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 looked out the window, watching the snowfall steady itself back into the ordinary world.
For a moment, the drifting flakes had tilted sideways—just a breath, barely noticeable—but she’d felt that tug in her ribs again, the one that meant the world had slipped. Her counselor called them “emotional echoes.” Her mother called them “episodes.” She called them wrong, because the air thickened and the colors leaned, and everything felt like it was about to fall through the floor.
But then the snow straightened, soft and simple. Normal. And she could breathe.
“Ready?” her mother called from the hallway, trying too hard to sound casual. “It’s just in the garage.”
She nodded even though her mother couldn’t see her, pulling on her boots, the ones still too stiff around the ankles. The snowfall blurred the sky into one pale wash as she stepped outside. Her mother waited by the garage door with a cardboard box—simple, brown, and taped neatly.
His handwriting was on the label. Her stomach dropped.
They hadn’t known he’d mailed it before… before the news. Before the folded flag. Before they said “Martian incursion” and “wrong coordinates” and “immediate casualties” in voices that sounded like static. The package had arrived a week after the funeral, quiet as a knock that comes too late.
Her mother lifted the lid.
Inside lay a bright red sled. Not plastic. Metal runners. Old-fashioned.
The kind she’d once pointed out in a catalog without thinking he’d notice.
Her breath hitched. “He got it.”
“He did,” her mother said softly. “He wanted you to have it for winter break.”
The world leaned again—just slightly—and she steadied herself on the garage wall. The sled shimmered faintly, not with light, but with familiarity, as if it remembered something about her too.
She dragged it through the fresh snow to the small hill behind the apartment complex. The cold bit at her cheeks. The air smelled like minerals and ice—Earth winter, not Mars. He’d always said he missed winters most.
She set the sled down. Ran her glove over the wooden slats. Felt her heartbeat double-tap behind her ribs.
Then she climbed on.
The world tipped. Not dangerously. Not wrong. Just… sideways enough.
Snowflakes bent in long silver arcs. The air thickened. Sound muffled to a low hum.
And suddenly she was sliding through something warmer than winter—something like memory made real.
There he was.
Standing at the bottom of a different hill, wearing the old star navy parka with the missing zipper pull, waving her forward the way he used to when she was little. His smile was the same: one side higher than the other, like he wasn’t quite sure he deserved to be happy.
She didn’t cry. She thought she might. But instead she laughed—breathless, surprised—because he looked solid, not dream-thin. Solid enough to catch her if she reached the bottom.
The sled shot forward. The world blurred. The wind was sharp and sweet.
She reached him.
Before she could say anything—before she could ask how, or why, or if he was really here—he touched her cheek with a gloved hand and said, gently, “You won’t stay long. But you can visit. Whenever the hill feels right.”
No explanations. Just warmth. Just him.
Then the snow shifted again, the slope changed beneath her, and the sled coasted back into the present with a soft hiss across the ground.
She sat still at the bottom of the actual hill, breath clouding in the cold air, the red sled gleaming beside her like nothing strange had happened at all.
She touched the wood again, feeling the warmth fading but not gone. “Thanks, Dad,” she said. “I love you, too.”
A single snowflake landed on her sleeve, perfect and bright, and she watched it melt without looking away.