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.

The storm had passed, but the warmth in the circle of chairs lingered like an afterimage.

Sam noticed it the moment he stepped inside Breakwater Books & Brew. The chairs near the bay window were still gathered close, mugs left where hands had warmed them, a scarf draped over the back of one seat as if its owner meant to return. The shop smelled faintly of cocoa and paper and something else—relief, maybe. The kind that came from not having to be alone for a while.

December always did this. People drifted in under the pretense of weather or errands and stayed because it felt safer than going home. They rarely asked for help; they just wandered until something caught and held.

Mae came in a few minutes later, stamping snow from her boots. She paused when she saw the chairs and smiled.

“Looks like last night was busy,” she said.

“Full house,” Sam said. “Jake said no  one wanted to be the first to leave.”

She nodded like she understood exactly what that meant and started gathering mugs, moving quietly so the room could keep its shape a little longer.

Sam began straightening shelves, returning books that had been handled and set aside. One paperback still lay open on the low table, its spine creased in that particular way that meant someone had read the same paragraph more than once. He picked it up and checked the bookmark tucked inside: a receipt from the ferry, folded small.

He smiled and set it behind the counter with the others.

That was his favorite part of the holidays—the way people found the book they needed by accident. Not the one they came in asking for, but the one that met them halfway. A collection of letters for the widower who needed other voices in the room. A mystery set in a seaside town for the woman who wanted somewhere familiar to walk for a while. A slim book of poems someone held against their chest, as if it had already said what they couldn’t.

Not every book left the store wrapped. Some left tucked under arms, or pressed flat against coats, or carried openly, like a declaration.

As Sam bent to straighten one of the chairs, something slipped from between the cushions and fell softly to the floor.

A book.

Not one of his.

The cover was plain, cloth-bound, its title stamped faintly on the front:

Harbormaster’s Log
Coal Bay, 1894–1899

He frowned, turning it over in his hands. It didn’t have a price sticker. No barcode. No record in his inventory.

Mae looked over from the sink. “Find something?”

“Looks like it found us,” Sam said.

He opened it carefully. The pages were filled with neat, spare handwriting—notes about weather, arrivals, departures. Names of ships. Names of people. Small observations written down so they wouldn’t be lost.

He read a line at random.

December 21. Cold, but clear. Three travelers stayed longer than planned. Gave them directions anyway.

Sam closed the book and sat for a moment, listening to the hum of the espresso machine warming up, the muted sounds of the harbor waking outside.

“Guess it belongs,” Mae said softly.

He set the logbook on the low table with the others—the found books, the waiting ones—and left it there.

Someone would need it.

The bell over the shop door chimed as the first patron of the day entered, brushing snow from their coat.

Sam stood, the familiar warmth of the morning routine settling over him again as he reached for the espresso machine switch.

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.

The night felt different now—larger somehow, full of places for wonder to hide.

The overhead announcement crackled as if it had traveled a long way to reach them. All outgoing flights have been canceled. Not delayed. Not rerouted. Canceled. Outside the tall terminal windows, snow moved sideways in thick, luminous sheets, swallowing the runway lights faster than they could blink back on. The weather service was already issuing apologies.

Most passengers groaned and surged toward the customer-service desk. She went the other direction—toward the quiet corner of the terminal where the airport bar spilled into a lounge lined with club chairs and a fake fireplace flickering in its little glass box.

The bartender spotted her and lifted his chin in greeting. “You look like someone who needs a chair and something warm.”

“You’re not wrong,” she said.

“Grab a seat by the ‘fire.’ I’ll bring it over.”

The club chairs were arranged in loose circles, like the airport wanted strangers to believe they could be friends. When the next few stranded passengers trickled in, they drifted into her circle almost by instinct: a businessman already shrugging off defeat with a sigh; two college students wrapped in scarves big enough to be blankets; a tired mother carrying a baby who slept with his cheek pressed to her shoulder.

Then there was the man in the vintage flight jacket—leather worn smooth, patches stitched by hand, real metal zipper with a pull tab that looked older than her father. He eased into the chair nearest the fake fireplace, warming his palms over nothing.

The bartender arrived with mugs of hot cocoa. Real cocoa. He made a point of telling them so.

“Storm’s throwing its weight around,” he said. “You’re welcome to wait it out here.”

“Better here than gate C17,” the businessman muttered. “Pretty sure a family of raccoons lives there.”

The students snorted. The bartender winked.

The mother rocked the baby gently. “He’ll wake up any minute. He always wakes up when the pressure drops.”

“Hand him here,” said one of the students—unexpectedly gentle. “My little cousins love me.”

The mother hesitated only long enough to check the student’s grip, then passed the baby over. He blinked awake, then settled into her arms like he’d made a decision.

“Wow,” the mother whispered. “That never happens.”

The man in the flight jacket smiled. “Babies know who to trust.”

His voice had a warm, radio-static softness, the kind you only heard in old recordings.

The businessman leaned forward, curious despite himself. “You sound like you flew professionally.”

“For a long time,” the man said.

“What’d you fly?”

“Oh, whatever needed flying.” He gave a small shrug, as if the details were unimportant. “Cargo. Rescue. The odd emergency route on Christmas Eve.”

“Christmas Eve?” the student holding the baby asked. “Like… weathering storms?”

“Like whatever came through the air that night,” he said, eyes glinting.

Everyone laughed, but he didn’t.

As the storm worsened, the lounge grew warmer. People took turns holding the baby, who seemed to enjoy the rotation. The students played peekaboo. The businessman—awkward at first—held him like he was handling a fragile instrument, and to everyone’s surprise, the baby gurgled at him.

“See?” the bartender called from behind the counter. “He’s judging your aura. You passed.”

They talked in little bursts.
Where they were headed.
How long they’d been traveling.
Who they were hoping to see.

“First Christmas without my sister,” the businessman admitted quietly.

“I get that,” said the mother, adjusting the baby’s hat. “Holidays get complicated.”

“Storms too,” the man in the flight jacket added, almost to himself.

A gust rattled the terminal windows. Snow swirled outside, thick and bright.

“Well,” the bartender said, refilling their mugs, “looks like you’re all stuck till morning. Cozy up.”

They did.
Surprisingly easily.

Hours passed.
The fake fireplace hummed; the baby slept across someone’s knees; conversation rose and fell like tidewater.
It felt like a room suspended outside of time.

Then, a little before dawn, the man in the flight jacket stood.

“Storm’s easing off,” he said, glancing toward the windows.

Everyone turned. The snow had thinned to drifting flakes. The runway lights flickered hazily back to life.

“Will you catch a flight out?” the mother asked.

He smiled, pulling a cap from his jacket pocket—a cap that hadn’t been there before. “Flights aren’t really my concern tonight.”

He nodded once to the group—almost a bow—and walked down the corridor.
Not hurried.
Not lingering.
Just… leaving.

She blinked, and he was gone.

The bartender collected the empty mugs, smiling knowingly. “Some folks pass through exactly when they’re needed.”

The intercom crackled.
A gate agent cleared her throat.
People stirred.

The storm had passed, but the warmth in the circle of chairs lingered like an afterimage.

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.

She didn’t move.

Not when the old clock in the hallway sighed its way toward midnight, not when the baseboard heater clicked on again, not even when the house settled with the soft, tired creaks that meant everyone else was asleep. She kept perfectly still beneath her quilt, eyes wide open in the dark, listening the way her grandmother said deer listened in the woods—ears lifted, breath held, heart leaning forward.

Because this was the year it might not happen.

This was the year kids at school had whispered across lunch tables and in the coatroom, telling her she was too old to believe anymore. Too smart. Too tall. Too everything. They said Santa was a story grown-ups told, and she had almost nodded along, almost said “yeah, I know,” almost given in to the hollow, heavy feeling that came with pretending to agree.

But she wasn’t ready. Not yet.

So she waited.

The street outside was quiet. The snow had stopped earlier in the evening, leaving the world wrapped in that soft, thick hush that made everything sound far away. Perfect sleigh-bell weather, she whispered to herself. Her grandmother used to say that on nights when the snow held its breath, you could hear things you weren’t supposed to. Important things.

She closed her eyes and counted backward from one hundred.
Then forward again.
Then sideways, on a diagonal she invented just to stay awake.

The refrigerator hummed.
The wind brushed against the gutters.
A car turned onto a distant road.
Nothing magical.
Nothing impossible.
Nothing like the sound she remembered from when she was small.

Her chest tightened a little.
Maybe the kids at school were right.

She rolled onto her back and folded her hands on her stomach the way she’d seen her mother do when she couldn’t sleep. The ceiling looked pale in the moonlight. She tried to imagine what it would be like to let go of the idea, to shrug and say, “I don’t believe in that anymore.”

But something inside her—small and stubborn, like a spark under ash—wouldn’t make the shape of that answer.

She listened harder.

Minutes passed.
Maybe more than minutes.
Her eyes stung.
Sleep pulled at her like a tide.

Just when she felt the last thread of belief loosen—
there.
A sound.

So faint she almost missed it.
A far-off silver glimmer of sound, like two tiny stars tapping against each other.
High.
Light.
Impossible.

Her breath caught.
She held still, afraid the smallest movement would break whatever spell she’d stumbled into. The sound drifted again—brief, bright, unmistakable. Like bells carried on a current of night air.

Her throat tightened in a way she didn’t have words for.

Maybe she imagined it.
Maybe she dreamed it.
Maybe it didn’t matter.

She eased her fingers out from beneath the quilt, barely daring to move, and let herself listen for as long as the sound lasted.

When it faded, she finally blinked, slow and steady, not disappointed at all.

The night felt different now—larger somehow, full of places for wonder to hide.

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.

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.

“The wind changes,” she said, “just before something big happens. Haven’t you noticed?”

He looked up from the living room, already half smiling.
“Oh no. Not the Weather Witch routine again. Last time you said that, the sump pump exploded.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” she replied, her tone making it clear she’d been waiting years for him to bring it up again. “And you have noticed. Every big storm we’ve ever had starts with this.”

He opened his mouth to argue, then shut it again. Because she was right — she always felt these things a moment before they happened. Thirty winters together had taught him that much.

He stood, listening with her.
The pressure in the air shifted.
A faint metallic tremor ran through the holiday lights on their balcony.
The house seemed to inhale.

“Yeah,” he admitted quietly. “Okay. I feel it.”

The transformer outside gave a low, uneasy hum, faltering just long enough to make her pause with the mixing bowl in her hands. Then the lights blinked once — sharp, warning — and everything went dark.

No gentle dimming, no slow fade.
Just out.

From the living room he called, “Well, Merry Christmas to us.”

She laughed softly. “We didn’t forget the bill, did we?”

It was an old joke, one carried forward from a time in their lives when forgetting the bill was a genuine possibility. Back then, humor had been their only reliable light source. Using it now softened the edge of the sudden dark.

“We paid it,” he said, already feeling his way toward her. “This one’s the grid.”

They met in the hallway as they always did during storms — hands first, then foreheads touching, a simple ritual formed in the years when they’d had so little and leaned so much on each other. After three decades, they could have found each other blindfolded on another planet.

“Should I check the breakers?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Get the lantern.”

He hesitated.

Not because he didn’t know where it was, but because the lantern lived in the box they rarely touched — the one from a winter they didn’t talk about often, when outages weren’t inconveniences but everyday realities, and that small metal lantern had been the only light they could count on. Touching it meant touching all of that again.

“The one from the old place?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, though he couldn’t see it.

He went to the bedroom closet — top shelf, box marked MISC. though they both knew exactly what was in it — while she moved toward the front window. Outside, their suburban cul-de-sac was dark and still. A few neighbors stepped onto porches with tea candles or phone flashlights, their voices drifting low, softened by cold air.

He returned carrying the lantern gently in both hands. Tin sides. Tiny punched stars. The fabric-wrapped handle from a winter they survived together, even when they weren’t entirely sure how.

“Oh,” she murmured. “I really thought we’d lost it.”

“You would’ve noticed,” he said, though his voice held the same soft relief.

They lit it together. The wick caught with a small, golden bloom, casting star-shaped shadows across the bookshelves, the framed photographs, the holiday cards lined along the mantel. The lantern glowed exactly as it always had — modest, steady, familiar.

“It still works,” he said.

“It always did.”

They settled onto the couch, shoulders touching, the lantern resting on the coffee table between them. Its warmth didn’t heat the room so much as ease it — smoothing the edges of memory until Then and Now sat comfortably beside each other.

For a while, they simply breathed in the quiet, letting the dark be gentle instead of heavy.

Eventually she stood and looked out the window.
The street was dark. Still. Waiting.

Snow began to fall.

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.

She hums a song as ancient as dust.

It rolls low in her chest, a tune older than the Pole itself, older than winter, older than the first fires lit by human hands. The sound vibrates through the workshop floorboards, down through the packed ice, deeper still through stone and mantle and molten dark—until the earth answers back with a faint thrum of its own.

The elves pause. One by one.

They always do.

They freeze like candle flames caught mid-flicker, pointed ears tilting toward the source of the song. Their eyes—silver, green, gold—grow brighter. Not warm, not friendly. Bright like gemstones turning toward the hammer.

Mrs. Claus keeps humming. She must.

Tonight is the Night of Deepest Descent, when the elves renew their magic. A cheerful phrase on the calendar for those above ground; a necessary dread for those who know the truth.

Her husband—“Santa” to the winking masses—sits in his study polishing spectacles, pretending not to hear. He hates this part. Always has. Kindness comes naturally to him. Old power does not.

But she was born to it.

The North Pole chose her long before it chose him.

The elves begin to sway, tiny hands lifting, palms down, as if feeling for something rising. Their shadows stretch unnaturally long across the walls, thin and whip-like, curling like smoke even though there is no fire.

Then comes the cracking sound.

Like ice under too much weight.
Like the world taking a breath.

A seam forms along the center of the floor—hairline, glowing faintly red. Not the red of holly berries or candy stripes. The red of magma. The red of origin.

One of the elves—Perrin, the smallest—steps forward and touches the seam with reverence. His fingers spark blue. The magic rushes up through him, a surge of ancient power that makes his eyes roll back white for a heartbeat.

Then he exhales softly, and the seam closes.

The workshop exhales too—wood settling, machinery sighing, the air losing its electric bite.

Mrs. Claus finally lets the last note fade.

Perrin looks up at her, eyes their normal crystalline green again. “It is done,” he says, voice thin but steady. “We will be strong for another turning.”

He returns to the others, and they slip back to their tasks as naturally as snowflakes settling into a drift. Their humming resumes—light, cheerful, perfectly harmless.

To most ears.

She walks to the window. Beyond it, the eternal polar night stretches wide and blue, the aurora shimmering overhead like a curtain of spirits.

Her husband says her name softly, once, then again.
She doesn’t turn.

The floor beneath her feet still holds a faint warmth, as if the earth hasn’t finished exhaling. Outside, the aurora shifts color, and for an instant she thinks she sees movement under the ice—nothing defined, just a ripple, the world remembering something older than winter.

The room cools.
The shadows lengthen.
Somewhere in the deep, a single pulse answers itself.

She closes her eyes, listening.

The wind changes.

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.

She smiles. “They’ll find their way,” she says softly.

The younglings cluster close to her, their eyes wide as moons, their soft bodies still faintly translucent with newness. They haven’t learned yet to dim their glow, so the cavern sparkles — hundreds of tiny lights flickering against the stone, reflections moving like fireflies through water.

Outside, the desert wind moans across the dunes, carrying the scent of iron and ozone. The sky beyond the cave mouth is purple-black, strewn with so many stars it almost hurts to look. The elder has seen a thousand nights like this, and yet each one still feels like a beginning.

“Is it far?” one of them asks. Its voice is high, tremulous, hopeful.

“Far enough,” she says. “But not beyond reach.”

They murmur among themselves — a soft chime of uncertainty.

She chuckles. “You think distance is the hardest part. It isn’t. The hardest part is not knowing which way is yours to take.”

Their light flickers lower at that, and she regrets the shadow her honesty casts. “But you’ll learn,” she adds, gentler now. “The stars mark paths, not destinies. The wind remembers the shape of every traveler. You’ll listen, and you’ll know.”

One of the older ones — older by perhaps a few rotations — steps forward. “Will you come with us?”

“I will watch,” she answers. “But this is your journey. You’ll go farther without me.”

They shift uneasily. They’re not ready to leave the warmth of the nest, not ready to trade comfort for discovery. She remembers that feeling — the ache of wanting safety and freedom at once.

“Do you know why we’re called the Wandering Kind?” she asks.

A dozen small heads tilt. “Because we wander?”

“Because we seek,” she corrects softly. “And seeking means you can never stand still for long.”

She reaches into the pouch slung across her shoulder and pulls out a handful of dust — fine, shimmering particles that glow faintly blue. With a whisper, she scatters them into the air. The motes drift toward the cave’s mouth and catch the faint starlight, revealing faint trails across the sky — glowing threads stretching outward, weaving and crossing and looping back in on themselves.

“These are the paths of those who came before,” she says. “Every one of them once stood where you do now, wondering if they could survive the first night alone.”

“Did they?” another asks.

She smiles again, soft and knowing. “You wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t.”

Silence settles over them — a listening silence, deep and reverent. Outside, the wind shifts, and the glowing dust begins to fade. The younglings turn their faces toward the open sky.

“Go on,” she says. “Before dawn finds you waiting.”

One by one, they step into the starlit desert. Their glow grows brighter as they move away, pale lights bobbing like will-o’-wisps across the dunes. She watches until they’re only a constellation of tiny sparks at the edge of sight.

When the last one pauses to look back, she lifts a hand and waves. The youngling mimics the gesture, then turns and continues after the others.

The elder lingers a moment longer in the cave’s mouth, feeling the wind brush her face like a benediction. Then she sits, pulls her cloak around her, and looks up. The stars shimmer — the old paths intertwining with the new — and she hums a song as ancient as dust.

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.

They rise into the cold blue of space, still hand in hand, still laughing.

Far below, the ocean ripples with light — thousands of bioluminescent shapes spiraling up from the deep to greet their visitors. The shuttle hovers over the water, its hull still glowing from the long descent through the planet’s upper winds, and for a moment the aliens inside forget to breathe.

“They’re beautiful,” murmurs the smaller one, his voice like wind through reeds.

“Cousins always are,” replies the elder, flexing her delicate, translucent limbs. “Eight arms, three hearts, and the wisdom to remain in the sea. We share an ancestor older than tides; they simply remembered their path better than we did.”

They glide down in a capsule no larger than a tide pool, the outer plating cooling with a soft hiss as the ocean rises to cradle them. In seconds, the hull becomes a mirror — water pressing close, refracting starlight into a scatter of trembling sparks.

A chorus of color greets them, shifting through violet, coral, gold, and jade. The octopuses sing in light, not sound, their chromatophores pulsing intricate patterns of greeting. The visitors answer with a glow of their own — spirals and waves that mean kin, memory, season-turning.

For the first time since leaving their ancestral waters, the ache of distance eases.

Their hosts guide them toward the reef — not coral, but a living city of glasslike spirals and kelp-towers grown into lace. The octopuses bear gifts: shells filled with glowing plankton, strands of kelp threaded with luminous stones, and sea-fire that burns without heat or harm.

The elder bows low, her eyes like twin suns behind clear lids.
“We bring you warmth,” she says, “for the turning of the light.”

The octopuses reply in shimmer and ripple: We bring you the sea.

A circle forms — water, radiance, motion. The visitors ignite their sea-fire; the octopuses answer with a burst of phosphorescence so bright it paints the underside of the waves in molten gold. For a heartbeat, the ocean appears to hold a sunrise.

The younger alien laughs. “It’s not so different from burning embers,” he says.

“Everywhere there’s life, there’s fire,” the elder answers. “Some flames simply choose different colors.”

The circle widens, ripples spreading, and the two species drift into a shared rhythm — some with hands, some with arms, all with joy. In their mingled glow, something ancient rises, older than language or gravity: the understanding that warmth is not bound to flame, and family not bound to form.

Above them, the stars flicker — responding, perhaps, or merely echoing the radiance beneath them.

The elder reaches toward the surface. Water beads cling to her fingertips, catching the light as they lift — tiny sparks suspended for an instant before falling back, carrying the shimmer of this night into the wide, waiting dark.

She smiles. “They’ll find their way,” she says softly.

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.

When he reaches for her hand, she doesn’t let go.

The air around them is thin and electric, crackling with a thousand unseen particles that shimmer like the inside of a snowflake. The comet’s tail stretches behind them — a luminous ribbon of ice and dust unfurling through the velvet dark. Stars slide past in perfect, ancient silence, as if the universe itself is leaning in to watch.

She’s wrapped in a silver parka and too many scarves, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with the kind of wonder only the very young ever let themselves feel.

“Grandfather,” she breathes, “we’re really doing it!”

Old Man Winter grins, his beard curling like storm clouds, his eyes the pale, dangerous blue of a frozen sea. His voice rumbles deep in his chest, warm despite the cold he carries within him.

“Of course we are,” he says. “You think I spin tales just to pass the time? Every legend needs its first telling — and tonight, this one belongs to you.”

He clicks his tongue, and the wind obeys. The comet dips lower, sweeping around a pale, glittering moon. Frost trails behind them in twisting shapes — antlers, wings, bursts of crystalline laughter.

She laughs too, the sound human and joyous against the infinite dark.
“It’s beautiful.”

“Beauty,” he murmurs, “is the one thing I never tire of making.”

They skim through the solar veil, the comet’s light scattering like spilled diamonds. The temperature drops, but she doesn’t feel cold; her grandfather’s magic wraps her in an invisible warmth, a flickering halo that turns her breath into tiny auroras.

He guides the comet’s path with one hand, the other still clasping hers.
“You know why we fly on the Solstice?”

She shakes her head.

“It’s the longest night,” he says. “Not for sorrow — for balance. The dark gives the light a place to return to. Winter holds the world still, just long enough for hope to gather its breath.”

Below them, Earth drifts in slow rotation — half-shadow, half-glow. The poles shine white, and delicate threads of light mark the places where humans huddle together, claiming warmth against the cold.

“Are they celebrating tonight?” she asks.

“Most of them,” he answers. “They’ve forgotten my old names, but not the feeling I bring. Warmth means more when the cold is close. Light means more when the night runs deep. That’s what this season remembers — not a single story, but the turning of the world toward brightness again.”

The comet arcs downward, brushing the upper atmosphere. Frost scatters across the sky like sequins thrown from a dancer’s hand. Somewhere below, a child looks up and makes a wish. Somewhere else, an old woman smiles, remembering winters long past.

Her grandfather loosens his grip and nods forward.
“Your turn.”

“Mine?” Her voice trembles between awe and eagerness.

“Every Frostkeeper marks a path once,” he says. “Choose where our light will fall.”

She closes her eyes and lifts her free hand. Gravity hums. Magic answers. The comet sweeps lower, scattering crystal dust over northern forests, frozen rivers, and rooftops crowned with thin halos of light.

When she opens her eyes, the world below gleams faintly — a silver web of frost that will vanish by morning, leaving only the softest glint on glass.

“That’s it,” he says softly. “You’ve found your rhythm.”

She smiles. “Can we do it again next year?”

He chuckles, the sound rolling like distant thunder.
“Next year, you’ll lead.”

They rise into the cold blue of space, still hand in hand, still laughing.