Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Christmas

"Alright, try it now."

"But Commander, I'll have to pull power from the reactor core."

"I said do it airmen, did it sound like a question?"

"Yes, sir."

A sudden eruption of lights exploded about the mess hall, and down the hallways of the ship, thousands of tiny twinkling lights. Krill, having been walking to speak with the Commander paused at the entrance to the room and spun around in wonder. Lines upon lines of lights had appeared out of nowhere to be projected around the walls of the room and down the hallways of the ship. They weren't bright or anything, instead an almost delicate yellow in color gently twinkling like the light of distant stars.

"Get those overhead lights off,"

With a loud thud, the lights switched off, casting the room into the warm ambient glow of those thousand twinkling lights. He spun in a circle staring up at the ceiling, shocked to find a mosaic of falling snowflakes, which faded and vanished before hitting the floor,

"Give me more fall-off on that snow airman. Tomorrow better be magical or someone is getting their ass fired."

He turned his head again eyes widening in geater wonder as they fell on the center of the room. The flickering, projected hologram of a massive tree. It was one of those furry looking earth plants that could reach higher than thirty feet tall, though this one only nearly brushed the ceiling. It stood in the middle of the room decorated by hundreds more twinkling lights, yards of red ribbon and shiny glass balls. Atop the tree, there was projected the human caricature of a star glittering with firelight.

Tongues of phantom fire licked against the far wall, under a mantle of stone and brick.

Krill turned in another wide circle as the strange lights flickered around him, reminding him strangely of the space walk he had gone on with the commander so long ago, stepping out into the darkness surrounded by stars, alone in the vastness of space, but where that had been cold and distant, this was a close warmness that filled him up from the inside and made him feel oddly warm.

Soft footsteps behind him and then a pause.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

"What is it?'

"Realistically, more than four thousand years of pagan-christian and corporate tradition." Krill looked up to find the array of glittering lights reflected against the human's bright green iris. His voice grew soft, though it stayed warm, "More romanticized.... This is.... Home. This is childhood and imagination, and family wrapped in a box and tied with a bow. This is being warm when its cold and loved when you're alone. This is comfort on the edges of space when earth is a trillion lightyears away and you may never go back."

"Feeling a bit poetic today I see?'

The Commander shrugged, "Maybe a little.... Kind of homesick too." he sighed, "This is the first year I won't be celebrating Christmas with my family."

"Christmas?"

"Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what it meant to other people, but when I was a kid, it was mostly just a day to celebrate our family.... Mom loves Christmas, she goes all out every year, even when things were tight.... She always managed to make things special. One year dad snuck out in the middle of the night and left reindeer tracks in the snow to convince us they had been there."

"Er, Reindeer?"

"Ah, never mind. I'll tell you about it later. Important thing is getting everything ready for tonight. If you want to see the real magic."