Summary:\u00a0 All these years he had been listening hard for the song of the stars only to be disappointed.\u00a0 But now… his soul was at peace as he accepted what would be….<\/p>\n
Written in response to Rider’s 2013 Christmas Challenge.<\/p>\n
Rating:\u00a0 K\u00a0 (760 words)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Last Christmas<\/strong><\/p>\n Adam Cartwright leaned against the open sash of his bedroom window and gazed out at the yard, its familiar outlines made strange by the ghostly whiteness of the moonlit snow.<\/p>\n The house was quiet.\u00a0 Pa and his brothers had gone to bed.\u00a0 Even though they were adults now, some of the childish excitement of Christmas<\/span> Eve still persisted inside each one of them.\u00a0 The living room downstairs was rich with the scent of pine and wood smoke, and the lingering scent of brandy.\u00a0 There were presents under the tree.\u00a0 Adam smiled to himself, remembering the way Hoss and Joe had giggled together as they\u2019d arranged the packages beneath the green boughs of the Christmas<\/span> tree, all decked with glittering glass and shining beads, twinkling in the candlelight.\u00a0 There was mischief wrapped up in one of those parcels. \u00a0Adam thought back to the year Joe had wound a clockwork mouse before wrapping it.\u00a0 When Adam had torn off the paper, it had leaped from his startled hand and rattled away across the floor, leaving Joe in helpless fits of mirth on the hearth rug.\u00a0 \u00a0Then there was the year he\u2019d unwrapped a small, wooden box that had turned out to be full of pepper.\u00a0 Hmmm. \u00a0 He would have to be on his guard in the morning.<\/p>\n Pa had brought out the big Bible and read the age-old Christmas<\/span> story, the way he had done every Christmas<\/span> Eve, for as long as Adam could remember.\u00a0 Then Adam had picked up his guitar and they\u2019d sung Christmas<\/span> carols, while the fire blazed in the hearth and a few snowflakes drifted lazily beyond the darkened windows.<\/p>\n No snow fell now.\u00a0 The sky was clear, the stars needle-sharp sparks in the deep blue blackness.\u00a0 The air was bitingly cold.\u00a0 He should shut the window, keep the warmth inside, but he wanted to breathe the clear frosty silence of this, his last<\/span> Christmas<\/span> Eve on the Ponderosa.<\/p>\n Yes, he knew it now.\u00a0 The brooding sense that had been growing inside him all year had finally, tonight, reached its fullness.\u00a0 He had looked around the familiar room, cosy in the lamp light, at the contented smiles on the faces of his family, and somewhere, deep inside him, he had known that the time had come.\u00a0 This would be his last<\/span> Christmas<\/span> on the Ponderosa. \u00a0He was thirty-five years old.\u00a0 The restless spirit inside him would no longer be ignored.\u00a0 When the snows melted and the green grass sprang in the meadows, he would pack his bags and be on his way.<\/p>\n He hadn\u2019t told anyone else.\u00a0 And he wouldn\u2019t.\u00a0 Not yet.\u00a0 Let them enjoy this one last<\/span> Christmas<\/span> together.\u00a0 There would be time for the inevitable sadness,\u00a0disappointment, arguments, later.\u00a0 For now, he wanted to savor every moment he had left, soak up every sound, every smell, every taste, and hoard them away, like precious treasure, deep in his soul.\u00a0 So that he\u2019d never forget.\u00a0 He smiled to himself again.\u00a0 How could he ever forget?\u00a0 The notion was unthinkable.\u00a0 If he traveled to the furthest side of the world, he would carry this place with him.\u00a0 And one day – one day \u2013 he would be back.\u00a0 He\u2019d promised himself that much.<\/p>\n The stars were startlingly bright.\u00a0 Adam leaned his head further out into the frosty stillness.\u00a0 Once, on another Christmas<\/span> Eve, many years ago – before they\u2019d even reached Nevada – Pa had told him that, if you listened hard enough on a cold, clear night, you could hear the stars sing.\u00a0 Like the angels, Pa had said, bending near the earth.\u00a0 Adam had listened many times since that night, but he had never heard anything.\u00a0 He strained his ears one last<\/span> time.\u00a0 The cold air bit deep into his lungs and turned his breath to smoke, but he heard nothing.\u00a0 Nothing but a stillness so complete, it was almost magical.\u00a0 Maybe, he thought – just maybe – he\u2019d be listening for the wrong thing all these years.\u00a0 Maybe the music of the stars was actually…silence.\u00a0 Not just an absence of sound, but this all-enveloping stillness, as though the universe and everything in it was frozen in eternity, suspended for a fragile moment between past and future.<\/p>\n Downstairs, the clock struck midnight, shattering the silence of the stars.\u00a0 Adam Cartwright turned from the window as the chimes ushered in his last<\/span> Christmas<\/span> day on the Ponderosa.<\/p>\n ~The End<\/em><\/p>\n