Twelve Days of Christmas
I wasn't going to but changed my mind and have written a Christmas story. I hope you like it. I would love to hear your opinions and look to working further on the story. I am sorry it has taken so long to update but I have not been well and will try to finish this Christmas story as quickly as I can.
I do not own or have connection with the "Criminal Minds" program or its characters.
Chapter Six. Six Geese A-Laying
He looked up and saw her standing at the edge of the table where she placed her cane and then watched her sit down with the bag next to her. She pulled out the book that she had found in the catalog and the librarian had brought to her. It was a fifteen century tome on the catholic religion and its precepts. It was an old book that had been created by the monks and waved from the English persecution of the time by a member of the nobility who took it to France for safety. It was a book that he knew of but had not read himself. She looks up and sees him looking at her.
She whispers, "Hello, what have you come in today to read?"
"I'm reading a book on linguistics of the Mayan peoples of the fifteen century. I am interested in studying some more of the 2012 prophecies."
"Do you believe in prophecies?"
"I don't know if I would say that I believe in it but it is interesting to read about."
"What other things interest you my young friend."
"Oh, everything interests me. I can't seem to get enough of reading and learning things."
"Do you ever do things that don't include reading?"
"My job includes profiling and trying to determine what and why people do some things."
"Do you remember ever just sitting and looking at something?"
"When I was a child, I did a little of that."
"What do you mean?"
"There was a park that I spent a lot of time at and played chess with adults and my dad got me into little league and so I did that too. But once in a while I would just sit at the little pond that was there."
"What made the pond so interesting to look at?"
"It wasn't the pond as much as it was the geese that fascinated me."
"The geese? What was so fascinating about them?"
"They would just swim around and once in a while bend their necks to get a drink or get a fish out and feed. They were just so calm and knowing just what their place was in the world."
"You don't know your place in the world?"
"I don't know if I know that or not. Sometimes I wonder if the work I do does any good. There always seems to be another person trying to hurt or destroy others."
"Is that your job to stop people from hurting or destroying others?"
"My job consists of catching those who try to do that."
"What does that make you when you do this task?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why do you do it?"
"I want to save others and bring the guilty to justice."
"Then you do have a place in the world."
"Yeah I guess I do. But it is not like the geese who don't have to work for it. It is as if someone is just providing and making sure that they have what they need."
"Sounds spiritual to me."
"I'm not that spiritual. I never went to church or anything like that. What I know of spirituality and religion I learned from reading books not in practicing it."
"Do you believe in God?"
"I don't know. I have seen a lot of evil in the world and if that is caused by the devil then there must a God to balance against it."
"What do the geese represent to you?"
"Maybe they represent that balance. It is an interesting philosophy."
"Do you find that in your life and what you work at? Isn't there some type of non-evil that you can see that may be protecting or providing what is needed.?"
"I don't know."
"Have you ever thought of yourself and your co-workers as that balance."
"What do mean?"
"That you are being used to balance against the evil that you pursue. That you are the good which protects."
"That doesn't sound like what I do."
"It does to me. Because that is what heroes do. They protect and provide for others who are having difficulties in life. They are the balance against evil."
He scoffs slightly at that and says, "I don't see myself as a hero. I identify sometimes with the bad guy."
"That makes you a bad guy then?"
"No, but I am no hero."
"It is human to identify with those struggling to see past their own pain. Many of those 'bad guys' that you may identify with are not really bad. They just chose the wrong way to deal with their pain. Tell me more about what you saw when you watched the geese?"
"There isn't much more to tell. They swam around and drank and ate the fish and bread that people would throw around the ground when they came out of the pond."
"So God isn't the only one who provided for them."
He looks at her and nodded his head slightly and then there is a buzzing on his cell phone. He looks at the phone and then says, "I would love to talk more but I have to go now. It was a pleasure meeting you."
"I enjoyed our conversation Spencer and remember God does provide and protect the heroes too."
He gets up and goes out of the library.
Later at the BAU offices he places his book bag on the table and opens it up to discover a box with his name on it. Opening the box he discovers an ornament of an angel with six geese laying together etched on her skirt and in her right hand is a book while her left hand is on the head of a small child with a halo and wings.