And I started drafting a little solstice story today. Didn’t get that far into it, and I’m not really sure where it’s going. 🙂. But here’s a few paragraphs, just to get you in a (science-fictional) solstice mood.
*****
Solstice on Kriti
Narita swore under her breath as she wrestled with the tangled light strings. She always meant to put them away neatly to make this job easier, but the hospital was always slammed around the holidays, and by the time it was time to take down decorations, she was lucky if she could get them into a box and shoved under the bed.
She’d once tried to convince Amara that they should just do holo-decorations instead, but the look of appalled betrayal on her wife’s face had shut that idea down pretty damn fast. And if she left Amara to put the decorations away, they’d be up for at least three more months, which offended Narita’s sense of order.
She’d been fighting these for at least half an hour. It would be easier to perform surgery on a Kemmenite, dual circulatory system, eight limbs, and all, than to deal with these lights!
Treat it like surgery. If Narita walked into an operating room in this kind of state, there’d be blood on the ceiling before she was done. Deep breath, center. She sent a note to the house system, play solstice music. Amara had put together a playlist years before, and the first strains of “Abbots Bromley Horn Dance” started up. Lesle Kulbach on recorder, wild and sweet and so very old. Okay. Let’s do this.
***
Amara had always thought it was a bit of a shame that solstice on Kriti wasn’t the same as solstice on Old Earth. It couldn’t be, of course – even on Earth, the winter solstice in the Northern hemisphere was paired with the summer solstice in the Southern hemisphere. One half of the planet rising into the light, while the other half slipped into the dark. And once humans left their home planet, well it all went to hell. She wasn’t sure if all inhabited planets had axial tilt and seasons – probably? She could look that up. But what was obviously true was that solstices were happening all the time, across the Charted Worlds, and it didn’t really make sense to celebrate any but your own planet’s. No solstice on Jump ships, no solstice on orbital stations. Sad.
Narita would have the lights up by the time she came home, but she wanted candles too this year. With the rising tide of violence in the galaxy, with the baby due next week, it had been feeling too dark for too long. She was so tired; they all were. What she wanted was candles – forests of candles, oceans of candles. Enough to drive away the dark.
So it was lucky the University had started a new tradition this year – a solstice fair, the first on Kriti. She entered the central courtyard, and it was almost funny. No pine or spruce grew on Kriti, which tended much more towards scrubby red trees and shrubs. But somehow they’d found enough green boughs to deck the square, affixed to every lamppost. They couldn’t be real, but in the fading light of late afternoon, they looked real enough, wrapped in gold tinsel garlands. Students had set up tables all around the courtyard, and the art students displayed a staggering array of handmade goods.
It was tempting to browse them all – but the little monster was kicking hard today, she had to pee and her feet ached. So Amara made a beeline for the table covered in candles – short and fat, tall and skinny, some twisted in fantastical shapes. She was going to buy as many as she could carry.
*****
….to be continued.