Samhain, a Halloween story

Title: Samhain, a Halloween story
Author: Lynn Fox
Pairing: Grissom and Sara
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None
Summary: Halloween fic, with a slightly different touch.
Author’s Notes: Being pagan myself, I thought it would be nice to tell all of you a bit about the rituals that are done on Samhain, or Halloween. The lyrics are from a pagan chant. They inspired me to write this story.
Disclaimer: Neither Grissom nor Sara are mine. I don’t expect anything in return of my writing, I just hope that people enjoy it.

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Fire red, summer's dead,
Yet shall it return.
Clear and bright in the night,
Burn, fire, burn!

Dance the ring, luck to bring,
When the year's aturning.
Chant the rhyme at Hallowstime,
When the fire's burning.

It had seemed silly at first, to buy a house with a fire place in Las Vegas. Weather would only turn moderately cold in wintertime, and even then temperatures wouldn’t drop low enough to produce even a tiny snowflake.

Sara wanted a fireplace though. A real one, that you could throw pine logs in, and enjoy the smell of them burning, crumbling. She’d throw pine cones in, she had decided, because she remembered the crackling sound they’d make when on fire.

Her aunt in Montana had owned a fire place. She had lived in a wooden cabin right up there in the mountains. She’d spend winters there, when she was a kid. Sometimes it would be over Christmas, sometimes between Thanksgiving and Halloween. She’d be allowed to skip school then. It was one of few things she was allowed to do. She didn’t particularly like missing out on school, but she’d learn a great deal from her aunt June, and the best part was that she was there, in snow, just not ‘home’.

Her aunt would teach her about the trees in the forrest, the animals that roamed the meadows. Sara had spent one summer in Montana, and she had been amazed at the variety of animals normally hidden by the blanket of snow.

On Halloween there had never been trick-or-treating, or costume parties like she knew the kids in California attended. She’d walk through the woods with her aunt, all day long, then come home and carve pumpkins the size of a small calf. They’d cook together, pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, and leave plates outside, and she was always allowed to stay up late.

And they’d sing songs. Sara still remembered some of them.

She never quite understood why her aunt celebrated Halloween so different from the rest of the world, nor why she called it ‘sowing’, and why she’d be happy one moment, and a bit sad the next.

But she didn’t care until it was too late. Until she’d been taken from her home and put with a foster family, and never spent another Halloween in Montana again. She learned then of her aunts paganism, of Samhain, of Yule, of all the pagan sabbats. She learned, and she remembered.

Fire glow, vision show
Of the heart's desire,
When the spell's chanted well
Of the witching fire.

Dance the ring, luck to bring,
When the year's aturning.
Chant the rhyme at Hallowstime,
When the fire's burning.

Grissom didn’t mind the fire place. Not at all. It had proven to be a good place to sit, and read a book, and sometimes do naughtier stuff than that. They had bought two large chairs to put in front of the fire place, and when temperature dropped sufficiently to not be complete idiots for putting the fire place on, they’d light it and spent hours in it’s heat, sometimes simply gazing into the dancing flames.

He distinctly remembered both the first time he had been sent out for logs, and the first time he had tried to light the fire. Both hadn’t been very easy tasks. After having fumbled with small twigs, medium sticks and actual logs, he had given up, and bought a bottle of gel to light the fire with ease. Maybe not as romantic as planned, but more romantic than a swearing man because the twigs wouldn’t catch fire, he had figured.

Sara had told him how she would like to toss pine cones in there, and he had called a friend up north to send him a big box of pine cones. It had been his Christmas gift the year before, along with a necklace, and a book on English literature. She’d read the book, didn’t wear the necklace that often, but she’d nearly strangled him in her hugs when she opened the crate of pine cones.

It was Halloween, the third time they would spend it together. He had learned over the past few years that this was always a special occasion for Sara. She hadn’t ever taken the day off before they had bought the house with the fire place, but ever since then the 31st of October had been systematically crossed off as personal time.

He came home in the afternoon, after a near-double shift, to a house smelling like pumpkins, a lit fireplace, and Sara humming a slow tune that seemed to repeat itself a lot. Bruno was sound asleep on his pillow, an orange ball with a strange face clutched between his front legs.

“Hello my dear,” he said to Sara when he found her in the kitchen, tossing pumpkin seeds into the bin. He kissed her lightly on her cheek, and looked over her shoulder at the small pumpkin she was carving. “Aren’t those supposed to look mean?” he asked.

“No way, look, it’s such a small pumpkin, I figured it was a baby.” She nudged her head to the right. “His mommy and daddy are over there.”

On the kitchen table sat two slightly bigger pumpkins, one with enormous eye lashes.

“Can I help?” Grissom asked, walking around Sara to grab a sharp knife from the drawer.

“Sure, there’s two left, you can make them as mean-looking as you like.”

They spent the remainder of the afternoon carving and chatting. After dinner –Grissom couldn’t remember having had so many different types of food with pumpkin before in his life, except for maybe the previous year- they sat down in front of the fire.

“I saw you bought Bruno a Halloween ball,” Grissom said.

“Yes, it was on sale, and I thought it would probably be less of a mess than giving him his own pumpkin.”

She told him stories of her youth then, and she sang, and they talked about what the future would hold for them. She told him that she would take their kids to Montana some day, and although it surprised him that she was talking about having kids, he didn’t feel as scared as he thought he would.

He realized how creating life with the woman he loved would in a way bring back ancestors from years before, and would make his blood run through veins of children he might never even meet, hundreds of years from now.

For just a moment he realized how he was just a small sliver in the world’s time, and that his past and future would forever be connected.

Fire spark, when nights are dark,
Makes our winter's mirth.
Red leaves fall, earth takes all,
Brings them to rebirth.

Dance the ring, luck to bring,
When the year's aturning.
Chant the rhyme at Hallowstime,
When the fire's burning.

Their bodies warm after having sat in the fire for so long, they went to bed, crawling up against each other to heat the cold covers. Through the window they could see the rising of the waning moon, and the piercing brightness of the stars.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Sara whispered, “I used to sit outside wrapped in a blanket, watching the moon for hours. It hardly ever happens that the stars are as bright as they are tonight.”

Grissom softly kissed her neck, and sighed. “Yes, I remember being a kid, and being able to enjoy the sun, and the moon for days at a time. When do they start losing their magic? When do we stop caring about them? I hardly ever take the time to look up at the moon for even a minute, and I work nights, I spend hours in the moonlight, but I never seem to notice.”

“We’re noticing now.”

He wrapped his arms more securely around her as they kept stargazing from their own warm bed.

“Do you really want children?” he suddenly whispered.

Sara turned around, and frowned. “I think so, I know we haven’t really discussed it before. Is that a problem for you?”

“No, no problem. I just want to make sure, so we can teach them not to forget about the beauty that surrounds them, not to take anything for granted. I took love for granted for a long time. I don’t anymore.”

They kissed then, and that night they took the first step on their path to the future to bind them eternally, in the blood of their offspring.

Fire fair, earth and air,
And the heaven's rain,
And blessed be, and so may we,
At Hallowstide again.

Dance the ring, luck to bring,
When the year's aturning.
Chant the rhyme at Hallowstime,
When the fire's burning.