The snow fell like little diamonds on the two as they walked, deep in conversation. Oblivious to the scenes around them, they reminded the company president of two ants as he glanced down from the window of his top floor office before returning to his work. As the friends made their way past the large window of a corner café, a patron looked out and saw that in the intensity of their conversation, they did not notice the woolen scarf of the one closest to the window had caught on the window ledge, was pulled from where it had carelessly rested on his coat and now lay in the gathering snow beneath. An old woman in a thread-bare coat turned the corner they had just rounded, found the scarf and, crossing herself, bent to retrieve it, wrapping it around her neck to gain its precious warmth. The stars began to come out, winking here and there in the dark velvet sky and casting pinprick lights from their million miles away in the heavens. The two increased their pace, as they trudged up a slight hill in their walk.

The voice of one rose, “I’m telling you, all of us want a miracle,”

“If such things exist,” the other interrupted.

“If such things exist,” the one acknowledged, “but no one wants to be in the place it would take to get one. Nobody wants to be in the place where a miracle is their only option. Who wants to have everything taken away with nothing to fall back on? Who wants to feel so desperate they think they’ll go crazy?”

His companion nodded his head.

“At any rate,” the companion replied, “if someone did witness a miracle,”

“If such things exist,” the one reminded him.

“If such things exist,” the companion agreed,” he would have had to wish for it or ask for it for a very long time, I would think.”

“Oh, no doubt about it,” the one remarked, as they unwittingly passed the life-size crèche in the yard of a local church, “a person would absolutely need to know they needed it before they witnessed a miracle.”