I do apologize for the delay in posting. To make up for it, I'll post two chapters today. More info in the Author's Note at the end of this chapter.
Winter has fallen with vengeance, and the warmth of June – and the uncomfortable realizations involved there in – is nothing but a memory. The holiday season is in full swing, and Illana and the rest of her preschool-aged classmates end up getting recruited to be snowflakes in their church's Christmas Eve Pageant.
As no snowflake is supposed to look alike, her teacher gave them all two toddler-size rectangles of fluffy white fleece, drew a basic six-armed star the middle of each, then let the children go crazy with glue sticks, sequins, and several different colors of glitter. The glitter in particular held a certain enamorment for Illana, and Bethany is still finding the sparkly particles in her daughter's hair the night of the pageant three weeks later.
As Illana's godparents (wow, how literal), Rab and Mary are there as well. Considering they have pretty much helped raise Illana from the start, it seems only fitting that they would want to attend her stage debut, even if the subject matter is probably rather tedious for them by this point. After all, who would want to relive the story of their birth over and over again?
The pageant itself is simple - a handful of middle-school students taking turns reading the well known Christmas verses from the Bible as a pair of grade school students play Mary and Joseph and act it out in traditionally subdued fashion on the stage. Illana and her group won't come out until the end, when everyone else is gathered around the manger under a bright spotlight, witnessing their future savior's humble beginning.
It's right around the time that Mary and Joseph arrive in Bethlehem that Bethany is suddenly struck by the peculiarity of the situation.
Here she is, watching the traditional Christmas Story being acted out at the front of the church, just as she has every year since she was one of the youngsters up there on the stage; just as millions of people have watched the same story on the same night in thousands of different churches all over the world for hundreds of years. Behold, the humble beginnings God's one and only Son.
In that extremely inappropriate moment amongst the soft and somber mood of the Christmas Eve service, Bethany Slone, Mother of God's one and only daughter, starts to laugh.
She manages to muffle her face in her arm before the laughter can bubble up too loudly, and what emerges instead is a rather undignified squeak that might be mistaken for a petite, feminine sneeze if you don't give it much thought. A few heads turn her way, but luckily none of the looks she gets are dirty, so she takes a deep breath, manages to compose herself after a few seconds, and tries to focus once again on the stage.
It doesn't last long, however. A few minutes later, when Mary and Joseph are turned away from the first inn, Bethany has to jam her arm against her mouth again as her imagination supplies the visual of the admission clerk at the hospital the night Illana was born – complete with pink scrubs covered in cherries – in place of the boy playing the first innkeeper, somberly telling Mary that they have no room. She doesn't quite manage to be as dainty about it this time around, and several dark looks are sent her way at the choked off snort that escapes before she can muffle it against her elbow. Mary and Rab, sitting beside her in the pew, inch away from her, identical looks of 'What the hell is wrong with you, crazy woman?' on their faces.
Then, when the narrator gets to the part about Jesus being born in a stable, Bethany can't help but glance over at Rab... only to discover that he also seems vastly amused by the situation and is just barely holding back his own laughter. All hope is lost when he catches her eye, and the two of them have to get out of there very very quickly or risk bringing the wrath of the congregation down on their heads. They stumble their way out of the pew – thankfully they're at the end, so the only knees she has to trip over are Mary's, who just rolls her eyes and moves them aside so she can pass – and make a break for the stairwell.
They just barely make it out the sanctuary doors before Bethany gives in, laughing so hard that she has to sit down on the landing between upper and lower levels of the building or risk falling and breaking her neck. Rab is in worse shape – he didn't even make it to the landing, and is instead sitting about three-fourths of the way down the first set of stairs. Both of them are laughing so hard it hurts to breathe.
"Oh man, Rab," Bethany says once she's mostly gotten control of herself, wiping tears from her eyes. "I hope no one ever gets wind of the story of Illana's birth and turns it into a pageant. I wasn't half as composed as Mary was, and thank God that this day and age it's kind of illegal to turn away patients, even if there isn't much room left at the hospital. More power to you, my friend, for starting life in nothing more than a stable, but I am extremely pleased that there was not a barnyard animal in site the night Illana was born."
Rab shakes his head and replies. "My dear Bethany, do not let hundreds of years of author's prerogative and artistic interpretation fool you. I might've been born in a stable, true, but as back then pretty much the only options you had for that sort of thing was 'inside' or 'outside', it wasn't nearly the event they've made it out to be over the years. The star and the angels, that was rather impressive, true – Father has always been a bit of a showman, after all – but don't for a moment believe the BS they try and spread about how Ma was the silent strong type. Strong, definitely, but silent? Ask anyone who knew her – that woman had quite the set of lungs and was not afraid to use them."
"And that's only half the story - she was also a bit of a linguist. There were a lot of different groups we ran across in our travels, and I learned everything I know about language from her." He chuckles fondly and continues. "I was, of course, too young to remember this happening at the time, but my Da, Joseph, claims that the night of my birth, she spit all sorts of venom in four different languages at the roof of the stable, all night long. Despite what you've heard, Ma was not one to sit quietly and leave her opinions unsaid. This is something I learned very early on – and was reminded of frequently – every time I got in trouble as a kid. Which, again, was way more often than the folks who as wrote the Bible would leave you to believe. Why do you think it skips over my first twelve years?" he finishes with a wry smile.
Bethany laughs again, her abused stomach muscles twinging in protest; considering all the trouble Illana has gotten herself into since the whole cardinal resurrection when she was two, it is not the least bit hard to imagine some of the surprises Mary might've had to deal with when Rab was a boy.
"Rab, you have no idea how much better that makes me feel." With that, she stands and starts back up the stairs, offering him a hand as she passes so he can get to his feet as well. Together, they manage to sneak back into the sanctuary just in time to see Illana do one more snowflake twirl before all of the children in the pageant gather together with the rest of the congregation and they bring the service to a close with the traditional Christmas Eve hymn, "Silent Night."
Right, as promised, explanation time! This particular chapter is a brand-new bit of inspiration that didn't exist until just after I posted the last chapter a few weeks back, hence the delay - I had to write it before I could post it, and it did not come as easily as some of the other chapters have. I'm still not 100% pleased with how it turned out, but the truth is that this chapter is a stop-gap; a break that I kinda wanted to have between the previous chapter (Chicago, girls only weekend, and the return kinda sorta of Bartlby if you need a refresher after the two week delay) and the next chapter, I just couldn't think of anything to write that would fit chronologically into the story until now.
As you may have noticed, this whole story is pretty much written as a series of One Shots - parts of a whole, but which work as Stand Alones just as well. This chapter isn't necessary, and after fussing with it several times and still not getting a final product I am entirely happy with, I almost decided not to post it. However, it does give me my desired break in focus (and I will explain the reasoning as to why I wanted that break in focus as the object to be focused on becomes more clear. Yeah, just smile and nod if that didn't make any sense), so post it I shall. Also, I figure there is no such thing as too much fluff, and this chapter so far seems to be one of the fluffiest. Come on, glitter and snow flakes! How much fluffier can you get without the addition of cute baby animals? ;)