9: nightfall

Still, Gifting Day was much with them, and they were reluctant to part with their gifts, and begged to know if their gifts would be waiting for them when they awoke, so they could play with them again.

“Tonight you will sleep,” the mother told them, “and tomorrow you will awaken, and you will each have a new cloak and new spectacles and a new key, and the Gifting will begin again.”

“But Mother!” they protested. “We like these gifts. We want these gifts. Can we not keep them? Can we not take today’s wonderful gifts forward into tomorrow?”

“Beloved children, tonight as you sleep you will remember all the Gifting Days, and all the gifts they have brought you. And you will choose for yourselves the cloaks and spectacles you will wear the next time, and the key that will guide you. And then, tomorrow, when you awaken, it will be as your very first Gifting Day, and all the gifts will be new, eternally.”

“We choose the cloak and spectacles and keys?” the children asked. “You do not choose for us?”

“No,” the mother said. “You do the choosing.”

The children thought about this, too, in silence, until out of the stillness one last child’s-voice drifted, scarcely a sigh: 

“Mother, this must be very good.”

“You are good, my beloved,” the mother said. 

And now she moved among them, kissing each one gently, tucking them safely into their beds. 

“Now hush,” she said. “I love you,” and her words were borne back to her in a billion billion whispers, mere murmurs, as sleep slipped among the children, touched them, one by one, and welcomed them into its embrace.

: : : : : : : : : :

That night the children slept, deeply and well, and, sleeping, remembered. And in the morning when they awoke it was with a shiver of excitement.

For Gifting Day had come ... at last.