Note: I made a list of prompts, and wrote a bite-sized story for each one. They don’t live in the same universe, but they’re all a little off-kilter from what you might expect from holiday fare. And if you pay attention, you’ll notice that the last line of each story becomes the first line of the next. Also? You can listen to these stories at my podcast website: BathtubMermaid.com.
Snow began to fall.
The soft kind—lazy flakes drifting past the window in slow spirals, settling on the porch rail like they were testing the temperature before committing. Inside, the living room was a small explosion of wrapping paper, gift bags, cardboard tubes, and the unmistakable evergreen smell of the tree that was just slightly too big for the room.
“Hold right there, sweetheart,” she said, guiding her daughter’s tiny index finger to the center of the box. “No—right there. That’s perfect. Don’t move.”
The little girl, all bright eyes and crooked pigtails, leaned forward earnestly, pressing her finger down as if the fate of the entire holiday season depended on it. “Is it tight enough?”
“It will be,” the mother murmured, looping the ribbon around the box and pulling the ends snug. She tied the knot fast and neat, hands working automatically—muscle memory from hundreds of December nights like this one.
She reached for the scissors and slid the blade along the ribbon’s edge, pulling gently until the tail sprang into a perfect curl. Her daughter gasped like it was magic.
“How did you do that?”
“Practice,” she said. “And a little bit of luck.”
But really, it wasn’t either.
It was imitation.
Her mother’s voice rose up in her mind, soft and warm and carrying the cinnamon scent of the kitchen from decades ago: Put your finger right there, sweetie. She could still feel her own small hand, steadying the ribbon the same way her daughter was doing now. She hadn’t thought about that moment in years—not really—but suddenly it was as clear as the afternoon it happened.
She smiled without meaning to.
“Are you thinking about Grandma?” her daughter asked.
She blinked. “How did you know?”
“You got the remembering face.”
“Well,” she said, smoothing the curl of ribbon, “Grandma used to teach me how to wrap presents just like this. She let me hold the ribbon down so she could tie the knots. And she always made the curls look perfect.”
Her daughter traced the ribbon with one fingertip. “Is this how she did it?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Exactly like this.”
They worked through the rest of the gifts together—some lumpy, some crooked, some surprisingly tidy, all of them full of the kind of love that doesn’t need to be told what to do. The snow thickened outside, turning the streetlights hazy and soft, making the whole world look quieter than it really was.
By the time they finished, the little girl was yawning hard enough to squeak.
“Okay, ribbonsmith,” the mother said. “Bedtime.”
“Can I wear the sparkly ones tomorrow?” the girl asked, pointing to the leftover curls—pink, gold, silver, and one bright green.
“We’ll see.”
But the next morning, when the pigtails were brushed and newly elastic’d and bouncing with that particular energy only small children have on Christmas, she tied one silver curl around the left elastic and one green curl around the right.
Her daughter looked up at her reflection, surprised delight blooming across her face. “I look like a present!”
The thought rose instantly, fierce and tender: You are my present.
“You look perfect,” she said instead.
She opened the curtains a little wider, letting the pale morning light in.
The house felt different somehow.
Familiar.
New again.
Both things at once.
In the quiet between footsteps and excitement, she felt something soften, something settle.