Detroit: A whirlwind of white, like powdered sugar had sifted from Heaven.
Chicago: Every tree glistening with ice, a perfect, sleepy world encased in glass.
Memphis: Slush flung against curbs and roadsides like mud from a child's hand.
Everywhere, ropy strands of Christmas lights swinging from the lofty trees, and the tentative warble of carols from each radio tower he passed.
It was Christmas Eve, a time of year that often warmed his heart. For centuries he had watched, unnoticed, as people celebrated the birth of the Savior. Some with merry singing, others in quiet reflection. There were always smiling faces, gleeful shouts from children who relished in the gift-giving. When he was infant himself—not a child, he'd never been, but something close to it—he would perch on his brother's shoulder, staring down through what the others called the "great glass fishbowl" and into the world.
"What are they doing?" He asked the first time the humans ever observed the holiday; he was curious. Always curious. It annoyed the others. Or most of them.
"They're celebrating the Son's birth." His brother would answer.
"He was born in the fall."
"I know. It's a little Pagan here, a little mythology there. Mix it all together and you get Christmas."
"Then why does Father not get angry with them? Isn't it blasphemy?"
"It's the hearts that count. Humans are works of art, don't let the others tell you different." His brother would say.
The others used to join them. But now they sat by the great glass fishbowl alone, looking out of Heaven, just the two of them.
"Why do they put up trees?" He would ask.
His brother would swing him down and hug him so tightly it crushed him. "Don't ask so many questions, Castiel. You'll hurt yourself."
"I'm sorry, Gabriel."
Gabriel would tweak him around. "Don't be. Just think before you ask."
That had been the last Christmas they'd spent together. Gabriel had run away, vanished without so much as a farewell. And now, like every Christmas since then, Castiel descended to earth with his true form wrapped in smoky veil, and went searching for Gabriel across the earth.
But in recent years, Castiel had noticed something that disturbed him. In more and more homes through which he passed, like the Ghost of Christmas that the human stories spoke of, he'd find a father passed out, drunk on wine, while listless children played in separate rooms and a weary mother puffed a thin cigarette alone in the kitchen.
He saw people who sat with their gazes riveted on television screens, and didn't speak to one another at all.
He saw fights, and breakups, murders, and death. He saw love seeping out of the precious day like melting snow across a black-lit street. And each year he descended, his heart broke a little more. The world was tearing itself apart, giving in to traditions. Forgetting that this day meant more than excellent food, and receiving gifts—it was celebration of Sonship, of family.
But they seemed to have forgotten.
This Christmas Eve, Castiel descended from Heaven without hope. The others hadn't even noticed him leave; they'd given up on ridiculing and persuading him years and years ago. He was the strange one, the oddest angel of the legion. He watched the humans too closely. And maybe that was true. But his yearly quest to find his brother brought Castiel back again, from Detroit to Chicago and on to Memphis, calling, first desperately, pleading, and then with resignation. He hunched, trailed off, went quiet.
He walked the streets of Flagstaff. There would be no snow here, but the human festivities were in full course. The mechanical singing radiating from homes and stereos, the monosyllabic renditions of old carols to which the humans no longer applied meaning. They were simply words that were required to be sung at this time of year.
He passed a shop full of children's toys, pausing to look inside. He'd passed through a place like this once, the year Gabriel had taught him how to manifest his essence. Gabriel had always had an affinity for children's toys; he'd sent a spinning top flying straight through Castiel, and laughed forever at the younger angel's puzzlement.
Castiel focused and caught a brief glimpse of his own essence in the glass: somehow he seemed haggard, and aged beyond his centuries. Not like Michael, who looked on everything with a timeless air of disdain, or like Lucifer, who held on to his beauty without change—or so the stories went. But Castiel was tired. So tired of seeing the humans decaying, forgetting what they were. So tired of searching for Gabriel. Just tired of it all.
With a single thought, Castiel reached the outskirts of the city. He lowered himself to the dry curb and pillowed his head in his hands—for that was the shape his essence took. Human, when he was near them, though they could not see him. Like a chameleon, Castiel conformed to the world of which he was a part. In Heaven, it made him silent, subservient, nervous. And on Earth he was so desperate to belong, somehow.
He sat there for a very long time, until the farthest-away sound reached his ears.
At first he thought it was the note of a song. But then it continued, with a pitch that changed sporadically. Castiel lifted his head, and turned toward the sound; and he saw a faint blue light glowing on the horizon to accompany the sound. The sound of a child's voice.
In a flash he was there, beside a small hut just off of the highway leading into the town. There was a muffled glow of a light screen from within; and Castiel leaned his ear against the door, and listened in.
"There's no snow. Why no snow?" The voice was light, innocent, certainly a child's. Castiel imagined himself on the edge of the fishbowl, looking down.
"Because," A second voice replied, with all of the knowledge of another, older child. "It's Flagstaff. Everybody knows it doesn't snow in Flagstaff."
"How come?"
"Because, dummy, it's too hot."
"Oh. Okay." There was a silence in which Castiel found it in himself to be amused. Children were the essence of his Father's great creation. "How come we don't get any presents?"
"Because we have to eat. We can't have both."
"Oh. But I wanted a present."
"Well, here. You can have this."
"Your bracelet? Daddy made it for you, though!"
"So? You're the one who wants a present. Take it."
Castiel walked quietly to the window, and looked inside.
The hut was a single room, softly lit by candlelight. The children sat before it, wrapped in thin blankets. One perhaps nine, the other no older than five. Huddled together, chilled it seemed despite the warmth of the Arizona night. The older was sliding an oversized bracelet onto the wrist of the younger.
"Thank you." The young boy said, and he turned, nestling his head under the older's chin. "Don't you wanna present, though?"
"I got one." A strong arm wrapped the small boy in and held him close, protective. "I get to keep you around."
The small boy smiled, and soon was asleep, a wave of dark hair falling into his eyes as he leaned, and breathed. The older boy stared down at him, and Castiel saw his lip quiver; and a very slow, shining tear ran down his face, followed by another. They fell silently into that matted mess of dark hair under his chin.
"You're my present." He whispered, resting his cheek on the boy's head. "You're the best thing I ever got."
Castiel stepped back, his essence banking and falling with a feeling so indescribable, so intense it made him feel stripped bare. There was so much darkness in that small hut, so much shadow at war with the light. But around them, that light—so pure and sacred, it glowed. And it struck him like a Grace, to be standing here in the middle of nowhere, to have stumbled upon this thing—this precious, precious thing—where he had least expected it. To find love and family in the middle of an empty place like this.
And Castiel felt a sharp draw to end the moment, to freeze it for eternity. As though he could look beyond any conceivable sight, and see that it wouldn't last, and that someday something would come along and rend this peace apart. He wanted this night to remain, to go on forever, so that these two perfect examples of his Father's love would never be hurt, or broken. That they would not melt like Chicago's ice, or become like the snow in Detroit, running away downstream until it was thin and wan and finally, dried up.
But that they could stay: perfect, and intact, and not feel the brutal force of broken humanity. That they could remain wrapped in the darkness and light, so tediously in between, and never move again. That was what he wanted; and if he had ever asked anything for a Christmas gift himself, it would have been that.
But that was not in his power to do. They would have to live on, and grow, and age; and touch lives, and be touched themselves; and somehow find a way back to this small place, in their heads and their hearts, when they had no hope left to hold on to.
For now, however, Castiel had a small gift of his own.
It was a simple thing to do, something he had seen Gabriel accomplish dozens of times. It simply took a thought, his eyes closed, his essence moving, and wrapping around him like a cloak. He felt a chill creep idly across his being; and then he opened his almost-eyes, and the stars were reflected in them, a shower that passed across his essence like striations of light on glass.
He moved quickly away, quickly enough to rustle the thin drapes and rattle the glass. And then he stood far off and away, where the shadows lapped the edge of the light cast by the candle hut, and watched the stars fall in force. And he realized something he should have held on to for years.
That across the world there must be gems of humanity like the one he had found. And all that need be done was to search deeply, and uncover each diamond in the rough.
Humans, after all, were works of art. Flawed. Warped. Twisted by sin. But no artwork was perfection. And somehow the flaws made them beautiful, when one could move beyond his flaws, and strive to be better.
The door of the hut opened suddenly, and a thin, high voice cried out: "Wow! Come look at this!"
The smaller boy came squeezing out into the open, staring up at the stars. And with a whoop of glee, he started dancing, spinning circles, overjoyed at the vastness of the open night sky and the shower of stars.
"It's like snow, but way up high!"
"I've never seen something like this." The older boy said, awe in his quiet voice. "It's like it's just for us." He walked to join the young boy, and wrapped an arm around his small shoulders, embracing him sideways. "I know it's not what you wanted, but, still. Hope you like it."
The small boy wrapped his arms around the other. "Merry Christmas, Dean."
"Yeah. Merry Christmas, Sammy."
A most precious gift. And the light around them glowed brighter as they stood there, watching the tumble of snowfall stars, unaware of the silent, vigilant spirit in the shadows who watched with them, affection and protectiveness defining his essence.
Castiel smiled as the last stars melted away into the coming sunrise. "Merry Christmas, Gabriel."
And somehow, somewhere in this great fishbowl of humans, he had the strangest feeling his brother had heard.