He came, soaring gracefully, from the North...an almost imperceptible blur of blue and scarlet knifing through the brisk winter's air. A child, being half-dragged and half-carried by his preoccupied mother, spied the fleeting blur as it whizzed past a crowded shopping mall parking lot. "Mama!" he cried incredulously scanning the heavens for another glimpse of the bright night traveler. "Didja see him?!?"
"See who?" The boy’s mother said absently as she fumbled around in her purse for her car keys.
"I saw him! Up there!" The boy said, wide-eyed and giddy, pointing to the sky.
His mother opened the car door and stuffed her purchases into the back seat. "That's nice, honey," she said as she lifted him into the passenger seat and secured him with the seat belt. "You can tell me all about it later."
She went around and got into the driver's seat. She started the engine and looked back for a chance to pull out. "Right now we've got to hurry home and get everything ready for the big day..."
The boy sighed dejectedly. "Okay, Mama. But I really did see him...flying over the city..."
The woman, warmed by a sudden realization, smiled. "Oh..." She turned and took his face gently into her hands. "Well of course you saw him flying over the city, Michael...it is Christmas Eve after all and that's exactly where he belongs on this night of nights."
She kissed his forehead and then turned back to drive. Michael smiled and pressed his face to the window searching the dark skies for the traveler as the car pulled out into traffic for the short ride to the warmth of home.
The blur came to rest upon the top of the tallest building in the city. The blur became a man...a tall and powerful man...his burnished red boots softly crunching the fresh snow on the roof.
He looked out over the festive, dancing lights of the city...of his city. (He paused and smiled at that thought knowing full well that all the cities of the fragile blue Earth were his cities...so many responsibilities, all freely accepted.)
His kind, knowing eyes grew softly opaque and, randomly, the lives of some of the citizens of the city were fleetingly known to him: shoppers scurrying through the stores one final time...parents cursing and laughing and cursing again as they struggle to assemble magical wonders with only perseverance and arcane instructions to guide them...children sleeping and trying to sleep and pretending to sleep with visions of reindeer dancing in their minds...the faithful gathered in the myriad houses of God reaffirming their continuing gratitude for His gifts.
He saw them all...heard them all...discreetly glancing past each life but feeling that much more content and reassured for having shared even a fleeting instant with each of them.
The twinkle returned to his eyes as his field of vision contracted. It was a good night, he thought, a soft and peaceful night.
His thoughts drifted to his mother...the warm and wise woman who had taken an orphaned child as her own and raised him with all the love her abundant heart had to give. She was, he was certain, fussing with pies or some such at that very moment.
A glance across the miles confirmed this almost instantly. His father and his wife were trimming the stately tree in the living room...his father was telling a story with uncustomary animation (no doubt an embarrassing tale from his son's childhood) and his lady love was laughing that magical laugh of hers.
The crowning star was waiting patiently in its padded box for the tall man's arrival (that he would place the star was lifelong tradition...his father would have it no other way.)
The tall man smiled and drew a measure of bracing air into his mighty lungs. And then, with nary an afterthought, he leapt boldly into the night, his great scarlet cloak billowing gracefully behind him. He cruised slowly, silently, around the city once more chuckling warmly whenever the inevitable "Look! Up in the sky!" reached his all-hearing ears.
"Merry Christmas, Metropolis," he murmured affectionately as he turned towards the west and flew, straight and true, to the comforting warmth and love of his boyhood home and another blessed Christmas with the most important people in his life.
(for Kal)
