Disclaimer: These are Marvels. This is fan-fic, which meant I borrowed Sam and Rahne. Many thanks to Em for the title.

    Rahne shifted into a warmer fur-form to fight against the coldness of Christmas Eve. Sam was taking his own sweet time with the telescope he had borrowed, trying to find the exact location of a star he insisted that Rahne see. Maybe it made sense to him to stand out in the freezing cold for half an hour, trying to find one star out of the millions in the sky, but it sure didn't to her.

    "Finally!" Sam whispered as he stepped back from the CM-1400 that Meggan had loaned to him. He placed one reverent hand on the black tube and felt a wave of envy. He loved astronomy, but he could never justify buying a telescope this expensive. "I wanted you to see this one," he insisted to his girlfriend.

    Rahne smiled tolerantly at him and looked into the eye piece. "It's a verra pretty star," she offered as she looked at it. "Very bright, very blue... That's guid, isn't it?"

    "It's yours," he whispered as he handed her a piece of paper with the official seal of the International Star Registry on it.

    She stood back from the telescope and stared at the piece of paper. It was a sweet, loving gift... but it wasn't what she had expected. After dating a man for eighteen months, six of those seriously talking about marriage, she had expected another kind of sparkly. "Thank ye," she whispered. Although, she reasoned philosophically, at least it wasn't the electronic tire gage Pete had bought for Kitty as one of her eight Hanukkah gifts.

    Sam smiled at her decidedly unenthusiastic response. He knew what he was doing, and he was going to enjoy every second of her reaction. "There's more," he added as he started to pull at her hand.

    The more Rahne thought about it, the better his gift seemed. A star wasn't something that most women could claim to own, and she would enjoy sitting out with him looking at it. It just... was more a gift she would have thought to give Sam than receive from him. He loved to watch the stars, could name all the constellations in the sky, and read all sorts of magazines and journals about the stars. It had been a natural extension of his love of science fiction.

    She was so lost in her thoughts that his sudden stop startled her. "What?" she asked again, as she looked down at the clearing on the other side of Muir Island. Sam had carefully lit candles in a geometric pattern, almost like a blue print, so that the candles sparkled in the snow. "It's beautiful," she whispered.

    Sam slipped another piece of paper in her hands, this one a deed. "Moira sold it to me," he explained, trying to keep the huskiness out of his voice. "I thought it would be a great place to build a house."

    Rahne dabbed the tears from her eyes as she read the deed, made out in her name. She looked carefully at the candles, and for the first time noticed that each small square had a name written in it. "Sam?" she whispered, guessing what he was up to.

    In the mountains that Sam had grown up in, it was traditional for a man to work hard for as long as it took to earn the money to build a house. It was a symbol of his hard work, and his dedication to the woman he loved. The front poach that he labored so hard on was the same one that they would use years later to watch the grandchildren play.

    He nodded, this time making no secret of how he was feeling. "Rahne," he whispered as he pulled a diamond ring out of his pocket. "Ah've tried ta give ya the heavens and the earth... ta show ya what ya mean ta me..." He knelt down on one knee and whispered, "Will ya give me your hand?"

    "Oh yes," Rahne willed the words to come out of her dry throat. "Yes... yes."

   ***

    In their joy, they never noticed the thin tentacle that lay at their feet. If they had, they might have noticed that it led back to the Castle. And if they had followed it inside, they would have found a table with Kitty, Meggan, and Amanda sitting around Douglock, listening almost as intently as Moira and Sam's mother on the speakerphone.

    But, given the plans the two mothers started making as soon as they got the go ahead, maybe it was a good thing they didn't.