Welcome to December, the threshold of the year's end. Darkness envelops the days as time slips sideways and we begin the countdown to the festivities. Frost etches the windows while silence settles over rooftops. It is a season of stillness and strangeness, where the world turns inward and everything feels just a little out of phase.

Welcome to the eighty-fourth edition of the Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter.

This month's theme is Quantum Solstice. Step into the rift where time fractures, choices echo, and meaning flickers between realities. Thank you to everyone who submitted this month. Your stories bent the rules in the best ways. Ready to fall between the cracks?

Congratulations to both winners of the December theme: Loreley Weisel-Librizzi and Marie Vibbert!

In Superposition by Loreley Weisel-Librizzi – A haunting meditation on identity, memory, and quantum possibility, told with lyrical precision...

Quantum Solstice by Marie Vibbert – An emotionally resonant tale of connection and legacy, where science and family intertwine at the edge of time...

This month's newsletter features:

• Myth & Fiction Podcast
• The Fractal Universe from Allen Stroud
• Call for Illustrations: Romantic Fantasy
• Original Sci-Fi Flash Fiction #1: In Superposition by Loreley Weisel-Librizzi
• Original Sci-Fi Flash Fiction #2: Quantum Solstice by Marie Vibbert
• EXCLUSIVE Newsletter Subscribers Special Promotion
• Next Month’s Flash Fiction Theme

Quantum Solstice

Marie Vibbert

Rhea’s senior class was building a full-size replica of Stonehenge on Proxima Centauri B for the solstice. Adults called it too much until the comms team announced their quantum communicator would be open for use at the celebration. Now there was a feeling that this solstice was a new one, that every holiday after would commemorate this: the year they got to talk real-time with Earth. Every parent chipped in, eyes far away and faces shining.

All but one. Rhea saw her mother crossing the square between the admin module and the school module. Mom stopped, just for a step, and then turned her back, hurrying away.

Dad put his hand on Rhea’s shoulder. “You know this is hard for your mom.”

“I’d know if she ever said why she won’t talk about Earth!”

Dad looked down. Her parents never explained. “Come on,” he said, “Let’s get cleaned up.”

Proxima hung heavy in the sky, the shadows short under the copper glitter of the sandstone plinths. Dad wove their way through technicians carrying cables, testing the booth set up in the center of the henge.

Quantum entanglement smacked of magic: an electron on Earth in sync with an electron parsecs away? Proxima B’s slower rhythm would line up with the Northern Hemisphere solstice on Earth this year, give or take a few hours. Was that part of the alchemy of the successful test? Probably not, but the possibility burbled like soda in her heart and burnt like a shared secret in every eye.

At home, Mom was bustling confidently from storage boxes to the cook surface, and the air was full of the smell of frying potatoes. She waved at them. “I got the menorah set up. Can you get down the candles?”

Dad stretched to the ceiling strut where eight candles, dipped as a family project last year, hung in pairs from their shared wicks.

Rhea realized with horror she’d forgotten the date. “Mom, our turn in the booth is tonight. We only get a half-hour each.”

Mom lowered the spatula. “It’s the first night of Hanukkah. You’re staying home, both of you.”

“Lin.” Dad laid the candles next to the menorah, which sat on a stack of storage boxes covered in a cloth. “I respect your feelings, if you want to give up your turn, but—”

“But nothing. Sunset happens when it happens. You don’t postpone Hanukkah!”

“Hold on.” Dad pulled up the quantum-booth schedule on their largest display screen. “Sunset is at… 17:12… There, see? Our appointment isn’t until 18:00.”

The pleasant frying scent sharpened with scorch, and Mom scrambled back to the cooktop. “You’re going to rush this? This is supposed to be a joyful time.” She spoke like she was holding back a scream. “A time for family.”

“I want to meet my family.” Rhea’s breath wouldn’t come to make the words louder, but she knew Mom heard.

Dad cut the candles apart and fussed with the little fake pine tree he’d made from frayed radiation shielding. “Go put on your good suit,” he said.
Rhea dutifully changed into her newest jumpsuit, which was kept for limited service.

It felt awkward and cold when she returned to the main room. Dad kept glancing at the clock, but Mom wouldn’t light the first candle a second before 17:13. At least the prayer sounded the same as always, and they all relaxed a little when Mom set out the pancakes, and Dad brought out the present bags they reused every year.

No one was saying anything about the booth. Another family silence. Rhea treasured any tidbit of her mom’s past that slipped through accidentally. Mom had lived near a freshwater sea like the one they fished in. She had skated on frozen ponds. She sang a song about brown eyes turning blue.

It was 17:45, and Rhea couldn’t stop staring at the clock, either. Mom sighed. “Yes, you can go. GO.”
Dad kissed Mom on the hair, and she hugged his arm, tears reflecting flame.

Rhea felt sudden fury. How selfish! Not to see her family, not even once? What if this communicator stopped working? It had taken ten years to get it functional. What if it only worked today, on this special day when two far planets danced in step?

But then they were outside, in a carnival atmosphere of neighbors holding lanterns. And in the darkened booth, tiny golden motes thickened and coalesced into three-dimensional forms painted in sand: her grandparents, thin and frail but energetic, and Dad cried while laughing, and Rhea was gushed over, pronounced beautiful and perfect; everyone talked over each other until they were silent, smiling.

Rhea’s appointment for her maternal family was right afterward. As Grandma and Grandpa Wynn faded, she murmured, “Mom should be here.”

Dad squeezed her shoulder before exiting. “I know,” he said. “You can’t force it.”

Alone, she trembled. What if… Was Mom right to shun her family? Were they monstrous? The sprites spread, twisted, and became a sagging man with rounded shoulders.

Rhea cleared her throat. “Grandpa Cohen?”

He squinted at her. “I… was expecting Lin?”

“I’m her daughter, Rhea.”

His face bloomed into a smile. “I’m your uncle, Oliver.”

She had an uncle? Rhea felt something sharp stuck at the top of her throat. “Why does she hate you?”

Oliver flinched. Rhea’s eyes and nose were running. Oliver reached toward her. Quantum entanglement moved light like magic, but light ghosted through her cheek, unable to touch. “Your grandfather and your mother… were too much alike.”

Slowly, they talked. The sea was called Lake Michigan. Her grandfather put roofs on houses. She had three cousins.

It felt like a fairy tale. A battle knowable. Oscar shrugged. “I only saw slammed doors.”

When Rhea stepped back into her own life, Mom was with Dad, waiting between softly sparkling stones. Mom’s eyes brimmed with questions.

For the moment, all answers were possible. Rhea could keep a secret in turn… but no. “Grandpa passed. Last year.”

Her mother collapsed like a waveform.

Marie Vibbert is a Hugo and Nebula finalist with over 100 works in professional magazines, including Analog, F&SF, and Clarkesworld. Her stories have been translated into Chinese, Vietnamese, and Czech. Her latest novel Andrei and the Hellcats, is very gay space communism, and out now! By day she is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio.