There are nights like this, nights like velvet, and you can't describe them any other way. Nights where the mist hovers seductively around streetlights, creating muted halos that are just this side of pink. Nights when the snow curls around and blankets every footstep, where you feel as if you could fall into a snowdrift and never freeze, never feel the cold, if only to feel that soft unbreakable silence forever.
Tonight would have been perfect like that, only there was no snow. I lamented to Alex about this, and he sighed. We talked about Christmas dreams... things we had always wanted to do. Alex's grandfather owns some land, and his family has always wanted to build a cabin there. They tried a few years ago, but it was an utter failure. Alex has always wanted to go back to that, to finish it, to have his own family spend their Christmases there with him. To cut down their own tree, to drink hot chocolate, to build a fire and be blocked in by three feet of pure snow. He told me he had such a pristine vision of a Christmas spent that way.
My own Christmas dream, simple and silly, was to go caroling in period clothing... brilliant reds and greens, top hats and cravats and cloaks, fingerless gloves and wonderful harmonies. To throw a traditional Christmas party, as if it had just stepped from the pages of Dickens, fresh-faced and cold from the journey. Bashful kisses under the mistletoe... some that didn't mean a thing and some that perhaps meant too much. Wassail and charades and dancing.
What's your Christmas dream?