A heavy snow falls on Christmas Eve. Mark asks the girl if she wants to go play outside, because she seems to be doing better. The fever has lifted, she hasn’t had convulsion for a while, and he dares to hope that she may be getting better. Maybe her body is fighting against the disease and slowly bringing her back to health; or at least Mark hopes so. But she doesn’t want to go outside. She’s tired and just wants to sleep.
“Tomorrow’s Christmas,” the boy says.
“Really?” Her eyes sparkle. “I didn’t get you anything!”
“You don’t have to,” Mark says.
“But I want to.”
“You’re sick. You need to rest. When you’re better, we can find me a gift.”
“Are you getting me something?”
He smiles. “Well. You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to find out.”
The man stands out on the back porch smoking and staring at the freshly-fallen snow, feeling the stinging pinpricks of snowflakes driven into his cheeks by the savage windows coming up from the Cincinnati valley. The haze of the falling snow hides the city below, the empty skyscrapers lost from view. The man lets the smoke fill his lungs and exhales. A beautiful, wondrous feeling as the nicotine surges through his blood and alights in his fingers. He tosses the cigarette into the snow and leans against the brick siding and feels the wintry wind slapping him in the face. A tear brims in his eye but it is frozen before it crawls down his cheek. He remembers his first Christmas with Kira: sitting beside their small Christmas tree with only a few meager ornaments and flickering red-green-blue lights. They opened their stockings and then their presents. He got her a pearl necklace. She loved pearl necklaces. And she got him a new case for his cell phone and a frame in which to put his Flight School diploma. They cuddled on the sofa and drank hot cocoa and watched the snow falling outside. A snow similar to this one, except beneath the snow lied only grass and not the teeth-gnawed bones of fallen angels.
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