The cop goes up a few notches in my estimation. 

Daniel nods.

“Smart kid, huh?”  He ruffles Daniel’s hair and adds, “So, you understand Jack didn’t grab your arm on purpose?  He didn’t mean to hurt you or scare you?”

The kid nods again and sniffs back tears, but doesn’t lift his head from Teal’c’s shoulder.

After the fact, my hands are shaking so badly I have to shove them in my pockets.  My heart’s pounding faster than if I just ran the Boston Marathon and the adrenalin is kicking into high gear. 

“Carter, make sure I didn’t hurt him.  Daniel, let her look at your wrist, please.”  I shove off the bench, bending to pick up the lost picture as I get to my feet.  “I’ll catch up with you guys in a bit.”

“No.”  Daniel pushes off Teal’c’s shoulder and sits up.

“One of us needs to make sure I didn’t hurt you,” I tell him quietly. 

“No, don’t go away.”

“Will you let me look at it?” 

“Everything okay here?” 

It takes every ounce of self-control I possess not to deck the guy who slaps a hand on my shoulder and leans into our space.

“Slight accident is all,” Pete responds.  “Thanks for checking, but we’re fine.  We’ll let you know if we need anything.”

And Shanahan scores again, the voice inside my head announces, as if calling a game. 

The host takes the broad hint, gives a nod, and departs. 

Rapidly.

Couldn’t have done it better myself. 

“Come on, Sport.  You gotta let one of us look at your arm, or we’re never going to get out to skate,” Pete cajoles.

Reluctantly, Daniel holds his arm out to me.  Carter and Pete step back out of the way and I step closer to Teal’c.

 “Will you let me hold you?”

He leans to me immediately and without hesitation.  And as I take him in my arms, he presses his cheek to mine and whispers again, “I’m sorry, Jack,” his voice still thick with tears.  Both arms go around my neck and the knees get locked at my waist.

I squeeze him slightly as I back up to the bench and sit down again. 

“Why don’t we let the two of you work this out?”  Pete grabs their bag off the bench and steers Carter away.  Teal’c, after a long look at me, hoists his bag and stalks after them.

For awhile, I’m not sure who’s clinging to whom.  We’re both pretty shaken. 

A couple of folks eye the end of our bench like they might be thinking about taking up residence, but decide, after a look from me, it’s probably not a good place to land right now. 

Another long sigh and the urgency of Daniel’s hold eases a bit.  “You scared me.”

“Yeah, well, guess what?  I scared myself.  I’m really sorry, Daniel.  And I still want to see your arm.”

“It’s okay, you didn’t hurt me.”

“We can ask that guy I nearly hit for some ice.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” he repeats, though he still has it cradled to his chest and he’s still chewing away on that ring finger.

“Daniel, I’ve only got a coax or two left in me before I use my Colonel voice.  Please cooperate?” 

The 6.0 Richter scale shudder I’ve been trying to suppress ripples through both of us and Daniel pulls back to look at me.

“Are you okay?”

I eyeball him for a second before answering honestly, “No.”  I close my eyes and lean my forehead lightly against his, moving a hand up to support the miniature shoulders.  “No, I’m not.  I could have hurt you badly.  If Pete hadn’t stopped me I might have broken your wrist.” 

“But you didn’t.  You always tell me that’s the important thing.” 

When another shudder rocks us both, he pats my cheek lightly and holds up his wrist for inspection. 

“I’m okay, Jack.  See, it’s not even red.  You didn’t hurt me.” 

A thorough inspection eases my mind a little, if not my conscience.  I have so got to stay in the moment with a kid around, can’t ever again be off visiting my less salubrious adventures when I’m on parent duty.

“Hershey says there’s been enough drama for the evening, let’s get on with the fun stuff.”

“He does, does he?”  I glance at the dog, who grins at me.  “So Hershey thinks you’re ready to try ice skating?”

“Yep.”  Daniel wiggles to be let down.  “Where’re my skates?”  Hershey jumps up, barking like a madman as Teal’c strolls up again.

“Are you ready for ice skating applications, Danieljackson?”

Hershey thuds down on his backside with a sheepish grin.  I don’t think he recognized Teal’c until he heard him.

“Ice skating applications?  As in skating lessons?”  I inquire, just to be certain. 

“What happened to my skates?”  Daniel is bent over peering under the bench, looking for his skates.  “I knew what he meant, Jack.  Did you see where I left my skates?”  He climbs back up on the bench to look over behind the seat. 

“Did you leave them at the slide when you went back to go down again?”

“I don’t think so.” 

“Perhaps Majorcarter has assumed custody of your equipment.” 

“Oh yeah, Pete had ‘em when we went back to the slide.  They must have them still.”

Hershey jumps up again, straining at his leash in an effort to follow as Daniel zigzags through the throng headed for Carter and Pete.  They’ve found another bench within sight of us and are exchanging their boots for skates. 

“Are you planning to skate this evening, O’Neill?”

“In a bit.”

I’m in no hurry; we have a couple of hours here.  I can sit and observe for awhile without attracting attention.  That is, if Teal’c will give up his bodyguard stance and sit down. 

“Not skating, T?”

“It does not appear so at the moment, O’Neill.”

I watch our trio head toward the reservoir, Daniel awkwardly hitching his skates along between Carter and Pete.  As they hit the ice, they both grab him by the elbows, which is a good thing since both feet fly out from under him the instant his blades touch the glassy black surface. 

The ice looks like its been cleared for a good half mile out, though it’s a little difficult to judge in the light of the torches they’ve planted along the lake shore and across the ice at the far end.  Like a stripe on a skunk, a ribbon of molten silver flows down the center of the ice, poured out by the moon on the rise toward its zenith.  The rest of the ice looks like obsidian flecked with gold where it catches and reflects back the torch light.  

“In general, Teal’c, it would be helpful if you looked less like a bodyguard and more like a body builder, ya know.”

“I do not.”

“Yeah, guessed that, too.” 

There’s nobody in this crowd I would look at twice and apparently Teal’c agrees, because he comes around in front of the bench and takes a seat beside me. 

“So, what do you think?” I ask quietly.

“I believe Danieljackson would be quite safe with anyone here this evening,” Teal’c responds in a low rumble.

”My thought, too.”  Not that I’m going to let him out of my sight.

“Agreed,” Teal’c intones, reading my mind.  “I believe I will test the ice, O’Neill.”

“Have fun.”

Teal’c raises an eyebrow at me, but gets on with the business of putting on his skates.  I wonder idly, as I watch Carter and Pete tow Daniel up and down the shore line, if Teal’c learned to skate on Chulak.  I know they have winter and snow there, so there are probably frozen lakes or ponds, but it didn’t really look like the kind of place that has sports rinks on every other corner.  And I have a feeling the only kind of Olympics taking place on that planet are the compete-against-your-fellow-Jaffa-for-a-place-on-the-local-Goa’uld’s-goon-squad.

Out on the ice, Daniel’s let go of Pete’s hand and has one arm out for balance, but he’s definitely skating.  He’s picking up his feet and moving them in time with Carter’s gentle glides. 

It seems to me that Daniel in this incarnation has a lot more physical confidence then he ever had as an adult.  For some reason, I think he got stuck in that awkward, uncoordinated, teenage stage in his body awareness.  He’s never been particularly graceful, but until I saw this incarnation in action, I always thought his running into things had more to do with his inhuman ability to focus than his coordination. 

This incarnation is supremely comfortable in his body.  Of course, this incarnation hasn’t experienced the years of oppression adult Daniel must have lived through - at least not physically.  I know that left scars on his soul, but I never realized just how much it had affected his physical posture.  Sure, the self-hug never really went away, though over the years, as he began to recognize that other people were actually willing to put their arms around him, he resorted to it less and less.  It took years more for him to get to the place where he was comfortable with that kind of physical affection.

Teal’c steps onto the ice like he steps out of the wormhole, as if he’s just stepping across a threshold, and glides toward the moon’s runway.  Speaking of graceful, Teal’c is poetry in motion. 

“Teal’c!  Teal’c!  Look at me, I’m skating!” Daniel hollers, flapping his free arm wildly, which causes him to loose his balance. 

Pete scoops him up from behind, breaking his fall and righting him in one smooth motion. 

I remember my mom threatening to belt a pillow to my ass more than once when I was first learning to skate on our pond in Minnesota.  In those days our house had the pond that froze over first and lawsuits were opportunities only for folks who had too much money to begin with.  The entire neighborhood learned to skate in our north forty.  There was never any adult supervision, no one telling us you can’t do that, it’s too dangerous, and nobody had a fence around their pond. 

Teal’c’s response is too low to hear, but Daniel is transferred to his care and Carter and Pete join hands and swiftly disappear into the shadows on the far side of the reservoir.

Since Teal’c has him, I figure I can take my eyes off him long enough to put on my own skates.  It’s not that I don’t trust Officer Shanahan; Pete doesn’t know Daniel like we do.  Blink and he can disappear on you.  And Carter’s always a little distracted when the hunky boyfriend is around.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s entitled.  I just don’t let my guard down when Daniel’s with them.

When I straighten from lacing the boots, T has picked Daniel up and is doing lazy figure eights up the path of the moon.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say they’re dancing.  I’m guessing what I’m seeing has been picked up from watching something like Dancing with Your Idol or whatever the show is.  Teal’c’s good that way, he can see something once and immediately replicate the patterns of movement perfectly.  He long ago mastered all Earth forms of martial arts, plus a few we’ve run across on other worlds.

“Hershey, you want to take a run at the ice?” 

The leg of the bench has been set inside the loop of his leash and on skates it’s a long way back down, but we manage and Hershey sedately trots along side as I hobble down to the ice.  

He’s a little wary as he sniffs the edge and gingerly pats a paw at the frozen stuff before edging out onto the reservoir’s surface.  He looks up at me, grinning that shit-eating grin he saves for when he’s done something really bad or he’s really happy.  I don’t need Daniel to interpret, Hershey’s just glad to be going along for the fun; he thought he was going to get stuck back there tied to the bench.  While he gets his ice legs under him, I skate around him a couple of times, then head out slowly, letting Hershey get the hang of this slippery stuff, toward Teal’c and Daniel. 

They’ve reached the end of the runway and have turned around.  Actually the ribbon of moonlight stretches as far down the reservoir as I can see.  They turned back when they reached the torches planted in the ice.  Daniel is back on his own feet, his glides a little longer, knees bent accommodatingly.  He’s definitely getting the feel of it now.  Teal’c swings him up to skate the last twenty yards over to me and swishes to a stop, spraying ice all over the dog who shakes it off with an indignant yelp. 

“Did you see us, Jack?  We were skating on the Avenue of Dreams.  Want to go out there with me?  I want down, Teal’c.  I want to show Jack how I can skate.” 

Teal’c obligingly sets him down on the ice, bending to keep an arm around his waist until he’s solidly planted with his skates at a ninety-degree angle. 

“I will release you now.”

“Okay, I’m ready.”  Daniel wobbles a little as he swishes out first one skate, then the other, and glides a moment before getting into the rhythm. 

Hershey, careful to keep his distance, trots along beside him, quite as confident as Daniel on the ice.

“Way to go, Sport.  You’ve really gotten the hang of it.  Like it?”

“It feels like I’m sailing like the moon!  Come on, Jack, you have to catch me if I fall!”

“There is a rough spot between the fourth and fifth shore torches; however, it is visible and you have only to steer him around it.  He will be fine on his own if he wishes to skate by himself.  It is good that he has experienced these physical body forms of learning, I believe.  Should Danieljackson be resized to normal, this may carry over into his adult manifestation.”

What did I tell ya?  Great minds think alike.  I hope it’s true.
,
“I’ll watch for the rough spot,” is my only reply.

“Are you coming?  Hurry up or we’ll leave you behind!” 

“Have fun, T.”

“I believe, O’Neill, I have seen much more of your world since Danieljackson’s downsizing, then I ever have before.  I will endeavor to go have fun.”

“Hey, if that’s a subtle dig at my never following through on my promise to show you our world, it went right over my head.”

“In which case, it is a good thing it was not.”  And there goes the usual head thingy Teal’c can use for an infinite number of responses. 

“Sweet.”  I dig a toe pick into the ice and head after Daniel.  When I glance back, our resident Jaffa Ursus has blended so well into the shadows it takes a second for me to find him.

The teenagers have evidently taken up residence on Daniel’s Avenue of Dreams.  I’m about to suggest we turn around when I realize the heavy beat I’m hearing is actually a dance beat.  A Mambo, or maybe the Rumba, we’re too far away to distinguish.

“Oh,” Daniel says, disappointment evident, “they’re on our street.”

“Sounds like they’re about to dance.  Want to go watch?  Or find someplace else to skate?”

Hershey looks like he’s getting into the swing of things already.  His tail’s going ninety miles an hour and he’s sniffing like he wants to trot right over and join the dance.

“I don’t want to watch, I want to skate.”

So we skate around the perimeter of what looks like a competition getting under way.  They’re relatively close to the shore and there’s at least a 100 yards of moon ribbon still available for us to skate. 

An hour or so of chasing torch light on the ice and trying to entice the moon down to play with them has both Daniel and Hershey panting. 

Daniel gets a ride.  The dog has to fend for himself and he’s not happy when we’re sidetracked by the dance competition and stop to watch. 

We’ve been standing watching for about fifteen minutes when a young woman skates over and glides to a stop beside us. 

“Hey, Colonel.  Come and join us.”  She waggles her fingers invitingly. “Daniel can stay with Dulcie for a bit.”

“Uh – do I know you?”

She smiles - and what a smile it is.  “Yes, sir.” 

But that doesn’t give me any hints and I look at her a little more closely.

“For cryin’ out loud, you’re Misiel’s kid!  You’re . . . uhm . . . bigger . . . taller, I mean taller, than last time I saw you.”

She flirts another smile at me.  “Is this your little boy?  I remember you were married to that very nice lady – Sarah?  She was a lot of fun.  Is she here tonight?  I met Daniel earlier this evening, and Hershey.” 

She bends gracefully to rub the dog’s ears and Hershey suddenly looks a lot less pissed that his ass is on the ice.

Before I can even think of a reply, Daniel jumps in to bail me out.  “Jack’s not my dad, he’s just my guardian for now.  And he’s divorced from Sarah, so, no, she’s not here tonight.  I want to dance.”

“Come on then, if Colonel O’Neill won’t dance with me, you can.” 

Daniel slides out of my arms like the eel he sometimes imitates, hits the ice, and skates around Misiel’s kid.  I have no idea what her name is.

“Merisol,” she says, grinning as Daniel reaches up to take her hand.  “We’ll be back in a bit.  It’s an ice Salsa party, feel free to join in; you don’t have to have a partner if you’re shy.”

Yeah, right.  Like I could contort this forty-something body into those gyrations.  Not happening.

But I’ve got find Teal’c and Carter because watching Daniel dance with Merisol rates another Mastercard moment. 

He watched her for a couple of minutes and picked it right up.  On ice skates no less. 

And boy do these kids have rhythm.

Within minutes, Carter and Pete flank me on one side, and two seconds later, Teal’c pulls up to watch on the other side.  Two minutes more and T’s been pulled out onto Daniel’s Avenue of Dreams by a potential dance partner.  And while he’s not nearly as much fun to watch as Daniel swinging those miniscule hips, Teal’c for damn sure has the moves.

“Priceless,” Carter giggles, stealing my line. 

Hey, everybody’s stealing my lines tonight. 

“Come on, Pete.”

“Uh, Sam . . .” the cop reluctantly lets Carter pull him into the middle of it, but I hear him telling her he’s more of a Fred Astaire than a Ricky Martin.

“Sorry, Hershey, guess you’re stuck with the old fart tonight.”

If there was a competition, it’s turned into a free-for-all.  There are dancers strung out on the ribbon of moonlight from the shore to the torches delineating the safe skating area and you’d never know they were on ice.

It’s fun to watch, but the dog and I are about frozen by the time our dancers decide to throw in the proverbial towel. 

We skate away with multiple invitations to come back literally ringing off the ice.  Daniel and Teal’c were the hit of the party.  

Carter hands me her phone as we make the final approach from the Avenue to the beach. 

“Press this button to scroll, sir.”

“Let me see, let me see!”  Daniel clamors. He’s wrapped inside T’s coat and hanging over his shoulder.  He’s also exhausted, wired to the max, and so cold his teeth are starting to chatter.

“You can see when we get in the sleigh,” I tell him, flashing through a series of pictures of three-foot-high Daniel dancing with some lovely women. 

And then there’s one of Daniel without a partner.  “Carter, save this as large as you can and email it to me, would you?  This one needs to go into his album, too.”

It looks as if the moon has melted into a glowing puddle under his ice skates and he’s got his head thrown back so his hair is flying.  His hands are up as though he’s snapping his fingers in time to the beat, though I know he hasn’t mastered the art of snapping his fingers yet, and one small hip is thrust out so far it looks as though he’s hanging off his toe picks, suspended in the thrall of the dance somewhere between bliss and ecstasy.

I’m going to add a caption and get it framed.

The Littlest Ancient. 

Our sleigh is in the middle of the pack, so we end up chatting amiably with Giles for fifteen or twenty minutes before it’s our turn to leave. 
 
“So how did an Australian end up in Colorado driving a sleigh?” I wonder out loud, rearranging Daniel, who’s snuggled in with me under one of the lap robes, so there are less elbows poking me in the ribs. 

Hershey grunts his annoyance and wiggles around until he’s found a spot under the blanket, too.  Teal’c again appears more Ursus than Jaffa, and Carter and Pete are doing things under their blanket that can’t be discussed in front of a seven-year-old.

All right, I only hope they’re doing things that shouldn’t be discussed.  If I’d thought of it sooner, we could have hitched a ride back with someone else and let them have this time alone.

“Not so different from herding ponies,” Giles laughs.

Oh, yeah, how did an Australian end up driving sleighs in Colorado?

“I grew up in the outback, born and bred to the saddle, but with a will to wander.  Ran away at seventeen and joined the Merchant Marines.  That was twenty years ago.  Settled here with a mate, grew up a family and decided to stay put.  Just never lost the way of speaking I guess, and horses are in my blood.”

“Oh,” Carter pipes up, “you’re the owner?”

The engaging grin flashes again.  “I like to keep on top of my crew, Miss.  And something in the air lured me out tonight.  How was the skating?”

“We got to do ice dancing,” Daniel bubbles, holding up the phone.  “See?”

“It’s kind of small to see from that distance, Daniel.”

Giles leans down toward us and must have great vision, because he recognizes the picture immediately.  “Ahhh, the Salsa Dancers were out tonight.  A pretty sight they are on the ice.”

“I wondered if they were regulars,” Carter muses.

“That they are.  Come every other week or so, and always on nights like this when they say they can dance on the moon.”

“That was the best part,” Daniel enthuses.  “I like that, dancing on the moon.   Did you see us dancing on the moon, Jack?”

“I did.  Didn’t you see Carter’s picture?”  I show it to him, and like the uncomplicated seven-year-old he is, he’s delighted with it. 

“Wow, it does look like I’m dancing on the moon.”

I wonder how he’ll react to that picture when he’s forty again. 

Hope I’m still around to see it.

“That picture reminds me of the one I have on my desk.  The one I stole from the poster Captain Ward put together for Daniel’s welcome back party.  From the auction, sir?”

“Yeah?”  I know what picture she’s talking about, but frankly I don’t see the remotest similarity.

“Daniel, without any inhibitions?”

I look at the picture again.  “Ahhh, I see exactly what you mean.”

“Looks like it’s our turn.  You lot ready?  Settled?  Let me get us out of here and into the woods and you can drive again if you wish, little man.”

Tired as he is, Daniel instantly sits up.  He’s yawning prodigiously and I suspect is afraid he’ll fall asleep if he stays cuddled up.  He leans across the sleigh as we start off, creating a sizable hole for the wind to sneak into, and hands Carter her phone.

“Thanks, Sam.  Will you put those pictures in my album?”

“Sure, maybe we could work on it a little more this weekend.”

They’ve had a lot of fun putting together this scrap book as Carter calls it, not to mention the hours they’ve spent sitting on the sofa pouring over the thing.  Daniel loves to chatter about what we were doing and where we were when a particular photo was taken.  

Quote me and I’ll deny it with my last breath, but I get a big kick out of listening to the two of them babble.  I never imagined any living room of mine would ever again ring with a child’s bright, uninhibited laughter.  And Carter manages to pull it out of him often; I think she’s as addicted to that sound as I am.

Before we reach the woods, I can hear the symphony tuning up for the finale. Shades of the overture, with subtly different harmonies and variant tempos twining about the melody. 

As we’re slowing for Giles to lift Daniel onto the driver’s seat, I glance up at the sky.

“Carter?”

“Sir?”

“Did you happen to check the almanac?”

“For what?”

“Look up.”  I raise my voice a little to be heard about the orchestra.  “Daniel, look up at the sky.”

Giles casts a quick glance up, too, and reins in the horses so we come to a complete stop. 

“Are you all anxious to get back to the car park?” he inquires, hanging onto Daniel as he turns to look back at us again.  “If not, there’s a smallish hill not far out of our way, it will give us clear view of the meteor shower.”

“Oh, let’s go to the hill!” Daniel exclaims.

“To the hill?” Giles asks, though he knows he’s gotten his answer.

“To the hill,” the adults chorus.

Even the horses sense something unusual is going on and stand quietly in their traces as the humans crease the blanket of winter silence with our oo’s and ah’s.  The sky looks as though an artist with a paintbrush full of stars has flicked his brush at the night sky, spattering stars like paint specs against the velvet canvas. 

As we watch, breathing frost crystals into the night air, glittering shards of light fly toward us, winking out at the last possible moment before showering down on our heads.   Daniel actually ducks a time or two, when it looks like one’s going to land in the sleigh with us. 

“Ohhhhh!” Daniel articulates what we’re all thinking as weirdly bent bands of phosphorescent colors, like tall blocks laid side by side, undulate across our panorama, shimmering with iridescence.  “Jack, it’s like the sun dog we saw on P8 . . .”

“That, kiddo,” I snatch him off his seat and tuck him under the lap robe with me, “is something you may never see in Colorado again in this lifetime.” 

“Oops,” he whispers conspiratorially.  

If I had Daniel’s poet’s soul I would describe it as ribbons of color – sea-turquoise, inside-of-a-conch-shell-pink, tulip-purple and halo-white, flickering like fluttering ribbons across the horizon.  They coalesce and divide again like living organisms, dancing to the silent orchestra we can sense, but not hear. 
 
Hershey bounds up to take Daniel’s place, head cocked as though he alone, among us, can hear the extra-terrestrial music.

“It’s the aurora borealis, Daniel,” Carter says in a hushed whisper.  “I’ve never seen it this far south though there are reports of having seen them as far south as Mexico and even at the Equator.”

I notice Pete’s mouth is hanging open in a manner reminiscent of adult Daniel.  It’s a habit I’m trying to break in this incarnation, so maybe it will transfer over when and if he gets resized. 

Multi-hued trails of stardust are shooting across the sky with the rapidity of fireworks on the Fourth of July, or maybe the trails are just mirroring the colors of the bending, rippling tints of their backdrop.

I’ve seen lots of meteor showers and I seen the northern lights a number of times, both growing up in Minnesota and places I’ve been stationed around the world, but I’ve never seen them play in harmony like this.

“Must have been a big one,” I comment quietly. 

I don’t know why we’re whispering, except it’s so awesome. 

“Big what?”  Daniel wants to know immediately.

“Geomagnetic storm.”

“What’s a geomagnetic storm?”

“Do not blemish it with elucidation, O’Neill,” Teal’c murmurs.  “Hush, Danieljackson, and observe the marvels of your universe.”

Behind Carter and Pete, Giles is whispering into his keyed radio about the light show going on up here. 

This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences you can never predict, except I’ve been having a lot of these hanging out with this incarnation of Daniel.  I swear he attracts this kind of natural phenomenon, as if the Earth itself is putting forth its best efforts to entertain him while he’s here in this form.

But then, it’s not just Earth, and maybe there’s a lesson in there somewhere for an old, hard-ass colonel.  Maybe I’ve been seeing my best friend as nothing but a trouble magnet for far too long. 

The light show lasts maybe fifteen minutes, the meteor shower lasts nearly thirty-five and there’s not a single ‘let’s move out’, even from Giles. 

I know you won’t believe it, but the end of the show is a gigantic ball of fire literally coming in on the right side of the horizon and flaming out as it hits our atmosphere on the far horizon.  It rides in magnificence across the sky like a flaming chariot drawn by emblazoned mythological horses.  I wonder briefly which SG teams are out there tonight and if there’s any chance it was a Goa’uld that just went down in flames.

“Hope they tracked that one,” Carter says into the silence.  “That was big enough to cause some damage when it hit the ground.”

“Wow,” Pete says, the awe in his voice clearly evident.  “Remind me to make time to hang around with you guys more often.”

“That was cool!” Daniel agrees.  “Can we come back out here tomorrow night?”

Carter’s laugh is quiet and floaty.  “Maybe not tomorrow night, Sport.  But let’s make sure we get to do this again before spring starts to melt the ice.  When do you close down, Giles?”

“The ice becomes testy around the beginning of March.  We don’t let skaters out beyond the 1st  or 2nd, unless we have a long, heavy cold snap.  The castle remains until it melts, but you’ve got a couple months yet to come again,” Giles replies.  “Are we ready, then?”  

At our nods, he snaps the reins, clucks to his horses and we sweep down the hill to the accompaniment of the wind and the water and the woods . . . and the folk who live here, too.

The last notes of our woods symphony trail into silence as the sleigh runners glide to a gentle stop.  Even the harness bells are mostly quiet, only an occasional head toss creating a musical tinkle. 

The magic of the night has tossed its glittering net of enchantment over everyone.  There’s an almost reverent hush as we depart our conjured conveyances and head over the snow bank to climb into the less mysterious confines of cars and trucks.

I shift my sleeping armful of Littlest Ancient to dig for keys and hand them over to Shanahan, who lifts an eyebrow at me.

“I don’t want to wake him up,” I offer lamely. 

All right, the truth of the matter is, I don’t want to let him go.  Nights like this I feel like the tether between us is real, and solid, and worth its weight in gold. 

~*~

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