“I’ve just worked out the game of ‘fetch’.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes really, the Ball of Power is… Love. And no matter how hard you try to get rid of it. It just keeps coming back to you.”

The Ball of Power flies through the air. Quick as lightning Anu leaps skyward, catches it in his jaws, lands with a thud and proudly trots back to me to again lay it at my feet.

“You’re a clever Bird-Dog, Anu, aren’t you boy?”

***

…It is time. He holds out a hand, helping to raise her. Bones ache, pain written on the old-young face framed in the grey cloak of hair. She smiles, placing her hand in his, rising slowly to her feet.

It will be the last time. They have journeyed far these two… Guardian and seer… servant and priestess…He had been young then… spring in his step… summer in his eyes. Now there were only winter’s tears.

She watched them follow the lines etched deep in his beloved face, smiling for him. There were no words. Her skin translucent in the torchlight, bones fragile as a bird’s… she catches a tear and lifts it to her lips.

A sobbing breath and he squares his shoulders… Wraps her in furs…leads her into the night.

***

My eye is caught by a flash of light and I stop in front of a charity shop. It is the first depiction of the nativity we have seen on this the final shopping day before Christmas.

There they are in all their humble and not so humble glory the Shepherds, the Kings and the Manger…All of them illumined by the Star.

“Sort of fitting wouldn’t you say? A cast off idea amongst all the other cast offs.”

“It’s still a marvel of symbolism though isn’t it?” coos Wen.

“Even though it never took place.”

“There you go again…Donald Sams, determined as ever to meddle.”

“The most orthodox of the orthodoxy can’t dispute that one.”

“That it never took place?”

“That it never took place quite like that.”

***

Coming soon in paperback and for Kindle

Giants Dance: Rhyme and Reason

“A Vincent-France production”

(Yep… he even had to meddle with that…)