Chapter Text
Sol looks the same from almost anywhere.
That sounds wrong on the face of it. If you stand on Earth, you call it the Sun and it’s a blinding disk that turns your entire sky into a high-dynamic-range problem. If you stand on Mars, it’s a smaller, meaner coin you could cover with your thumb. If you’re out here—far enough that “out here” stops being a poetic phrase and starts being a navigational parameter—Sol is just another star.
But it’s my star.
And because I am, by training and by personality, a man who cannot leave well enough alone, I check it every day. It started as a practical thing. Even after I stopped needing daily sanity checks to prove to myself that physics still worked, I kept doing it. Habit is a powerful drug. So every shipboard day I’d drift into the observation area, pull up the scope feed, and confirm: yep, that’s Sol. Same familiar yellow-white, same spectrum. Still dimmer than it should be. Still not catastrophic. Still wrong.
Next is Earth.
Earth’s orbital position: approaching perihelion season.
Axial tilt: Northern Hemisphere angled away from the Sun.
Solar declination: trending toward minimum.
Midwinter.
Christmas.
I stare at the date and feel something loosen in my chest, followed immediately by a quiet ache.
Somewhere on Earth, people were putting lights in windows despite energy shortages. Someone was heating food they’d saved for a special occasion. Someone was telling themselves that kindness was still worth the effort.
Christmas had always been humanity’s way of pushing back against the dark. The longest nights of the year, and we responded by inventing warmth.
I didn’t have much family left down there. Not anymore. I wasn’t overwhelmed with grief. It was just… a tug. A reminder that Earth was still turning, still practicing rituals I couldn’t participate in anymore.
I stared at the tiny marker that represented home and told myself I was fine.
“Grace.” Rocky’s voice comes through, alert and precise. “You are… quiet. Sol is fine, question?”
Rocky knows my routine. I swallow and force my hands away from the controls.
“Yeah,” I say. “Sol is the same. So is Earth.”
A brief pause. Rocky is very good at noticing pauses.
“You are off,” he says, not accusing, just factual. “Something is wrong, question?”
I look at the calendar one more time. Then I exhale slowly.
“No,” I said. “Nothing’s wrong.”
I hesitate, because the words feel strange in my mouth out here, millions of kilometers from the nearest pine tree or blinking string of lights.
“You are spending longer time staring at Earth,” he continues. “This is anomaly. You have problem, question?”
“No,” I say automatically.
Rocky arrives beside me. “You often say ‘no’ before saying ‘yes’.”
I sigh. “Okay. Minor problem. Emotional, not technical.”
“Explain.”
I gesture at the screen. “It’s probably Christmas on Earth.”
He processes that. I can tell because his body stills, then produces a low harmonic tone, his thinking sound.
“Chris-mas,” he says. “Human winter celebration. You explain before when discussing human culture. Lights. Songs. Giving things.”
“That’s the highlights reel,” I say. “Yeah.”
“You are… not happy,” Rocky says carefully. “But also not sad.”
“Gold star,” I tell him. “Exactly.”
Rocky’s membranes ripple. “This state is confusing.”
“It’s confusing for us too,” I say. “That’s kind of our brand.”
I push off the wall and float a little closer. “Christmas happens during the darkest part of the year. Short days. Long nights. Historically… bad time for humans. Cold. Hunger. Death.”
Rocky hums. “So humans celebrate.”
“Right. We respond to existential dread with decorations.”
This satisfies him. “This is logical.”
I continue, because once you start explaining Christmas, stopping feels rude. “It’s about warmth. Togetherness. Being kind because the universe is dark and doesn’t care about you.”
Rocky considers that. “Erid has similar celebration. When underground currents are weakest. We sing so tunnels feel less empty.”
I smile despite myself. “Yeah. Like that.”
He shifts closer. He does that when something matters.
“You miss it,” he says.
“I miss… knowing it’s happening,” I correct. “I don’t miss a specific place. Or people. Just the idea."
Rocky pauses. Then: “Then we should do the idea.”
I look at him. “You want to celebrate Christmas.”
“Yes,” he says immediately. “For you. I want to learn about Christ-mas,” Rocky says immediately. Then, after a beat, softer: “If it makes you less… pang.”