Home for the holidays: Or not.

I'm not fond of this time of year.  Not the weather, because that's easy enough to change with a short shuttle flight.  No, it's the social aspects of this period on the Old Calendar.  When it was just Earth that Was, the calendar made sense.  So did the holiday periods.  The seasonal cycles were predictable and fixed.  Since the dominant cultures for the last couple thousand years before the Exodus were in the Northern hemisphere, the "holidays" were winter holidays.  A hodge podge of various cultures, all mixing together and distilling down to a set of social traditions that usually involved family and giving presents and stimulating the local economy by the purchase of same.

The holidays are depressing.

Winter is depressing.

I've been out on the Rim now for the holidays for the last seven years.  Even before I went to Hale's Moon, and now on Dragon's Egg, I'd been out here.  I was alone for most of those years, but 'Brina changed that for me. Unfortunately, this year wasn't one we'd get to spend together.  Some sort of technical emergency on the platform, which I actually understand.  She's the best they have and she came back out here to help run the place.  This time of the year is only significant to us because we got together at Firefly's, back on Blackburne, this time of the year.

The girls were off-world, again.  Somewhere.  Actually, I knew where all three of them were.  Keeping track was an ongoing test of my growing network.  But I missed them.  Not that we were a normal family.  Or ever would be a normal family.  Or even could be a normal family.  It was what it was.  Lonesome though it was.

Even Simon was off world for the holidays.

But at least Haley's around.  If you'd asked me, well, ever, whether I thought a Beagle would be the most stable companion in my life, I'd have called you Baka.  But here she was.  Snoring blissfully away in her bed.  Rescued from Reavers, in order to be a stable influence in a lonely Spook's tumultuous life.