A boy sat on a low stone wall on the edge of Bethlehem as the fading sunlight sifted through the narrow streets like a handful of warm grain. He stood up and walked into the market between the stalls and jutting rafters that leaned inward as if whispering secrets. 

Bethlehem was crowded with travelers arriving for the census. The streets were awash with the chatter of barter and the smell of lamb simmering in cumin and bay leaves. Merchants selling bread and figs angled for the coins of women in shawls carrying baskets against their hips.

A boy walked those streets as only a boy can before life hardens him. He drifted through the market lanes without hurry, passing between the rising and the falling, between the world he could see and the one he felt only as a faint tremor in his bones.

He moved inside a story, unaware. 

He stopped beside a stall where a woman wove reeds into baskets. Her fingers moved with a calm older than herself, each strand crossing another like morning and evening, grace and hope. The boy watched, imagining she had touched every bowl in Bethlehem, that her hands knew more of the world than he ever would. She smiled, slipped him a fig, and returned to her weaving. 

He kept walking, kicking stones, searching the familiar shapes of warm bread and people who made him laugh. He did not think of prophets or kings or the strange census crowd pushing into town. He did not think of the sky at all, though something in him tugged upward, as if the air had grown heavier with meaning. 

As evening approached, he finally lifted his eyes and saw a star rising, stitching its bright thread through the common cloth of sun and moon. Faint at first, now glowing like a blown-on ember—brighter than all others. 

He beat a soft rhythm on his drum as he walked. Not a real song, just a boy’s wandering syncopation, the way boys tap sticks on anything solid, unaware of the two worlds circling around him. Yet the beat steadied him and held those worlds—stone and star, sullen and rising—together for a moment. 

He wondered what he would become. A shepherd? A merchant? Whether his life would matter—though the question lived only as a pressure against his chest, a feeling outside a boy’s vocabulary. So it stayed there, an unplayed song resting against his chest.

Shadows lengthened, and the sky shimmered with something ancient yet fresh. A deeper light, older than the universe, descended quietly, slipping into the night.

The boy did not see that yet. He only felt the tug—the tension between what is and what will be, the quiet sense of the world leaning closer, listening.

A potter shaping clay caught his eye. His hands were immersed in creation and wet clay, his eyes burning, yet bright with joy. The potter raised a muddy hand in greeting. The boy answered with a tap on his drum—light and quick, almost shy. The potter laughed. The boy walked on.

He was just a boy, still believing that days unfold without limits.

The road curved toward the outskirts. The fields stretched out, quiet as a baby’s breath. Above him, the star brightened its pulse. Ahead, a stable waited. A manger. A cry that would undo the night and remake the dawn.

The drummer boy carried his small drum and his scattered questions, not knowing he had already been summoned by the Star.

As he walked, the two worlds began to gather themselves into one. Something shifted inside him—like an unseen hand steadying his own—and he no longer wondered what he was to become. He was Jair, son of Eliab, born to play music. He beat on his drum again, playing notes like he had never played before.