He had one arm around her. His other hand had been idly caressing her arm. He turned to her now to say, not unexpected, “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, really,” she was forced to admit. “It is just a feeling that has come to me about our son—”

“Son?” he interrupted in surprise. “We’re having a son? You actually know this?”

“Well, yes, I had a dream about him. My dreams are usually quite accurate. But that has nothing to do with the gift we must make.”

“What gift?”

He was starting to sound frustrated. She couldn’t blame him. She often questioned herself, the feelings she got.

“We must put down on paper, how we met, how we came to love each other, how we defied our respective people to choose love rather than what was expected of us. We must write our story, Christoph.”

“Write it?” He sounded uncomfortable. “I’m not very good with the written word, Anna.”

She smiled at him. “You will do fine. I already know this.”

He rolled his eyes at her. “I’ve a better suggestion. Why don’t you do this writing that must be done—and by the by, why must it be done?”

“We must do this, not for our son, but for his children, and their children. What I have ‘felt’ is that our story will benefit one or more of these children. I don’t know when it will be of benefit, or why, I just know that it will. Perhaps I will know more about it at some future time, have other feelings about it, but just now, this is all I know.”

“Very well, I can accept that—I suppose. Yet I still don’t see why we both must do this. It only takes one person to tell a story.”

“True, except I can’t write about your feelings, Christoph. I can’t write about your thoughts. Only you can add these, to make our story complete. But if your style of writing bothers you this much, or if you’ve had thoughts you think I might question or tease you about, I will promise not to read what you write. This story is not for us, nor for our son, it’s for those who will come after, that we will likely never meet. We can lock it away, so no one that we know will ever see it.”

He sighed, then kissed her gently on the cheek to make his reluctant acquiescence a tad more graceful. “When do you want to begin?”

She hesitated for only a moment. “Tonight, on Christmas Eve. I have a feeling—”

“No more ‘feelings’ tonight,” he cut in with a moan.

She chuckled. “I didn’t say we have to write a lot tonight, just a beginning. Besides, I have another gift to deliver tonight that will take quite some time—in the delivering of it.”