit city, and the slanting rays of the moon.   In the middle of the blank, wooden floor was a shape covered with a tarp. The stranger handed me the candle, stepped over, and drew aside the tarp with a theatrical flourish, like a stage magician revealing his pretty assistant, alive and unchained. A cloud of dust flew up at the breeze, and it blew out the candle, so the dramatic effect was ruined.

I had no clear view of the machine. In the moonlight, and the flicker of changing Christmas lights from some nearby building taller than this house, I could see there was a small saddle or seat facing two levers connected to a rotating cylinder. The cylinder was connected by a mess of wires to a crystal bar that glinted strangely in the moonlight. This crystal formed the axis of the machine. My eyes could not focus properly on it. No matter how I moved my head, the inside reflections of the crystal bar seemed to be farther away than the body of the machine around it, as if it were not a crystal bar, but a crystal slot or well opening into unexpected depth. Behind the saddle was a large and upright copper disk, connected to a gearbox.

The whole arrangement looked something like a crystal-poled metal parasol lying on its side taking a ride on a sled, and the saddle straddled the pole, and the cylinder and levers formed an offcenter handle.

There were scrollwork and flourishes on the brass, a windrose on the copper disk, and little cherubic faces on the cylinder, which betrayed that this was made in the days when the machines were works of art, and machinists were magicians.

The stranger said, “Unfortunately, the dials are decimal. It is an oddity of the inventor. This dial indicates how many tens of days you have passed through; this one hundreds of days; thousands; tens of thousands. You will have to be clever in your calculations to know the month and the year of your arrival.”

“Or I could my just use my phone,” I said, giving him an odd look. I was sure someone, somewhere on the Internet had set up an application to calculate such things.

The stranger scowled and shrugged. “I am not familiar with such a … gizmo.” (There was no Latin word for “gizmo” of course, he just said the English word. If that is an English word.)

I said. “The book by H.G. Wells never gives the Time Traveler a name. You say he is real. Who is the inventor? Why is he not ruling the world?”

He threw out his chest and spoke in solemn tones. “The Time Traveler is Nikola Tesla. Anyone reading the book by Wells in that day and age would have recognized the man at once—part showman, part madman, all genius.

“The machine itself was built in Menlo Park some time during the 1870′s, with the help, and, to be blunt, despite the interference, of Thomas Alva Edison, who saw no practical use for it.

“In 1895, a man named George Scherff, Tesla’s legal and fiscal adviser, gave an account of Tesla’s voyage into the future into the hands of Mr. Wells to put it into publishable form, since the account would not have been believed as fact.

“The machine was thought lost in the great fire that destroyed Mr. Edison’s great factory in 1914. Mr. Tesla is not ruling the world because a Nazi agent killed him in 1943.”

I gave the stranger a frown. “How could a man as bright as Edison see no practical use for time travel? Anyone would see the advantage of being able to read tomorrow’s stock market results or racing form.”

“The machine did not perform well until it was taken to Scotland. America is a young nation.”

“What does that matter?”

The stranger said, “The machine works by a resonance effect. Think of time as a stream, but certain events are rocks in that stream, rocks that make eddies, ripples, echoes. This is why there is no need for you to physically move the machine to the cottage where your wedding night took place. Merely touching your wedding ring to the forward cylinder will attune the crystal. Your wedding ring is an object that carries time with it. Anything used as a memento is.”

I instinctively clasped my hand over my ring, as if to protect it. “It is just a bit of gold. There must be something else involved. Something more.”

He nodded. “Time will never be understood by any era which divides matter from psyche, and disbelieves in everything but matter. Is eternity not a psychic reality? Mind and body are one, even as time and space are one. Man alone of all the beasts fears the future and regrets the past. Tesla understood this. The machine cannot be operated by any man who is too perfectly satisfied with his own time. The time traveler must yearn for … ”

I had been standing with my back him, inspecting, as well as I could, the half-seen shapes and shadows of the machine. Now I turned, and the motion startled him, for he jumped back, putting his hand in his coat pocket as if there were a gun there.

I said, “So that is why you were hovering like a vulture over the graveyard…?”

He said, “Think of it as a privilege, Mr. Went. Not everyone can operate the machine. No everyone is allowed to try.”

“Allowed?”

He licked his lips. “There is a certain danger to the operation, of which, ah, perhaps it slipped my mind, and I failed to warn you.”

I uttered a sad, little laugh. “I just buried the only reason I had to live. What should I fear?”

“Well, in that case, there is no need to dwell on…”

“I am not afraid to hurt you if you don’t tell me what is going on.”

“Ah! Understandable.”

“Talk.”

“The time machine’s principles are not difficult to understand, and a working model is not difficult to build. It was, or will be, discovered again in 1968 by Dr. Ann McGregor and then again by Dr. Sam Beckett in 1999; then, after the Great Collapse, the Revisionists of the Second Era, and, when they have destroyed themselves, those horrible living machines of the Third Era, who attempted to undo the paradoxes and snarls their predecessors left behind them. The Nexxial Agents, who travel as amnesiacs, form the Fourth Era of Time Travel, and so on, age after age and civilization after civilization, up until the Danellians of the Final Era.”

“I meant, talk while making sense.”

“What do you not understand? If you touch the time machine, if you make any effort to use it, all the events which you will set in motion become, for you, actualized: a real possibility. The events springing from those possibilities become real. And this includes time travelers downstream of you, unhappy with your actions, who seek to revise them.”

“Revise how?”

“The simplest way, the least complex energy state, as it were, to prevent time paradoxes, is to kill the time traveler just before he starts.”

I said, “And so you’ve never touched the thing? You were afraid someone from the future would pop into existence next to you, and shoot you with a ray gun? Why not go back and prevent your parents from ever meeting? The fact that you are standing here now…”

He shook his head. “Men still have free will. Not until the moment I use the time machine have I stepped into the fourth dimension. They would have to stop me right at that moment. There are time-energy considerations involved.” He looked at the brass and copper machine and sighed. “Oh, I have polished it, replaced old wires, kept the jars charged. I have sat in the saddle and toyed with the levers, yes, and even powered up the solenoid and heard it hum. When I wanted to remember something I’d forgotten, for example. But—actually to attune the cylinder and engage the drive? No. I’ve never done that.”

I said, “But you don’t know me. What if I climb on that thing and just fly away? Become master of the world myself? Why take the risk?”

“I must see if it works.”

“What’s that mean? Must?”

He spread his hands. “Can I explain the agony of living with this thing in the attic so many years, unable to know whether the machine actually works or not? A machine I am afraid to touch? Perhaps everything I read was a lie. Perhaps it is merely a stage magician’s trick. I cannot live just on faith. I have to see it. Have to see it lift off.”

“So if I jump on this thing, this magic time travel machine, every time traveler from hereafter to eternity might come gunning for me? Fine. You picked me because you know how badly I need to see her again. See her alive, I mean. I’ll play along. But there is one condition.”

“What is that, Mr. Went?”

“Tell me your name.”

“It would mean nothing to you.”

“Tell me anyway. If the Time Cops arrest me, I won’t talk.”

“They will not arrest. They kill. It is Professor Pajo Mandic. I am descended from Tesla’s sister Milka.”

I turned again and threw my leg over the saddle. “You said the machine moves through space as well as time? Guided by what, again, exactly?”

Professor Mandic stepped behind the machine and turned a crank, so that the large copper disk behind the saddle started slowly rotating. He threw an old-fashioned double-throw switch and the crystal bar between my legs began to glow.

I wondered if my legs were wrapped around something radioactive, even though it was too late to worry about such things now. I also wondered when I had started to believe any of this might be real. But the fact that I was nervous that the antique contraption might blow up made the hope that it could carry me into yesterday seem possible.

Professor Mandic said, “Touch your ring to the axis of the cylinder, and engage the first lever. It controls how many days per second—subjective seconds—you will be in motion. The second lever controls how many degrees into the fourth dimension you will be rotated. The greater the angle, the less contact you have with the three dimensional world, and the less time, subjectively, your voyage will take. If you stay at less than forty-five degrees, you will see the sun like a ribbon of fire, and winter snow appear and disappear in eyeblinks and a vast panorama. If you find yourself suffering from motion sickness, use that leather sack there. The first time traveler discovered an odd yaw and pitch and sway which made him nauseous. Wait? What are you doing?”

Because it was not my wedding ring I touched to the cylinder then. It was my crucifix.

If I could visit anyone in the world, any time, any place, who would I go see? I had only this one opportunity. Yes, I wanted to see my wife again. I would have given anything to see her again. It would be like an amputee regaining his lost right arm once again.

But there was someone I wanted to see more. I wanted an explanation.

I landed, or materialized, or whatever the word is, at the foot of a cross on which a man hung dying.

The sun was beating down and the flies were crawling on this man, and he cried out when he saw me, such a cry of hopeless pain as I had never heard. Immediately I leaped from the machine, and went to him, so see if there was any way I could get him down without hurting him further. He croaked at me, a word I did not understand.

The nails were not driven through the palms of his hands, as it is depicted in religious art, but right through the middle of his forearm, between the radius and the ulna, which looked even more painful. Other spikes had been driven into and through his lower legs, between the tibia and fibula.

He was also naked, which is also not the way religious art depicts it. I could see the insects crawling through his pubic hair. He did not have a free hand to scratch them or pluck them away.

Only then I noticed he was not alone. There were many more than two hanging to either side of him. The man to his immediate left had died, and hung there, withered like a mummy in the sun.

Perhaps I was still queasy from the gyrating motions of the time machine, or the sudden change from cool night to scalding day, but the sight of so many naked men, all dying, all with bloodstains drooling down their arms and legs, all gasping for breath, and the stench of wounds crawling with flies, made me lightheaded. And some of the men had voided their bowels after being hung up, so smears of fecal matter hung down the base of the crosses or their legs.

Worst of all was the sound, the gasping, grating, harsh, horrible sound. It was all those men trying to breathe.

Not many people talk about how crucifixion works. It is one of the most painful, humiliating and lingering deaths ever invented by man. The victim is hung by his arms to put pressure on his ribcage so he cannot breathe. The exposure will eventually kill anyone strong enough, but, before that, the pressure of all the body’s weight hanging from the dislocated shoulders, after several hours, or days, weakens the same muscles in the chest used for drawing breath until you cannot breathe.

In order to take a breath, the agonized victim has to straighten his legs, which are also nailed by spikes to the cross, and this relieves the pressure for a moment, so he can draw in a ragged, gasping lungful of air. His lungs would fill with fluid. Then, eventually, his legs lose strength, and ever so slowly, ever so painfully, he chokes. The lucky ones die of shock and exposure.

I stepped around to the back of the cross, not because I had any thought in mind, but only because I saw no way to get him down from the front. The splinters were driven into his buttocks and back, which was red, raw, and bleeding. The spikes did protrude through the wood, but I did not have any carpenter’s tools.  I pushed at the red point of one spike with my fingers, not because it could do any good, but only because I could not stand by and do nothing.

I looked left and right. There were about twenty-four or thirty men nailed there, all told. Some were children no older than fourteen. Some were graybeards, and they were dead and crows were eating their eyes with stabbing motions of their beaks that looked perversely like kissing. Perhaps some of the others, if they had been flown by helicopter to modern emergency rooms immediately, could have been saved, perhaps after amputation, and being given artificial limbs.

“Hoy! Get away from there!” This was in Greek, which I did understand.

I looked to the left. I saw a group of dull-faced children, bellies bloated with malnutrition, throwing stones at one of the crucified men, whose eyes had been torn out by birds, hitting him in the crotch and belly, grinning little dull-eyed gap-mouthed grins when he moaned and thrashed. They scattered at the voice.

The voice came from a little ways beyond them. A man in the iron cap and leathern skirt of the Romans was standing near a fire of coals, warming some snack on a stick, with an open flask nearby. I remember how impressed I was that, in a place like this, smelling like this, he could eat his picnic luncheon at leisure.  A friend of mine who used to work in the morgue could just eat his ham sandwich next to a ripe and newly sawed-open corpse like that. People get used to things; including things they shouldn’t.

There was a second soldier with him, but that man was lying down, having propped his shield up with his spear to form an impromptu parasol, and had his head in the shade.

The soldier slowly picked up his javelin (a four-foot length of wood and iron with a wicked tip) and slung across his shoulder his eight-sided shield set with a lightning-bolt motif. “All traitors’ bodies are property of Rome.”

At this, the other men hanging to the left and right now stirred and began crying out, some in tongues I did not understand, others in Greek and Latin.

They were crying for water.

I remembered reading somewhere that starving men lose their sensation of hunger after a while, but men dying of thirst merely get more thirsty and more as they die.

The mummified man I had thought was dead now stirred to life and called out to the soldier in Latin, “Break my legs, break my legs! Die! Let me die! The land of shadows!”

They were calling for the soldier, their tormentor, for water, or for a merciful death, not to me.

The soldier was now close enough to prod me with the butt of his spear, which was a lump of lead the size of a child’s fist. “Is your head in the air? No gathering the blood, necromancer! We don’t allow black magic. You barbarians are civilized now!”

Even he did not assume I was looking for a way to help the dying man.

I said to the soldier, “I am a stranger here, and have lost my way…”

That is about as far as I got when he stepped close to me, too close, so I could smell the fish and alcohol on his breath, and he backhanded me across the face hard enough to knock me down.

My Latin classes had not studied First Century swearwords, so there was a lot in what he said next I did not follow. But I got the gist. “Is this the way you talk to your betters? I march under the arms of Rome, cur. My children will be citizens. Don’t lift your eyes to me.”

I started crawling backward, inching toward the time machine, but he stepped forward and placed the iron sole of his marching sandal on my hand, driving it into the warm, bloodstained stones of the execution ground, pinning me in place.

“What? Don’t you respect the law?” he said. “I did not give you leave to go!”

“I lost my way, sir,” I said.

Only now did he seem to take in my clothing. “I’ll say. What are you? A Saxon? A Scythian?” He stared at the machine. “Your cart seems to have lost its wheels.”

I did not raise my eyes, not wanted to be beaten again, but reviling myself for being a coward.

“Robbers,” I said, “They took my horse, too.” It is hard to know a man’s mood if you are afraid to look him in the face. That makes it risky to lie, because you cannot gauge his reactions.

“Horse?”

“Donkey,” I corrected. Horses were creatures of war, not used for other purposes. This was before the invention of the horse collar. The plough-horse was a thing of the future. Slaves ploughed the fields.

“Why didn’t they take your—what is this?” He was no longer stepping on my hand, but had strolled over to the machine. “This big copper disk?”

“It is for astrology. To read the stars.”

“Ah? You tell fortunes?” He raised his voice and called out to the other soldier. “Hoy! Cratus! Come find out if your wife is whoring around on you! There is a soothsayer!” The other soldier grunted a word I did not know, probably some swearword.

“If I may be permitted, sir,” I said, “I can show you the secret. May I rise?”

He was curious, and waved me over to the machine, and he did not stop me as I slowly seated myself on the saddle. I had never opened the double throw switch, so I need only tap the handle once, clicking the second wheel over, and this put ten days between us.

This time, it was raining, and there were still crosses along the roadside, but no one was occupying them. My landing startled a pack of dogs snuffling at the foot of one, where perhaps some meat had pealed away from a previous use, and they ran off yelping.

The time machine did not have an umbrella or hood, and I wondered how well the works would stand up to being rained on. I squinted at the dials, and added up days by the tens and hundreds, and arrived at a figure, was sure I had made a mistake, and then checked it again.

I had not arrived in 33 AD, the date I expected the memento of the crucifix to land me. I am not sure if I had counted correctly, or added leapyear days correctly, or remembered the date when the Julian calendar switched to the Gregorian. I had landed in 3 or 4 BC—the nativity.

I could see, despite the rain, that the country around here was pockmarked with small caves. I picked the nearest one, and began hauling the machine toward it on its skids, seeking a place to hide it. After about an hour of sloshing through the rain, and, later sweating in the sun (for the shower was brief) I had a bright idea, walked to the cave, looked around, picked up a small chip of rock, walked back to the machine, sat on it, held the rock to the cylinder axis, and tapped the lever lightly.

The world blinked, and I was in the cave. I returned the wheels to their original setting, worked the lever again, and poked my head carefully out of the cave, and heard myself talking to the soldier a hundred yards or so away. I pulled some dry bushes in front of the cave mouth, and walked parallel to the road for some time, afraid being seen by any soldiers, and horrified by the nightmarish line of torture victims dying in the sun.

Eventually, I passed the last occupied cross. Not many minutes’ walk after that, I came across a line of people walking the road, some driving laden donkeys. They were not dressed as colorfully as one might expect from a Hollywood costume drama, and no one there even came up to my shoulder height. I am not sure how odd my clothing looked, in dark trousers and a white shirt (I had removed my coat and tie, leaving them in with the cave with the machine), but no one gave me any close looks as I simply started walking alongside.

I tried once or twice to start a conversation with my fellow wayfarers, first in Latin, then in Greek. No women would talk to me at all, but pulled their shawls in front of their faces and turned away. The men flinched, and mumbled something apologetic in tone, and cast their eyes down, and would not answer more than that.

Something in the footweary way they shuffled, the way they kept their eyes down, reminded me of photos I seen in various war torn times and places.  These people looked like refugees.

At one point, we all walked past something that looked something an energetic troop of Boy Scouts had made: tall poles lashed together with line, with a small platform topmost. I almost did not recognize it as a watchtower, until I saw the eagle on a pole above it: the all-conquering eagle of Rome.

At the foot of the watchtower, two soldiers were beating a man and taking his donkey, which was a young, healthy animal. They threw his bundle off its back into the dirt, and drove him back with blows from the butts of their lances. They led the young donkey away, laughing at their good fortune, to a paddock that had that same Boy Scout precision lashed-together-expertly look as the watchtower.

I should mention the clothing and gear of the Romans was handmade (of course) like that of the natives, but it looked as if it were handmade by better hands. It made them look like a superior race of beings, and that superiority showed in their voices and postures and the light in their eyes. It was the immense confidence, no, the pride that comes from knowing you can trample another man’s face, and tell him to kiss the sole of your boot. And he would.

Not refugees. I did not recognize what was I was seeing because, well, frankly, no one has ever conquered Kansas City, or hung up rebels on trees by the roadside to die slowly in the sun with spikes through their forearms and thighs.

They were a conquered people.

All the hope had been beaten out of them. The conquerors simply and methodically killed anyone who caused them trouble, anyone who showed too much leadership, too much initiative.  They killed the hopeful ones.

A trio of small raggedy children now darted out of the crowd of the road, and made as if to snatch the bundles and fallen belongings of the beaten man. His head was bloody, and maybe he was dazed, and he did nothing to stop them. I ran forward, shouting, slapped the biggest child, the pack leader,  across the back of his head hard enough to make him drop his loot—it was a crudely woven cloak or bedroll, nothing more—and the other urchins screamed like birds and fled. I put the bedroll back with the pile. The pile was more than one man could carry, which was why he had been using a donkey.

He stood there looking at me with big eyes. I saw the look in his face, the empty, wary look. He was expecting me to pick up some choice possession and make off with it. He thought I was a lion beating off jackals, not someone trying to save the deer.

Instead I passed him my handkerchief.  I motioned to his head. I pantomimed daubing the wound.

He said something, in a dull, dazed tone.

I said, “Do you speak Greek?” I actually used the word koine which I remember was the word for common Attic.

In the same tongue, he whispered, “Beware. They watch.”

It was true. The Roman soldiers were looking at me with flat, cold-eyed stares. They probably did not like my height, and my straw-colored hair. It is not my fault I was raised in Kansas. We have to be tall enough to see over the cornrows.

“Let’s get back with the others,” I said. “I’ll help carry the load.”

He looked a little stunned. Maybe he was surprised, or maybe he was actually stunned from the blow to his head. He tied the bundles together neatly and quickly with a rope, and I took the larger of the two and slung it across my shoulder.

We stepped back on the road, and the people near us quickened the pace, or slowed, to give us a wide berth.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Why didn’t anyone else give you a hand?”

He looked confused. “Hand?”

Idioms don’t translate that well. “Help. Aid.”

He grunted philosophically. “They are Sons of Israel, whose false temple is Jerusalem. The true temple was at Gerizim. It was destroyed by Yohanan Girhan called Hyrcanus a hundred winters ago, and now the Holy One wanders the Earth without a home.”

Now it was my turn to look confused. This did not refer to anything I knew from history books or Bible stories. “What, ah, is your kindred?” I used the word genus, which is vaguer, and could mean anything from race to nation to species.

“Ah! I am the son of Sahir, of the sons of Pincus, of the line of Issachar. And how should this servant address his master?”

I was not used to Middle Eastern exaggerations of politeness, so it took me a moment to realize he was asking my name.

“Jonathon, son of Jacob,” I said. It seemed odd to me that, though I was born in a hemisphere not discovered yet, three millennia away, my name and the name of my father sounded normal here. “At your service, sir.” I finished, and realized that his form of courtesy was not so alien after all.

We shook hands. Or rather, when I extended my hand, he wrapped his fingers around my wrist, which was almost the same.

“Why do you walk the road?” He asked.

“I am lost.”

“You must be very lost,” he said wryly.

“I am seeking Bethlehem of Judea,” I said.

“You mean ‘Bethlehem’—” my ear could detect no difference of pronunciation. “It is but a short walk hence. This is the road. Where are you from?” He was looking at my blond hair.

“I am from the farthest north.”

“I have heard of your land! No wonder your hands are softer than a woman’s. It is so peaceful there, so unwarlike, that men kill themselves out of boredom, merely to idle away the time! Yes? I thought Farthestnorth just a story.” He had heard me as if I had said Farthest North as one word, which, in Greek, was Hyperborea.

I grunted, thinking of deaths from drunk drivers and drug overdoses and heart disease caused by obesity. Indirectly, these were all forms of suicide by self-indulgence, which was another word for boredom. “Strange as it sounds, there could be some truth to that story.”

“I am northern, but not so far as Hyperborea. That is why the sons of Israel were pleased to see the Romans fall on me. They walk apart from us, so that any watching Romans know we are easy prey.”

“That is cowardly,” I said. But anger was mingled with pity when I said it. I was from a nation that had never been conquered, dropped down in the middle of a land that had been conquered by practically everyone.

Ben Sahir assumed a wry, philosophical expression. “If it lets them move along the roads without being robbed, who can say a dark word of them? We treat these Jewish swine the same when they are in Shomron.”

Now I understood. “You are a Samaritan! Are you good?”

“Ah. None is good save God alone. When the Romans savage the sons of Israel who walk our roads, we stand aside and look on. Better them than us. And what else can we do? When you fight the Romans, these trees grow fruit.” He nodded at a group of bloodstained and offal-stained crosses topping the rise by the roadside ahead. There were ten crosses together, empty at the moment. But the number of crows hovering in the air, and walking proudly along the ground, fearless of man, was ominous.

“Men should not treat each other so,” I said.

“As for that, it will be the way the world is until the he comes, the Christ.”

That last almost made me stumble. “What do you know of the Christ?”

He rolled his eyes. “Is that not the word in Greek? We call him Messiah.”

“That is the word. What do they say of him?”

“Those who count the generations say the world enters a new age soon.”

“What does that mean? Count the generations?”

“Count the years to the new age. From Father Abraham to David the King fourteen generations, and from King David to the Babylonian Exile fourteen, and it has been fourteen generations since then, so as history waxes and wanes like the moon, the time of waxing is nigh, and the Messiah will be born. He will smite the Romans and the heretical Southerners, and rebuild the one true Temple at Gerizim. The greatest conqueror of all time! But—” Ben Sahir shrugged. “Those who count the generations also said the Messiah was due three generations ago, but then others said we should omit Ochoziah, Joas, and Amasiah from the king lists, because of their wickedness, and God adds another generation of waiting for every evil generation. You know how astrologers argue. We wait, and they give a date, and it rolls by, and nothing changes, and the Romans hang out more fruit for the crows to eat. I will believe in the Messiah when I see him with these eyes, not before.”

“You think he is coming to throw out the Romans? Is that all?”

“Isn’t that enough? No human power can defeat them. Should we hope for something even greater? Not just to restore our kingdom, but also to conquer theirs? Ah! Strange and wondrous indeed if all the Roman world bent the knee and served the God of Abraham! But that will never happen. Never.”

“Don’t be so sure…” I muttered.

“Be that as it may,” said ben Sahir, “My father says the Greeks were worse than the Romans. The Greeks did not enforce their own laws. And they use slaveboys for girls.”

“Uh? Greeks here?”

“You must be from very far north. It was only fifty or sixty years ago. Hyrcanus and Aristobulus fought for the throne when the Queen died, and Pompey the Great aided Hyrcanus, and the rule passed to the Herodians, and Romans, who came as guests, did not leave, but stayed as masters. And it is not as if all the Greeks living here suddenly vanished, or went home.

“Before that, it was Alexander the Great,” he said. He had a little quirk of a smile, but the voice that came from it was infinitely weary. “Before that, Cyrus the Great. And before that, Nebuchadnezzar the Great. All the great man of history march through our land to step on us.

“There is rebellion in the air,” he continued. “The Romans can smell it. They have conquered everyone, so they know the smell of mutiny growing ripe. Why do you think they declared tax gathering time? Never before have we been ordered to march the roads to the houses of our fathers and pay the tax there. It is not Roman law. Come, you are learned man, I can tell from your outlandish accent! You make the mistakes learned men make, you learn the language from books. Why do you think they are taxing us this way, now, at this time? Forcing everyone out of hearth and home?”

I shook my head. I was already sorry I had volunteered to carry his load. The sun was declining to the west, and it was cooler now, but my legs were aching and blisters were developing. What I would have given for a bottle of insect repellant! None of the short and wiry people around me seemed to be having trouble. Call it the soft living of the Hyperboreans. I was too out of breath to ask.

“You might think it was to scatter any whispering groups of young men daydreaming of the days of Maccabaeus,” he said. “I think it is to show us. To show us we are whipped dogs. To show us they could march us to Egypt, if they wished, or off the edge of the world.”

After that, I had no more breath for talking, and we trudged on in silence.

Ben Sahir’s ‘short walk’ turned out to be almost more than my aching legs could carry me.

As we neared the village, the Romans had more corpses on display, but these must have been of people of a higher class than traitors and slaves, because instead of crucifixion, they were severed heads hanging by their hair from the wooden poles of a small fortress surrounded by a ditch outside the town. The fortress had a distinctly Old West look to it, which I did not expect, being made of sharpened logs set upright, with a dry-moat around it.

It was called a village, but it had at one time been larger, because I could see the ruins of walls half toppled over, and naked gate posts with no gate, but with an ox yoke lashed across the top. The huts and hovels, some of stone, some of mud, some (to my surprise) of timber, occupied less than one fourth of the land inside the crumbled line of the ruined walls.

I should mention the climate was not what I expected. Perhaps I had seen too many Hollywood Biblical dramas, and so I was thinking everyone would be dressed in burnooses, and the land be desert. They were dressed more like Greeks, in tunics and cloaks. I was surprised at the number and size of the trees, and size of the fields both cultivated and fallow. Maybe it was a climate cycle, or maybe the Romans would cut down all the trees one day soon to make more crucifixes, but at the moment, there were trees, and many houses were timber. The rooftops were flat, and many had little tents or sails on the top of them. I was not sure what they were used for.

Ben Sahir parted ways with me, explaining that, if I ate pork, I could not stay at the same Inn with “clean” people.

But he gave me a few coins, and pointed at a large house done in a clearly Greek style, as if it had been yanked up from Athens and dropped down here, with decorative amphorae and statues of gods and goddesses on the roof eaves.

There were before the doors also stones decorated with gods with wings for ears at the ground level, but these had been defaced by some vandal. Or maybe it was an art critic, because I saw the broken stone penises, large and erect, which the vandals had hammered away from the stone. There was a wooden sign nearby with two severed hands, a left and a right, nailed to it, and some inscription in Latin and Greek and Aramaic I was too weary to puzzle out. Probably a pragmatic Roman epigram on keeping one’s art criticisms to oneself.

Something in the sight of the careful craftmanship of the obscene statues  seemed to me to be as grotesque and inhuman as the sights of torture and conquest, but on a subtler level. What kind of world would adore as sacred such demeaning images, and maim and kill to preserve them?

I stepped into the common room, which was crowded, practically packed shoulder to shoulder, but everyone stepped out of my way when I approached a man standing on a chair, whom I took to be the landlord here.

He was arguing and cursing with knot of bellowing men around him, or perhaps it was an impromptu auction, because all the men were waving fistfuls of money, or something that looked like necklaces of beads, small coppery nuggets of uniform size. I did not know anyplace from history books in this quarter of the world that used beads for money, but maybe some things slipped through the cracks of history, or were not written down, or not remembered.

For some reason, the shouting fell silent when I walked up. Maybe they thought I was a giant. I mentioned before how no one here was as tall as my shoulder, and some were shorter than my elbow. Also, while I was not exactly stout, I was certainly well fed, and so I was broader than everyone here.

I showed the landlord the coins ben Sahir had given me. I had no idea of their value. “Don’t tell me, let me guess.” I said, “There is no room in the Inn. Do you have a stable out back, where you put little kids with glowing halos? Or shepherds who hear voices from heaven, and three wise men from the East?”

He said, “There is room for you, stranger. For strangers like you. We have a room set aside.” He whistled, and a little kid with straight black hair that gleamed as if oiled can trotting out of a short door leading to some sort of enclosed yard where they were cooking a fatted calf over an open pit. (I should mention all the doors were short, and I barked my head on the ceiling beams more than once.)

The kid wore a dirty smock and an iron ring around his neck. The bellhop (or slaveboy, or I suppose I should say) did not look me in the eye, but beckoned, and I followed, and he led me across the courtyard—in this style of building, all the windows face inward, toward a common courtyard, and there are no windows in the outer walls to tempt robbers. Of course, a really motivated robber could just shoulder his way through the walls, which were thin boards roughly cut, daubed with just enough plaster to keep out the wind. Stupid as it sounds, I kept being surprised at how rude and handmade everything looked.

The bellhop showed me to a room the size of a closet, which stank with the rich, ripe odor of the many previous inhabitants, and pointed to a straw mat crawling with lice. The room was also equipped an ewer of water (unless that was the chamber pot—the water was not purified nor chlorinated).

“Presidential suite, eh?” I said to myself in English. I showed the bellhop the coins which the landlord had not taken. In Greek I said, “Do I pay now? Pay later?”

He spoke to me in English. His accent was odd, clipped, almost as if he were used to speaking at a much faster rhythm of syllables.  “The natives deem it bad luck to take money from time travelers.”

I spun on him and made to grab him by the throat. But his metal collar made a loud popping noise, I got a shock to my hand and arm like I had grabbed an electric eel. I stumbled backward and sat down heavily, breathing deeply and hoping the dancing black spots in my eyesight would not overwhelm me.

The little noises from the rooms to either side, voice and motions, fell silent, as if the Inn were holding its breath.

“You are late Twentieth Century, or Early Twenty-First.” The kid said in his flat, strangely-accented voice. “Wristwatches and telephonics of that design were not made after the Endarkening. And you have made several temporal disturbances which no one, not even a Revisionist of the Second Age would have made. You are a pre-Nebogipfel chrononaut. A rare find!”

I realized that the people in the room to either side were not holding their breath, or, at least, not willingly. The silence was deeper. I could see over his shoulder where the cookpit in the courtyard was. The reflections of the flames on the wall should have been leaping. Instead, they were frozen. Little bugs in their clouds were as still as a photograph. Someone had hit the pause button on the video tape of the universe.

“Who are you?” I managed to say.

“I am a mote of the Cosmic Sculpture of the Sixth Era of Time Travel.”

“So, everyone in that common room knew I was a time traveler?”

“Of course. Bethlehem, at the time of the retrograde motion of Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction? This is the most thickly investigated spot of all history. But no one has ever found and killed a chrononaut of your early strata.”

“Killed? Wait a minute! I have not done anything to you—”

“Have you not?” And now the flat, unemotional accent, if anything, grew even flatter and more monotone, and the kid’s eyes, which suddenly looked very old and very wise indeed, bored into mine. “The man whose burdens you carried was fated to be helped by someone coming a moment later down the road, whose daughter, by that happenstance, he would met and wed, from whose bloodline sages and sacerdotes would spring, and military leaders, including the founders of an Antarctic Republic in the Forty-Second Century, after the time of the Great Thaw, and the discoveries of polar zodiacal energy will enable the founding of colonies on other worlds. All of this you obliterated with your thoughtless blundering. Millions of lives have been lost, or changed. You have no instruments for detecting temporal potential! You do not know who is important, and who is not, who is crucial to history, and who is not.”

With this, be pulled the collar off his neck, so he held a C-shaped bend of metal, looking like a horseshoe magnet. He pointed the ends at me. “You, for example, have no potential at all. You will never return to your life, and have no effect on history. Therefore nothing remains but to…”

The room was no bigger than a closet, and mote-boy, Cosmic or not, was no taller than my waist. I made a lunge for him, grabbed him by both arms, and smashed his head into the walls. To my surprise, it worked. I was sure he would zap me with some hidden superweapon if I moved. To my bigger surprise, the wall broke instead of the kid’s head. The boards were thin and the plaster, or maybe it was mud, was less than a half-inch thick. His head went all the way threw up to the neck.

The biggest surprise of all was when I yanked him back inside, and realize I was holding a dead body. The top of his skull had been burned away, his face blackened, as if his head had been thrust into a lightningbolt. I could smell cooked brains. This was not something shoving your skull through a thin board could do.

The pause button on the universe unpaused. Firelight in the distance started flickering, and noise of man and bird and beast started up again with a roar. I grasped the semicircle of folding metal the kid had been wearing as a necklace, thinking there was a gun in it, some futuristic laser gizmo which had accidentally gone off. But there was no button, no trigger, no muzzle, nothing I could see.

But I heard a noise in the air above. It sounded like something larger than bird, moving. I stuck my head through the hole—not the first stupid and impulsive thing I’d done that day— I saw only a shadow. It was manlike, but larger than a man, and held a long wand or tube in its hands, disappearing into the clouds of sunset. It seemed to be riding a horse, or perhaps a flying motorbike. Even as I saw the figure, I was not sure if it had not been a trick of my eyes, a shape in the cloud. Another time traveler, from some era after the Sixth? Someone who did not like the way these events turned out?

Professor Mandic had mentioned that, in order to avoid paradoxes, or minimize them, the time travelers would wait to the last minute. That meant something was happening now that the Mote kid had been trying to stop.

It was then that I heard singing. They were not the Mormon Tabernacle choir, but they were better than an average dozen men from my time would have been, because we only sing on Sundays, if that. Whenever we want song, we don’t have to do it for ourselves, we snap on a radio. Even people from my grandmother’s day were all better singers (so she had insisted once) then the folks of my generation.

Whoever they were, that choir, that was the event Mote kid did not want me to hear. But now I found that I was in the ridiculous situation of being held like a prisoner in the stocks. The splinters of the wood I had shoved my head through were now snug around my jaw and ears, and I could not draw my head back without impaling wooden points into my jugular. It was like I had stuck my head through a fish trap.

On second thought, I did not want to go back and explain to the landlord about the bellhop whose skull had been blasted in half lying in my room. And I could already hear noises behind me. I figured I had less than a moment before people without modern man’s ideas of privacy peered into see the source of the meat-smell.

So I just straighten my legs and pounded with my fists and broke my way through the rest of the wall. I did not pay attention to any noise behind me, but I just kept going. I ran.

The streets of the village were narrower and even more crooked than when I had been prowling the alleys of Rome. I kept turning toward the singing.

I smelled them before I saw them. Shepherds. They were even more ragged and work-worn than the people I had seen on the road, or in the Inn. Their hair and beards were long and lank, as if they had never known soap or shears. None of them had anything better woven than poncho-like rough cloak to wear, or a dirty loincloth. But they had sticks in their hands with crooks at one end, or some sort of hook or loop of leather, for drawing lambs back, same as Little Bo Peep. Some things don’t change with time.

I must have startled them when I blundered suddenly into their midst in the narrow street. But these men did not flinch or draw back or slap my face or step on my hand. They were all smiles and cheers like they were happy to see me.

I spoke to them in Greek, and then in Latin. I don’t remember clearly what I said. It might not have been very coherent. I doubt these simple hill-folk, the yokels of First Century Palestine, understood the tongues of their conquerors. But of course they knew what I wanted. I wanted to know why they were singing. What was the news? What was going on? You don’t need language to understand this. You just need to be human.

One of them, thinner and more careworn than the rest, blind in one milky-white eye and with ugly growths  on his cheek and neck took me by the hand and led me back the way the others had just been coming.

It was a little ways outside the town. We just stepped through a low spot in the toppled wall, where the growing grass had already made a green path like a stile. He pointed at a cave.

“I am looking for a stable,” I said. “A stable with a baby in the manger! And a big honking star sitting right on top of it! Where three kings of Orient are. Maybe a little drummer boy, too.”

The shepherd just pointed again at the cave. Now, in the gloom (for the sun sank rapidly at this latitude) I saw a flicker of butter-yellow light, like a reflection from the smallest lamp, somewhere in the depth of that cave.

The shepherd gave me a little shove, and went back, grinning. As he skipped off, he raised in voice in song, his hands over his head, twitching left and right with the rhythm. I could not understand a word of it, but I could hear his whole heart was in it. I could hear the gratitude.

As I got closer, I saw there was trampled earth around the cave mouth. I could smell the smell of dung. Then, I heard the lowing of cows, the bleating of sheep.

The stable was in a cave. Who puts a stable in a cave? On the other hand, considering how flimsy the last wall was I broke through, maybe it was not a bad idea.

There was a man standing, leaning on a tall staff, in the shadow to one side of the cave mouth. He was bald on top, but with ringlets of silvery white hair reaching from his ears to his shoulders. A beard as white as snow reached nearly to his sash. His robe was finely made, especially in contrast to what the grimy, half-naked shepherds had been wearing, bold pattern of blue and scarlet stripes, with threads of purple running through it.

He looked up as I approached, and his eyes were so noble and stern that I thought I was looking at some wise king out of a storybook; but they were so sad and kind that, if it had been a storybook, it was a story about a king long banished from his home, a prince whose forefathers in their pride and folly had been toppled from the throne that he would never see. The land under his feet, which was his by right to rule, he walked through as a stranger and an exile.

My mouth was dry.

“I want to see the child,” I said. I said it in Greek. And when he merely looked at me, motionless, silent, sad, and stern, something welled up in my heart I cannot explain, and tears came into my eyes, and I sank down to my knees.

“Please, sir,” I said in Latin. “I need to know. She’s dead. I need to know there is a reason. I need to know there is a hope. I have to see the child. That he is not just a story—a lie. A lie. Everyone says it’s a lie.”

He put his hand on my shoulder, and leaned and kissed me, which I thought was a little gross, and wiped my tears off with his thumb, and pulled me to my feet. But then he tapped the heel of his staff against my shoes, first the left, and then the right, and he nodded, making a little gesture with his eyebrows.

“Oh!” I said. “Like the Japanese, are you? No shoes in the house?”

He nodded. I slipped my shoes off.

He made a wide sweep of his arm, like a king throwing open the doors to a palace for a visiting dignitary, and motioned me to enter what was, after all, a stinking stable.

The ground was cold underfoot, and there was straw and quite a bit of dung, and I wished the light were better so I would see what I was stepping into. Well, sometimes you have to walk without seeing.

In the distance, there was a little light of a brass oil lamp, the kind Aladdin rubs to get a genii, shedding less light than my phone gives off when I pull it out of my pocket to check the time. There was darkness between here and the lamp.

Why he trusted me, a giant stranger whose language he did not speak, to be alone with his wife who had just given birth, that I cannot guess. I barked my head once or twice, so by the time I came to the small flickering circle of lamplight, I was bent and holding my skull. Because I had just stuck my head through a broken wall not fifteen minutes ago, it was covered with dust.

I am sure the young girl thought I was bowing, or had poured dirt in my hair to show grief or repentance, or something.

She was sitting on the ground, and there was at least three other people with her. The closest to the lamp was a smiling and crooked old crone to which the little girl spoke a word that was, even though gently said, was unmistakably a command.

Again, I was surprised. There was, of course, no reason to assume Mary and Joseph traveled alone in this day and age, or did not have servants. In my grandmother’s time even she, who was by no means a rich woman, had hired help come by on washing days and to help with the spring cleaning, and my grandfather had hands for the farm.

The girl was very young. Maybe she was sixteen, or maybe she was fourteen. I suppose in the ancient world, anyone above thirteen was considered an adult. Considering the life expectancy, maybe sixteen was middle aged.

To be honest, I was appalled at how young she was. Who marries a girl at that age? And travel while pregnant? Who makes her bear such burdens?

She rose gracefully to her feet, holding the babe in one arm, cradled against her naked breast. I did not think it was a good idea to stare at a sixteen year old girl’s naked breasts, so I tried to keep my eyes down, but with her free hand she touched my cheek and wiped the dust from my hair, and made me to stand up straight.

There were calluses on her fingertips. Women who do a lot of weaving get them, from pulling the threads in the same way, over and over. Young as she was, she had already seen her share of work. Despite that they had servants, these were not rich people.  And I suppose even rich women in these days wove.

I wish I could tell you how pretty she was. Her eyes were calm as a sea which had never known a storm, never felt the slightest wind, but were clear and blue deep into infinite deeps. It was like looking at the crystal bar of the time machine, as if they opened into another dimension. It was like—how can I put this?—as if I were Tarzan or Mowgli, and had been raised by apes or wolves, seeing a real human being, a normal human being, a woman who looked just the way women were designed from the beginning to look, seeing for the first time.

I said something then. I don’t remember what. It must have been asking to see the baby, who was, by the way, very energetically suckling, his little jaw moving as tirelessly as a machine.

The bent old crone came forward with a bowl of water, and offered it to me. I reached to take it, but she poured it over my hands, and then wiped my hands with the hem of her shawl before I could stop her. Then she knelt and splashed my feet, and wiped them likewise. I realized then that not all the water in this land stank. It was just that room at the Inn they had not bothered drawing fresh water from the well.

Another servant, this one a wall-eyed old man in dire need of dental surgery, offered the girl a small clay cup, which she passed to me with her free hand. The final servant, a man with a whip-scarred face whose ears were cropped handed the girl something that looked like a stone. She put it to her mouth and tore it in half with her teeth, offering me half. It was sourdough bread. I drank the wine and ate the bread, grateful for the hospitality of the Middle East.

The wine of this day and age had a grimy residuum at the bottom of the cup, looking all the world like tea leaves in an old fashioned cup of tea. I started to toss the dregs of the wine away, but the girl put her small hand on my hand and made me drink the whole thing. Not daring to offend the custom of hospitality, I drained the cup to the lees. Then the earless man took the cup away.

Without a word, she handed me the child.

I wish I could say newborn babies are cute. No, they are cute after a few weeks. He was still red from birth, and wrinkled like a lizard. The umbilicus had been cut off far from the navel, and tied with a red thread. In case you want to know, Jesus Christ is an outie, not an innie.

I have always wanted to have a child. I always wanted to hold a baby in my arms. I know most women love holding babies and few men do. I am one of those few. My wife, for reasons still painful to dwell on, could not have children. She had led a wild life as a teenager, and had aborted her firstborn, and the operation had had complications.  She had picked the name, Darrel, but her boyfriend of the time did not want to leave school or get a job.

Holding young life in my arms, so frail, and so precious, always seemed a miracle. I held him close, delighted with the warmth, the living weight in my hands. The stink of the animals was in my nostrils, but the warmth shed by all the animals made the cave like an incubator. I was already blinking, trying to keep the sweat on my brow from getting in my eyes. It stung, and I my eyes swam with tears. I was wondering why in the world any mother would hand me her child to hold.

The girl looked at my face and spoke in Aramaic to the scarred man. He bowed to me and spoke in Greek, “I am Ehved son of Emeth. My lady greets you and says Peace to you. This is Mariam daughter of Joachim son of Eli son of Levi and Anna daughter of Phanuel the High Priest.”

“Ah. Peace. Peace to you and to your lady. I am Jonathan son of Jacob.”

She spoke again. Her voice was like music.

“She says the child is the son of David. He is the king. The king belongs to the people. Whose arms should uphold the king, if the people will not hold him?”

She must have seen the look of surprise on my face when she handed him to me. Or maybe she could read minds. I had been riding a time machine this afternoon, and almost killed by a time traveler, so I was not sure what to believe.

The baby reached out and grabbed the crucifix hanging on a fine chain around my neck, and tried to put it in his mouth. My hand twitched, because I was torn between the need to get the choking hazard away from baby, but also to support the baby’s head, and I did not have three hands.

The girl must have seen the look of male panic on my face, because she reached up with her small hands and neatly plucked the crucifix from the tiny red fist and hungry little mouth.

The girl inspected the crucifix with a wide-eyed stare, tilting it to catch the lamplight. She said something in Aramaic. Her tone was one of innocent wonder, delight at finding a strange mystery.

The scar-faced man said, “My lady wishes to know what you are, and where you are from, that you would willingly carry an so finely crafted an image of the death by torment only slaves suffer so near your heart? It is an abomination. In what land are such things made?”

The baby in my arms was so fragile. The girl seemed so happy, so serene. I could not say anything.

She spoke again. Ben Emeth said, “He that is hanged on a tree is accursed.”

“No,” I said.

Ben Emeth looked offended. “What do you mean, no? I cannot say this to my lady.”

I thought of my wife’s unborn child, who had never lived, and whom I have never seen, never held, and who had never been mine. There are men who are fulfilled even if they are never fathers. I am not one of them.

I was no longer blinking because sweat was stinging my eyes. Now I was weeping.

I had been seeing it, in my heart, over the grave. A boy I could hold. I would have helped change diapers, and bottle fed him, made sure the apartment was child safe, no pennies on the floor a baby could have put in his mouth. I would have bought the right kind of safety seat for the car, the kind made of lightweight spaceage material, with a basket that unhooks from the seat for ease of carrying. And a stroller. And taught him how to walk. I would have been home for his first word. I would have tickled him and made him giggle.

And, later, ah, later: baseball and cub scouts and boy scouts and first communion and first love and teaching him how to tie a bowtie and how to fold a flag and how to clean a rifle, and teaching him all the words to IMPOSSIBLE DREAM from MAN OF LA MANCHA. How to tell the truth. How to raise a child when his turn came. Everything. I would have taught him everything. Maybe he would grow up to be a doctor, and heal the sick and save their lives.

And if my son, the healer, if he got arrested for a crime he did not commit? I would have done anything, sold the car and the house to hire the best lawyers. And if he was bounced from one kangaroo court to the next, and witnesses got up and lied about him? I would keep hoping someone would give him justice. I would appeal. First to the Sanhedrin, then to Herod, then to Pontius Pilate. Someone would see he was innocent, that he had done no wrong.

But what if no one did? What if the politicians and the powerful people of the world, the priests and the princes and the conquerors decided to kill him? Would I keep hoping then?

“What do you mean, stranger?” said Ben Emeth again. Beneath his scars and the wrinkles of his age, I saw he had once been a handsome man, no doubt young and brave. He did not like people contradicting his mistress.

“I mean no.” I said. “In a time to come, there will be one, who, when he is hanged on a tree, he is not accursed. It will be a curse, but is a blessing. And after that, it will be a blessing for all men.”

The scarred man and the girl spoke in Aramaic. I could not understand the language, but her tone was curious and innocent, brave as a kitten who had never been hurt, and gentle, but gentle like a queen is gentle, who does not wish any hard word of hers to wound her loving and loyal servants. I had only ever heard politicians my whole life, never someone who loved and led a nation as a mother loves her child. There is something in such a voice you cannot mistake when you hear it, because there is nothing like it on Earth.

Ben Emeth turned to me. “My lady asks in what land is the pain and horror of crucifixion a blessing? She asks where are you from? Who are you?”

“I am…I am from … I am lost. My own lady is lost. Tell her my own lady, my very own, is lost.”

I have no idea what my face looked like, or what they were afraid I might do, but the girl very firmly and gently took the child from me, and then and there unwound the cloth she wore as a headscarf. This was linen, and was white and lined with blue.

She turned and put the tightly wrapped child into a little nest of hay in the feeding trough. She said something over her shoulder to me. Ben Emeth was behind me. “She says you will be comforted. One will come who will be your attorney, and speak the word.” The word he used was Greek: paraclete. The word for ‘word’ in Greek was logos.

She smiled over her shoulder, and busied herself tucking in the baby. He was asleep. Even as a baby, was he not divine? How could he not know what was going to happen to him when he grew up? How could he sleep like that?

I was wiping my eyes, feeling foolish, feeling full of wonder, feeling I know not what. I said, “Tell her she should sleep when the baby sleeps.” Ben Emeth translated the comment, and the crone laughed and the girl smiled.

The girl spoke a final time. Ben Emeth said, “Bow your knee, and the mother of the king will give you her blessing, since under the ancient law of David that is her right. You have come far to receive it, farther than the shepherd band. Ask of her with what blessing she shall bless you?”

I got down on one knee, and the kneecap of my pants leg landed right in a plopping of cow dropping hidden in the straw. I suddenly realized that everyone in this cave must be insane, including me. That baby was just a baby, puny, and red and weak. The world outside was a nightmare, a world ruled by sadists who worshiped obscene things, and even the Jews and Samaritans served God by slaughtering each other and slaughtering cows and sheep and turtledoves, a God too pure and remote to do anything, no matter what prayers were said, or how many cows were burnt.

No matter how many prayers you said when the tests came back positive. No matter what you said you would do or would not do, or how much faith you had. He did not listen. Not to you.

I was kneeling in a stinking stable in a cave. My face still hurt from where the Roman solider had slapped me that afternoon.

Nevertheless, I said, “Ask her to pray for me. Pray for me now, and at the hour of my death. I want to see my wife again. I want to hold her, be with her. And talk. I want everything made right.”

The girl stood up, and moved toward me with footsteps so smooth she seemed to be gliding. She put both hands on my head, and said something in her liquid tongue. I felt a flush at her touch, as if my hair were trying to stand up, and the sensation moved from my head down my spine like a warmth through my body. She again touched my chin and bade me to stand up. She smiled and gestured toward the cave mouth. The audience was over.

I turned once to look toward the child. The tiny oil lamp was behind and beneath the trough of hay where the baby slept, and the yellow light slanted through the wide, crude slats and caught the wisps of hay sticking up around his tiny head so that a circle of gold, like a crown of fire, hung there. If my eye had been an inch to the left or right, I would not have seen it. I blinked, and it was gone.

I walked away into the night.

In one hand, I had a fistful of straw that I was using to wipe at my knee, to get the clinging filth off, and then with the other hand I was wiping my face. And now I started to sob in earnest. I had come for answers. I had actually seen the Messiah, held him in my arms, something every Christian has probably wanted to do; but there was no answer for me.

What now? Find the machine, climb on, go back to a year when my wife was still alive? And then what? Knock that version of me over the head and replace him? Pile her on the machine, and find a time in the future when they could cure everyone of everything? Behind me was a little warm cave lit by a tiny light, where the cure for everyone and everything was supposed to be, it had not cured me.

And I had forgotten my shoes.

Feeling like a fool, I turned and walked back over the cold ground, but now it was completely dark, and the tiny glint of light from the oil lamp was gone. Frugal people did not waste oil at night. I could not see the cave mouth. After a few moments walking, I was sure I had gone too far, and now I turned again and went the other way, or what I thought was the other way, but all I found was a land of rocks and darkness where it became cold very quickly in the gloom.

I pulled out my phone and opened it, hoping to use the screen as a flashlight, but it had run out of power at some point. I could not remember the last time I’d recharged it. I had not prepared for a hike, or to go camping, or to go time traveling, and had not even brushed up on my ancient languages or brought a compass or anything. I had followed a crazy man in a top hat, the descendant of an equally crazy scientist, because I was half crazy myself that morning, alone by the grave. Not one of her family had come. Not one.

I stubbed a toe and stepped on a stinging insect at the same time. It was like a white-hot needled being plunged into my heel.

“Jesus Christ!” I shouted in English. Then, hoping God would not notice I had been swearing, I quickly said, “Um, uh, forgive us our sins and save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls to heaven, including those in most need of thy mercy.”

Then I had an idea. I closed my eyes and just listened. There were lots of animals in the village, and maybe more than one cave was being used as a place to stall animals, but if I were still near the cave mouth, maybe I could hear something.

Sure enough, I heard bleating. It was a young sheep, complaining about something. I groped my way in the dark in that direction, stepping on every sharp stone and thorny bush in Palestine.

I did not find the cave mouth, but found the sheep. By that time, my eyes had adjusted to the starlight. It was a young lamb, a baby.

The lamb was by itself, in a little hollow, and there were thornbushes all around it. But no cave, and no shoes.

I turned away. The poor fellow bleated so pathetically. I looked over my shoulder, “Believe me, pal, I know the feeling.” I took a step, and he bleated again.

I sighed. Then I sighed again. I took off my shirt, wrapped it around my hands, and used that the push aside the nettles and stingers of the bush. I waded into the thorns for that dumb animal. Why? Because there was no one else around.

Once inside, scratched and bleeding, I said, “Come on, sport.” And I pulled the lamb with a heave-ho up onto my shoulders. Then lamb bleated louder. I was sure he was going to void his bowels on my shoulder.

I was surrounded on all sides by thornbush. Where was the break I had just so painfully trampled?

“Okay, sport,” I said to the lamb. “You got in here somehow. Do you know the way out? And maybe back to the spot where my shoes are, not to mention a warm stall for you, and plenty of yummy Lamb Chow? And why aren’t any shepherds watching you, this time of year? Did they hear voices singing in heaven, and just leave their work, to go look at the Messiah? I did that too. But she is still gone.”

And the lamb said, “No, the shepherd chief, Asher, asked Gabriel to watch us, and see we did not stray. When we were alone with the Archangel, he granted us the power of speech which Adam the Fallen King would have given us from that great tree which fairest Eve the Fallen Queen robbed, so that once and this once only, the paschal lambs could kneel and pray. Now we have a new Eve, and she has born us a new Adam.”

I was too shocked to throw the talking beast from my shoulders. The starlight from one single star above me suddenly grew brighter, or my eyes adjusted, and now I could see the circle of thorns was not a circle, but a spiral, and all I had to do was walk and turn and turn again, to be free. Not to keep the bad course I was on.

I took a step. “Are you a time traveler?”

“No. They are thickly gathered here, but in vain. They are not permitted to see the child.”

“Why can’t they see him?”

“Ah. Gabriel was asking me that just an hour ago. Why can’t they see him?”

This was an insane conversation. I laughed, trying to take things as they seemed. “So! You are a Passover lamb? Do you mind being eaten?”

“All who are loyal to the Master wish to be consumed as He is consumed. For what other purpose was He born? For what other purpose was I? The Sons of Adam were given dominion over us, and named us our names. As you live in Him, we live in you.”

“That sounds wrong, somehow,” I said.

“Your ears are heavy with folly,” said the lamb.

“I must be asleep,” I muttered.

“You will soon wake, as do all who sleep in the Lord.” he said. “Now ask your question I was sent to answer.”

“So,” I said, “I did not see the Star of Bethlehem. Or the three kings.”

“More than three mages will come, and they come first to Jerusalem, the City of David. They are horoscope-casters and astrologers from the ruling clan of the Zoroastrians, and the Lord shows by them that He can turn evil craft to good purposes. This is not for two years to come. But that is not your question.”

I drew a breath. “Are you the comforter sent to comfort me?”

“No comfort is given to the sons of Adam except after tribulation and temptation. You are in the fire. You are being refined. And that was not your question.”

“Why does it hurt so much? This fire?”

“You know.”

“Because my faith is small? Because I love my sins?”

“You say it. Not I. And that was not your question.”

A cloud passed before the bright star. I stopped walking. The thorns were all around me. I could not see the path.

I said, “Will I see my wife again?”

“You will see her again. She waits for you, robed in white linen, by the river of the waters of life which flows from the throne, and a cup of those waters is in her hand, and her hair is woven a crown of the blossoms from the trees who leaves are for the healing of nations. You must first suffer death, as the child will, and resurrection, as he will. Beyond the trial is comfort. Beyond the darkness, light. But she will not be your wife there. They do not marry, nor are they given in marriage. The union is more intimate. And neither was that was your question!”

“Maybe I should ask why you people always speak in riddles!”

“Maybe then I would answer that you people never ask the right questions.”

I knelt and put him from my shoulders.

Kneeling, my face was near his muzzle. I was looking to see if there were some trick. To be honest, I wanted him in front of me, if the cloud would pass away from the star, so I could see whether or not his lips were really moving.

That was when it finally struck me, and despite the tears that still stained my face, and the bleeding scratches all over the rest of me, and the Roman hand shaped bruise running from my ear to my jawline, I started laughing.

I could not help it. It was too funny.

The lamb just looked at me with big, solemn eyes.

“Sorry—didn’t mean to laugh,” I said, hiccuping and trying to control myself. “I wanted to see if—if your lips were moving. And then—then—you see, I met this time traveler in Rome, and he was afraid to use the time machine, and I used my crucifix instead of my wedding ring, so the machine led me here, and then—then there was this dying guy with no pants on, and a Roman socked me like I was filth, a nobody, like you’d kick a dog, and this little kid from the Sixth Cosmic sitcom or something who wears electric jewelry got his brain blasted when I shoved his head through a wall trying to kill me, on account of I didn’t let Antarctica conquer the moon in the Forty Second Freaking Century, and Saint Joseph kissed me on the lips, and I held baby Jesus, and now, and now, and now I want to see if your mouth moves. I am afraid of being tricked. You know, because some things are too hard to believe. Don’t let yourself be fooled! Seeing is believing!” And I laughed and whooped and laughed like a crazy man.

“Listen,” the little lamb said.

And I bent my head toward him, but he said nothing. “What is it?”

The little lamb said, “Do you hear what I hear?”

In the distance, I heard a bell tolling. It was a solemn, slow, beautiful sound.

It was so lovely to hear, that the crazy laughter died on my lips.

The lamb said softly, “That is the alarm bell from the Roman fort, foretelling the downfall of the pagan world and all its love of cruelty. The Christian world to come shall be cruel as well, but a world that will not love cruelty. Every bell on the face of the Earth is ringing this night, from the Pillars of Hercules, to Ultima Thule, to the springs of the Nile, to the Forbidden City and beyond. The bells sing in joy for the Savior’s birth. The stars also sing, but only my masters, the shepherd band, heard them. Asher, Zebulun, Justus, Nicodemus, Joseph, Barshabba, and Jose. They had prayed, you see. They pondered the word spoken to Job, and wished to know when it shall be that the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of light shout for joy? This is that night. There is no war being waged anywhere, on any front, for this one night and this one alone. Will you finally ask your question now?”

I drew a deep breath. “It seems so stupid.”

“God uses the fools of the world to confound the wise, Jonathan.”

I closed my eyes. “Why me? Of all the historians and sages and widows or widowers who suffered a loss, and saints who kept their vows and wise men, and everyone else, everyone in the world, why was I given a ride on that machine, and allowed to come here, and allowed to hold him in my arms, that little baby who holds the universe in his?”

My eyes popped open in shock. “Oh, good grief! I forgot to tell her that Jesus would be in the Temple when he turned twelve! That he is not in the caravan! I could have saved her all that grief! Jesus Christ, what the hell was I thinking!! Whoops, I mean heck. I mean Jesus Christ save me.”

“Be of good cheer,” said the lamb with perfect seriousness. “Your prayers will sustain and comfort her, whether you speak them now or later. Eternity entertains all prayers at once. And here comes the one who will answer you.”

I saw a light in the distance. It was clear enough that I saw the path again, and so, without any more mishaps with the thorns, I came into  place where the ground was clear of rocks and nettles. It felt like turned soil under my feet, and the earth was cool and soothed my aches and stings.

The light was a lantern being held in the hand of a being shaped like a man dressed all in white, purer than any white Earth could make. Over his shoulder was a shepherd’s crook. Tucked through his belt was a golden horn. On his head was a hood or veil which hid his eyes, but I could see his nose and mouth.

“Rise,” he said, because I had realized who he was, and my knees failed and I had collapsed in panic. “Fear not. I am but a fellow servant of the same One you serve. See that you bow not to me! I must return the lost lamb to the fold.”

I said, “Gabriel? Were you really watching the sheep so the shepherds could go see the child?”

The great being nodded slowly beneath his veil.

“Why was I allowed to see him? And not all the other time travelers? And not everyone?”

He said to me, “Lost lamb, if you were the only man alive, the only one who had ever sinned, and every other Son of Adam had remained pure and upright, it would all have been done for you. For you the child was born. For you he lives and dies. For you.”

The living being raised the lantern, and I saw it was a spiral galaxy inside the glass, not a candle, and clusters and superclusters of galaxies. “It is all for you. The stars love you, and He who, by his word, lit the stars and set them dancing, from the greatest to the least. Everything in the cosmos, all the light of all the worlds, to the blood shed by the Messiah. It is all for you, John Went.

“And more than a mere cosmos! Eternity and infinity are yours, endless life, unbound joy. You shall be rejoined with the one you love, and all the ones you love, and the love will be greater than mortal tongues can pray to ask or praise in thanksgiving.”

I did not know if he meant I would meet her that very hour, or only after many long seasons of life in this eon or many others. But I knew, then, that it did not matter. Only one question mattered.

“Why? Why?” I cried.

Gabriel smiled and he leaned, and he spoke very softly in my ear.

Do you not give gifts to those you love?

[slytherhell]

KILL YOUR DARLINGS.  PROLOGUE: THE START OF SOMETHING NEW.

prologue:

( the start of something new! )

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

━ [....] AND WHILE MOST ASSOCIATE THE NINETEEN-FORTIES WITH THE BLOODIEST MILITARY CONFLICT THAT'S EVER HAPPENED IN HUMAN HISTORY, WWII, buried deep inside that nonsensical madness of war, blood and death (and inspired by the war itself) was something else;

A literary movement.

And the diner that sat quietly on the edge of the cobblestone corner of Everson Street, is where it all began.

Owned by Lauren Donnovan since the Roaring 1920s, this has been the dinner for teens to stop by to after school and to talk with friends. Over its past twenty years of business, the places has flourished and grown--starting out as an old and run down little tea shop and mini library for those who crave more of silence and peace, but then eventually becoming the place where soft music places from the ceiling's speaker, where gentle lights of yellow shine all around, and where you're always greeted with a smile.

It is upon your first step into the jazzy restaurant, upon your first intake of air - you'll be great with sweet honey aromas trailing from the trays of teacups that have just been freshly sent through the oak-wood doors.

Give a short turn ( in either direction ), and there you'll have the wonderful flavors of chocolatey drinks, and the cherry and peach fillings of the baked sweets filling up your nostrils, invading your lungs, and settling happily into your conscience.

As you begin to look around, you'll be greeted with the most cheerful faces (of almost and every single race.) Yes, they'll all be gathered and seated at the circular wooden ben positioned in front of the kitchen--the open grill. They'll be talking of the day, of the newspapers, and how everything has been in one another's lives; all the while, maintaining full eye contact, full interest, and have the right responses, and consideration of words in mind.

And this! Seeing their smiling faces...it brings warmth into even the coldest of hearts.

And their laughter, oh! You'd have thought there was a Christmas carol playing by the wonderful sound the mixed in harmony created.

Steering away from this heavenly sight, and casting it over into the corner──where the flickering fluorescent light in hanging overhead, where the window is cracked up and the air conditioner blows cool air...

You see her.

( No, not the gorgeous blonde serving the customers, or the quite attractive brunette entertaining the older men sitting down at the establishment. But the one over there in the far left corner, with her head stuck in a book and teeth gnawing on the end of her pen as she continues to get deeper into the story. )

Yes, the young woman with her short bob that's curled into soft brown ringlets, and is brought out by the combination of her over-sized black sweater and black rectangular glasses (ones that sit neatly on her heart-shaped face; and with brown russet eyes hidden behind them.)

(And sure, she looks innocent, but just moments earlier, she was yelling off dirty jokes at the four young men--around her age, granted--and she purposely rose her maroon skirt to show off a fraction of her small cheek; all in a teasing manner, of course. The showing of her freckled cheeks as she gave a laughing smile proved this.)

This is FIONA MONROE.

When FIONA has sat back down, a couple of minutes pass, and return back into the normal activity of the diner.

( That is, before the door opens, and in enters a tall but young red-headed woman. And it is the minute her foot enters through the door, that one of the young men at the back table looks up, and his input into his table's conversation comes to a stop as his breath hitches in his throat. She is stunning.)

The young woman who has caught his attention; for starters, she is not happy. The boy watching can tell by her lack of eye contact, he can tell by the barely-visible bags underneath her eyes she used concealer in an attempt to hide, he can tell by the way she's not walking with the usual pep in her confidence-led step(s.)

But her attire, gives off the feeling as if this was another usual day of hers. She has a long trenchcoat over the brown turtleneck sweater dress she's wearing; and high, black over-the-knee boots over her black pantyhose. On her head, she wears a fedora--and she wears this in an attempt to cover up her static hair.)

( But even so, she steps up to the counter and orders her regular; honey camomile tea, with her book tucked underneath her pit. And though usually, she just greets one out of the four, today she stepped beside the watching boy, and with a small smile, speaks to him. She doesn't say much, just a short greeting, but she holds eye contact for a second longer and hides her face behind a curtain of her hair as she walks off. And of course, this causes the boy to freak out, and just before she reaches her seat, which is taken beside FIONA, he slides out of own and clutches the cloth that's on the chest of his heart. He looks up, and tells his worrying mates that: everything's fine, he's just happy.)

The girl for the cause of this happens to turn around after this, and gives out a little laugh as she shakes her head at him.

This young woman is LILY EVANS, and the young man is JAMES POTTER.

Seated over there, diagonally across from FIONA, (in the far right corner with a table accompanying three other young men, and with his hand dashing back and forth along the pages of the brown leather notebook as the creative juices intensified about his brain) is an equally good-looking young man.

( He has now had paused from his writing, for his hand has reached forward so he can take a sip of his honey-lemon tea; but the break too longer than he had expected and it was by the usual cause; his hair. He takes a fraction of a second to blow the duff of sandy-brown hair back up.... only for it to fall back down. His hand then accidentally brush against the scar that's subtly curved below his cheekbone, and right eye. He then sighs at both the mere memory of how it became and the fact that his beige sweater is now disheveled.)

He gives up with it all together, only to raise the porcelain white cup again.

( His hazel eyes begin to scan around, and eventually catch the sight of the kind red-headed girl and the flirty brunette across the room. He then gives them a crooked smile, and his face flushes red as it dawns upon him that they'd witnessed the whole entire scene. )

This is REMUS LUPIN.

Seated at the left of REMUS, with his curly black hair spun into a bun on the top of his head, with the tie of his shirt undone, and watching him alongside the girls is one of his best mates. His dark grey eyes are staring intently at the back of Remus' head, before they turn bright to match in the atmosphere as his laughter begins to fill the air.

( He then proceeds to go on and give a hard pat his back, causing Remus' elbows--which were previously propped against the table--to crash against it; knocking over his cup of tea. The black-haired fellow didn't expect this to happen, but soon after, bright hazel eyes are glaring at him and the sound of LILY and FIONA's laughter is ringing in the ears of REMUS. His friend is stuck in a frantic switching of trying to help, trying to apologize, and laughing, but in the end, laughter takes over and he's collapse against his chair with tears streaming down his--now--bright red face. )

This is SIRIUS BLACK.

The young man at the right of REMUS, well, his eyes widen almost immediately. While he was previously just sitting in the middle of everything, smiling and listening in to the stories told, he now points an accusing finger at the laughing SIRIUS, and rushes to help the sandy-brown fellow.

( He reaches for napkins, and hands them to his friend (who now has tea spilled on his lap.) REMUS takes them gladly, and tells him he doesn't have to worry about the mess, but the constant-worrying friend of his is now out of his seat; not caring off his dirties his morning iron-khakis as he scrambles to catch the dripping of the tea on the floor; but only ends up bumping his head underneath the tale in the process. )

This is PETER PETTIGREW.

_______________

━ AND SOMETIME LATER, WHEN THE LIGHT OF DAY HAS DRAINED AWAY, AND THE SKY IS PROUDLY SHOWING OFF IT'S DIAMONDS OF LIGHT, the scuffing of wooden chairs against the vinyl-tilted floor is heard as the group(s) of teens are done packing their stuff up, and are heading to leave.

(REMUS happens to be the first one at the glass door, and being the gentleman he is, holds the door open for the ladies. LILY walks through and thanks him, and FIONA does the same, but as she's walking out, she grabs the door and holds it for them. Being a little plot twist, they're standing there bewildered for a moment, but she laughs and says: I insist. And with this, all the young men walk through, thanking her on the way out, and also extending their arm to hold the door for her as well, for she is now the last one to exit. )

They wait a moment underneath the mini roof, checking to make sure all is with them.

(LILY has the hardback clutched to her chest and readjusts her fedora, REMUS has the worn-out leather notebook clutched tightly in his hand and a hand in his pocket, FIONA has zipped her things into her crossover bag, JAMES adjusts his glasses and zips up his jacket, and SIRIUS, and PETER, well they have nothing because a) they'd either leave it or b) the occasion didn't call for it.)

When the last of the fingers on the door left go, the bell tings; and they're out into the rainy night; the clicking of heels, steel-toed boots, and dress shoes sounding out down either side of the street as all three separate into their according destinations; either going left, right, or straight across.

( Faint smiles are on their face as they turned, and ducked; screams of exclamation leaving their mouths as the drops of rain proceed to drop down harder onto their back; as they, trying desperately through semi-clenched eyes, to see where they're heading.)

Very few minutes pass, and they can all still hear on another.

(But their laughter doesn't join in until they're further away, and are out of breaths, recovering. )

But when all is done...

(When LILY is up in her apartment, the faint glow of her night lamp shining on her back and she sits near the rain-decored window in her extra long shirt--that she uses as a nightgown--and the tunes of the radio is playing beside her; When REMUS, SIRIUS, PETER, AND JAMES, are all squished in the back of a taxi cab with the half of them asleep and remaining two awake are either staring at the scene outside the window, or are lost in their own thoughts; and when FIONA is in her car, heading back down to San Francisco with the radio blasting...)

The scene ends.

( Now, keep all that you've read in mind. For this only the end of the scene; the story itself has yet to begin.)

[dailyaudiobible]

12/19/2020 DAB Transcript

Zephaniah 1:1-3:20, Revelation 10:1-11, Psalms 138:1-8, Proverbs 30:11-14

Today is the 19th day of December welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian and it's great to be here with you as we close another week down together and take the next step forward. And as has been the custom lately, like we’re reading a book a day and we’ll be doing that today. We’ll read an entire book in the Old Testament.

Introduction to the book of Zephaniah:

This is the ninth of the minor prophets and its name is Zephaniah. And it's similar to some of the other minor prophets in that we don't know much about who Zephaniah was. The only clues within the text is that the message from Zephaniah came when Josiah son of Amon was king of Judah. And then there's a little bit of lineage. Zephaniah was the son of Cushi the son of Gedaliah the son of Amaria the son of Hezekiah. And that little lineage may actually be a major clue because a lot of times in the Scriptures, a lot of times in antiquity, it's…it's not like an entire multiple generational description. A lot of times when you're talking about somebody or just saying, “this person who is the son of this man.” For example, my son's name is Ezekiel and if he were introducing himself, he’s a little guy so he wouldn’t be doing that, but if he were…he’d be…in antiquity he’d be saying, “I'm Ezekiel bar Brian”, right? The son of Brian. He wouldn't necessarily continue that lineage back to his great-great-grandfather unless his great-great-grandfather were significant. And in this case, it's possible that Zephaniah was a descendent of the reforming king Hezekiah, which would explain how Zephaniah was aware of his surroundings and literate and also why, perhaps is prophetic utterances would be preserved. Obviously, credibility comes if you're an ancestor of a king. The name Zephaniah means “God has hidden.” And the text states that the message was given during the reign of Josiah. So, that would put him somewhere in the middle of the 600s B.C., or thereabouts, which would make him contemporary with other prophets that are famous and biblical like Jeremiah. A lot of textual scholars believe that Zephaniah had to be familiar with at least the writings of the prophet Isaiah because there's a similarity in the language and the tone. And we have read a number…like we’ve been reading prophecies for months now. And, so, we understand that a lot of times and most of the time prophecies are targeted very specific to a very specific people for very specific reasons. Zephaniah’s a little different there, because he's…he's essentially prophesying judgment on the whole known world, including Judah, including the Hebrew people. And, so, we come across a term that we have seen elsewhere, “the day of the Lord.” and that is the theme in Zephaniah. And, of course, we’re reading the book of Revelation as well. So, this “day of the Lord” this kind of final judgment sort of idea is ever present in front of us as we continue forward. But we should understand what God wants…wanted and wants to get rid of because it's not people that He wants to destroy. It’s evil that He wants to destroy. And when people want to hold on to their evil…well…then they get what they want. They get to hold onto their evil, but God gets what He wants, and the evil gets eradicated. And, so, the people doom themselves. But as we have learned from biblical prophecy, there is a foretelling of things that…that are to come or that may come if change doesn't occur, if repentance doesn't happen. But then there's the other side of that. What if…what if you do humble yourself? What if you do return to God? And then we hear words of abundant restoration. And Zephaniah is no different. And, so, there are three chapters in Zephaniah. We’re reading from the Good News Translation this week. Zephaniah one through three.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for another week. We are so grateful to You for giving us the gift of Your word, and giving us the gift of each other to move through a year of life together in Your word and community. We are grateful. And, so, as we close down this week we look to the proverb and we identify the kind of people that we don't want to be. There may be people who curse their Fathers and do not show appreciation for their mothers, may that not be said of us, Lord. There are people who think they are pure when they are as filthy as they can be. May that not be said of us Lord. There are people who think they are so good. How good they think they are. Lord our only goodness, and we declare this and confess it, the only good thing about us is You. You make us good. If we are good, it is because of You. Left to our own devices we know…we know where things go. And, so, may the pride and arrogance spoken of here never be said of us. And there are people who take cruel advantage of the poor and needy, even making a living by taking advantage of the poor and needy. Father the Scriptures over…You have said over and over and over that this has no place in Your kingdom. So, may this never be said of us. And as we close this week down and prepare to move into the next week, Christmas week, we invite Your Holy Spirit to hover and permeate everything that we do and say and think, all of our thoughts, words and deeds. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, and yup, it’s the website, and yup, it’s where you find what's going on around here.

And it's Christmas time around here. And we’re about to go through this weekend and enter Christmas week. Super excited about that.

Next week will be our Christmas party, our annual Christmas...well…it is our virtual Christmas party when we get to hear from each other. Looking forward to that early next week.

Reminding you of the Family Christmas album that is really the soundtrack here around the Global Campfire for the holiday season. You can stream it. Just look for my name, Brian Hardin or Family Christmas and my name and you’ll find it. You can stream it on Spotify, or Apple music or wherever. You can…you can buy it from those places as well. If you want a physical copy, like a physical CD of it, you can get that from the Daily Audio Bible Shop. But adding that into the mix of the Christmas season is…well…I mean it was intended to be kind…just to create the kind of atmosphere that we try to create here every day - serenity, peace, hope, and a relaxing exhale. And, so, check out Family Christmas.

Also, we released last week a Christmas single from Jill my wife, “O Holy Night”, one of the classic Christmas carols of all time. And I mentioned this, I don’t know, the day before yesterday or whatever, when you listen to the words to that song it brings so much context and hope into the holiday season. So, you can stream that at Spotify or Apple music or YouTube music or Google play or wherever. You can also buy it from those places. So, check those out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well and I think you profoundly. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi DAB family this is Dorothy out in California with a small prayer request. I got 39 shot…Botox shots for migraines. And, you know how when you sign a waiver and you never think it’s going to happen? It happens. Aside from all the things that almost…I mean��a lot of the things on the list, the hardest one is that I lost muscle control around my eyes. I have a forehead of a 20-year-old, but I can’t use my eyes. It…it’s…I…it’s actually really hard. I can’t drive. I can only see 1 foot in front of me. Actually, a couple days ago I ate strawberries and anyway I ate slugs in my strawberries. I didn’t see em’. I washed them. I did a good job washing em’ but I didn’t see them. So it’s been…it’s been hard. God assured me before I, you know, before I lost control of both…but God assured me when this started it’s temporary. And I know Botox lasts one or two months but it’s gonna be one or two months of this. And the counter medicine isn’t working. Anyway, I have an appointment with a neurologist on Wednesday. But anyway… so if you could just please pray for me. It’s small, I know, but I love you guys so very very very very much and I love you all. Okay. Thank you. Bye. I appreciate…

Hey, it’s Val in Vegas today’s December 15th. I’m so happy to come to you guys today in the last 15th of the year. We made it guys. Through God’s grace we made it. How this year started for me is absolutely unbelievable, but the real joy and power’s in God’s love and grace for me…for all of us and how I’m finishing it. To say the 2020s has been an unusual and challenging year would be an understatement. I just want you guys to know that I am doing good. I know one thing that’s happened this year for me is I have developed a deeper closer relationship with the Lord, and it has been wonderful. I needed to be closer to him in this quarantine as it’s just me and my little dog that live together and the Lord has really shown up and showed out in my life this year. I just want to say thank you guys for all the prayers and well wishes and thoughts and just love. And please know that I am putting that right back into this DAB world. I absolutely love you guys and if you don’t mind, I’m gonna continue calling in on the 15th of every month. I’ve enjoyed being committed to that and sharing my life with you guys. I love you all so much. You have no idea. So, thank you for holding me up and for loving me and caring for me. Val in Vegas out until January 15, 2021.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family this is All the Treasures in Wyoming with an update. If you all remember months ago, I asked you guys to pray for sweet Emily who had almost lost her life and was in the ICU. She had thrown some blood clots, her kidneys had failed. I mean it was a really urgent prayer request and you guys came through and you prayed. And even more than that God came through and answered those prayers with a yes. And I got to see Emily yesterday and I got to give her a hug. And she said that she is…she sent me this text…she said that she is walking without a cane and that her brain injury is coming along slowly. She’s off dialysis for now because her kidneys are waking up. And then she said, this is all God’s plan. Maybe not mine, but I pray to him morning noon and night. And if you guys also remember we weren’t sure whether or not Emily knew Him, right? So, I just want to encourage you. When I went to see her and I gave her a hug I asked her, I said, Emily did you get the letter that was dropped off to you while you were in the ICU. And she said yes, I did. And she said I kept that letter with me. It was up where I could read it every single day in my ICU room. And when I went to the long term acute care rehab that letter went with me and it was also up in my room where I could read it every day. And it’s one of those things that reminded me that I wasn’t alone and that I could get through it. And in that letter, I reminded her…well…I share the gospel with her and told her who Jesus was but I also told her who you guys all were. I said there are people all over the world praying for you right now. And she said that that helped her get through. But I do know today that she knows the Lord and I just wanted to thank you guys again for praying. God bless you guys. And to God be all the glory

Eyes of the Dove in Sekomane Washington lifting up prayers this morning 5 AM heading to work for Harold in St. Louis and your son. And I heard another father call in and broken for your son. And my goodness it was like a chain reaction. It made me feel broken too. I instantly thought of Brayden and Rylan my children remembering when they were born and their perfect body’s and their perfect little toes, counting their totes. And as you get the report about his foot, every piece, every part of your precious son is so important. Father, I just lift up Harold and his son. Father, I ask that blood would flow. Father that his body would be…would line up in the name of Jesus that that boy’s foot Father would be healed by Your blood. We call him healed Father. I ask for Your peace, Your peace that surpasses our understanding would be upon this family. And we just put on the full armor of God on Harold God as he goes through this…this hardship. There’s so many things going on this year that he’s having to process and now this. And this is no little thing. And we ask for protection of our children Lord Jesus in every way, their minds and their bodies, that nothing would be touched, nothing would be touched in Jesus’ name. Care about you Harold. Coming around you. You’re not alone.