The sky was glowing with angels. People have all these great ideas about what angels look like, like wings and halos, but they don’t look anything like the cuddly cupids you see on greeting cards. It’s hard for me to really explain what they look like besides, well, amazing, but I’ll tell you what, you’ll know ’em when you see ‘em.
The men camping had about the same reaction I did: freak right out. We jointly screamed in surprise and fear, we probably would have continued if the guys upstairs didn’t calm us down. I don’t know why I could understand them—somehow that was the last question on my mind—but I did, and the campers seemed too as well. It was then that I heard the words that have been repeated countless times in plays and churches all over the world. But this wasn’t like all those times.
The air echoed the words and the joy they had in their words was intoxicating. The shepherds—that’s who they were—began laughing and singing themselves. I got caught up in the moment and forgot for second that they couldn’t hear me, and if they did they probably wouldn’t understand me.
Just as quickly as they had appeared, the angel’s vanished, a small brilliant star remained in their place. I was still grinning long after they were gone, as were the shepherds. They began talking excitedly to one another and then abandoned their camp to head in the direction of the star. Some walked, others ran, but most of them were shouting in every direction. I chased after them, caught up by celebrations.
I asked myself if it could really be December twenty-fifth—it didn’t seem that cold—and if I really had gone back in time by two thousand years.
As I struggled with these questions, the shepherds and I were getting close enough to a town to see people. The shepherds spoke to them in breathless gasps, perhaps even tripping over their words before the people they spoke to could understand what had happened. After just a few short exchanges, the shepherds began following the star again, calling for the people around them to follow.
I stumbled as I went, dropping the song book to the ground. It fell open, and somehow I wasn’t surprised when I saw it had opened to the perfect song for the moment. I struggled to keep up with my fellow joy spreaders as I read the book by the star’s bright light.
Angels we have heard on high, singing sweetly o’er the plains, and the mountains in reply echoing their joyous strains! Shepherds why this jubilee? Why your joyous strains prolong? What your gladsome tidings be, that inspire your heavenly song?
We were approaching a cave with a light shining from the opening, some of the faster shepherds were shouting from the entrance prompting everyone to run faster. I huffed the last of the words as I reached the mouth of the cave, and braced myself to see the one that had caused such a jubilee that heaven itself had been singing about it.
But instead of a soft glowing light, I saw darkness. I turned half around, looking for the cave, and those who had found it with me, but there was nothing. The only thing I could see was the bright star hanging above me. Then, it stretched out and away from me. Before I could think to do anything, the star had fled miles away from me, until it was nothing but a distant bright spot in the sky.
* * *
Whew! Wow! I've fallen behind, that's embarrassing. Hey everybody, sorry it's been so long since my last post--stupid college!--but I've had a really busy schedule on top of school. Good news for updates, I met with my writing coach who gave me some really great pointers for how to proceed with Free Radical, and I've really taken them to heart. I love the story, and I loved working on the book, but regrettably it needs work. Or to be more precise, some of the portions of the story need to be torn out with a pair of medical pliers and hurled into the fires of eternity never to been seen or heard from again--which is cool I guess. Some of the material for dramatic reasons just needs to be fixed, and then I'll probably do some other work to it also, but if there's anything I've learned about writing, it's that it's fluid not static. Anyway, I know the list of subscribers isn't very big, but I'm still sorry for not updating sooner--here's to hoping I can change that!
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