The Librarians And the Advent List

Dec 5

It was late morning the next day when Cassandra found him in the Library. She was wearing something almost subdued for her. Well, subdued in the coloring at least. She was wearing candy cane striped tights and a light brown dress trimmed with white lace. Under the short sleeved dress she was wearing a long sleeved turtleneck with a pattern of gingerbread men and candy canes. A gingerbread man pin was among her accessories. He had a feeling upon inspection of her outfit that he knew what they were doing today.

"Are we makin' gingerbread men?"

"Close," she giggled. "But first we're going to one of my Christmas traditions."

A few minutes later, they'd stumbled through a janitor's closet into what looked like a science museum.

"Where are we?" Stone whispered to her.

"We're in the New York Hall of Science," she beamed. "And . . . ." She lead him around the corner to where he could see a massive bright display in front of him. "This is Gingerbread Lane."

"Gingerbread houses?" he asked perplexed although that wasn't just houses, that was a city.

"Over 1,000 of them. It's been breaking the Guinness World Record for a few years now. One man does all that himself!"

"Wow," was all Stone said, but Cassandra could tell he was impressed.

They spent a long time walking around, marveling at not just houses, but the whole world presented: businesses, churches, people, trees, buses, an entire little city made of cookies, icing and candy.

Cassandra, of course, was delighted. She'd been coming to the exhibit since it had begun and was always impressed by it. She also delighted in the faces of the children who had come into look at the exhibit. It was still early yet, so the children were too young for school, but they were absolutely entranced by what they saw in front of them. And a few of them got a kick out of Cassandra's outfit too.

But she smiled as she looked over at Stone who had wandered to the other side of the display. He had been a little reluctant to do this, she knew and she didn't blame him. After that mission in Oklahoma, she'd come to realize just how little pure joy Stone had had in his life. Even Christmas, which once had been a source of joy had been tainted for him. So to see that quiet look of awe on his face from something like this? Well this made it all worth it to Cassandra. Even if tomorrow he turned to her and said he was out.

"That was amazin'," Stone said to her as they finally turned to leave. "Really impressive. You said one guy did all that?"

She nodded, leading the way to the Back Door. "Takes him almost a year to do it all."

"So is that it?" he asked upon their return to the Annex. He looked like he was eager to get back to what he was doing but something in his tone suggested otherwise.

"Nope," Cassandra said, heading toward the Annex's kitchen. The table had been cleaned off and a couple of boxes sat on the table. "Not exactly the kind of thing we just saw, but I got us two gingerbread house kits, so I figured we'd give it a try."

Stone actually smiled, that delighted one that she liked seeing, before schooling his features into something more normal. She inwardly sighed, she hoped someday he'd be comfortable enough with her . . .with all of them . . .to let himself show excitement. But she made no comment on his slip and slid one box over to him.

It took them the whole afternoon, getting the gingerbread houses to stay was more difficult and required more icing than they thought. But at the end they had two decent looking gingerbread houses. Jacob's was more artistic, his attempt at a Victorian style home in candy. Cassandra's was of more precise construction but the decoration was much less artistic and much more of the 'how much candy can I get to stay on' variety.

"Well yours is more colorful," Stone said, not really hiding his teasing grin.

She playfully swatted his arm. "Well, I like them both." She sighed, looking at the clock. "Well, I should probably be getting to my lab to check on my experiments. See you tomorrow?"

Stone looked like he was going to say something but in the end settled for nodding. "I assume you're not gonna tell me what that is?"

She grinned mysteriously and walked out leaving him chuckling behind her. He carefully moved the gingerbread houses to a safe spot to dry and decided to run out to the craft shop to get some shellac to preserve them. She'd like that. So whistling, he took the other turn toward the street door.