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.
For once, she feels perfectly in time.
The station hums around her — quiet but alive, a cathedral of carbon fiber and light. Out the viewport, Earth drifts beneath her like a blue lantern, its cloud swirls gleaming silver against the dark. The orbit is stable again. The instruments whisper compliance.
For the first time in seventy-three days, she’s not fighting the drift.
She floats closer to the window, gloved hand brushing against the glass as if she could touch the horizon. On the far side of the planet, dawn unspools in a line of molten gold. The sun flares, and the panels outside catch it, flooding the cabin with soft radiance.
It feels like Christmas morning — though by the mission clock, it might not even be December anymore. Up here, dates blur. There’s only light and shadow, work and rest, silence and the steady rhythm of her own pulse.
She checks the comms again. Static. Then, faintly, a voice.
“Jemison, this is Houston. Do you copy?”
Her breath catches. “Copy, Houston,” she replies, the words a little too fast. “Jemison reads you five by five.”
“Good to hear your voice again, Commander.”
It’s a new voice, one she doesn’t recognize — calm, low, threaded with warmth. A voice that sounds like gravity.
“Telemetry shows you’re back in sync,” he continues. “Your orbit stabilized two cycles ago.”
“I know,” she says softly. “I felt it.”
There’s a pause on the line — not static, but surprise. Then a chuckle. “You felt orbital correction?”
“I’ve been up here long enough to tell when the universe exhales.”
She hears him smile through the static. “Roger that.”
They run through diagnostics together, the familiar ritual of systems checks and data verification. His cadence is steady, soothing, a rhythm to anchor herself to. She imagines him on the ground — headset askew, coffee cooling beside his keyboard, eyes turned skyward.
When the checklist is complete, he says, “You’ll have sunrise in about ninety seconds. You should see the aurora from your position.”
“I see it already,” she whispers.
Below her, ribbons of green and violet curl across the poles, shimmering like breath against the night. It’s not the first aurora she’s seen from orbit, but this one feels different — brighter, alive. She thinks of the Christmas lights her father used to hang along the eaves of their house, blinking patterns that never quite synced. He’d laugh every year and say, “Perfection’s overrated, sweetheart. Just make it shine.”
And she had.
Now, decades later, she’s circling the planet he left behind, bathed in the glow of a light show that no human hands arranged.
“Houston,” she says, “if you’re getting video, you’ll want to see this.”
“I am,” he answers. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
She could tell him yes, but it feels too small a word. Instead, she just listens — to the hum of the ship, to his breathing on the line, to the faint crackle of cosmic radiation singing between them.
“I think,” she says slowly, “that for the first time in a long time, I know what it means to be home.”
“Copy that, Commander.” His voice softens. “Merry Christmas, up there.”
Her throat tightens. “Merry Christmas, down there.”
Outside the window, the aurora shimmers brighter, wrapping the curve of the world in living green fire. The station drifts steady through the dark, and she lets the silence fill her, vast and bright as home.