To anyone who found their way here looking for Neil Gaiman's Calendar of Tales: I'm sorry to disappoint you. This is just a random person online taking his idea and his questions, and doing her own Calendar of Tales. You're more than welcome to stay and read my story too, though I have to warn you, I am definitely no Neil Gaiman.
Here's how this works: I asked a question. People answered the question. I picked one of the answers and wrote a short story based on it.
(I never said I wrote a good short story based on it.)
__________________________________
Why is January so dangerous?
Because January is for new beginnings, reinventions of self and dark, icy space. (Answer from Siiri)
Every year. Every damn year. Lea hated it.
She laid down and closed her eyes, letting out one last deep breath.
The world under her eyelids shifted, and she found herself in the empty darkness she knew all too well. Without her body, the world was icy cold. Or, rather, the place where she and her people went, as their bodies were grown anew. Cold, and dark, and empty, everyone in their own eternity. Floating in nothing, with the only sound she could hear her own breathing, loud in her ears. Why and how she was still breathing without a body was a mystery to her. The cold emptiness hurt her lungs with every breath.
She hated the void, more than anything else about the process, but this year having to do this was especially bad for all the other reasons. Lea had liked who she was, where she was with her life. She didn’t want to change, and she didn’t want things to change. But that’s not how it worked. It’s not like she had a choice. At least she could try to hold on to the memories from this year that were the most important to her.
And it wasn’t like she was going to be completely different. She would still be the same person, as far as you can be the same person if a lot of your memories have all but disappeared. The essence of her remained despite the changes and lost memories, the most ancient of the people assured them. It had never made much sense to Lea.
The physical changes were mostly tweaks here and there. Mending of broken parts, replacing scar tissue with new, still growing tissue. She was going to be good as new. Literally. And that included the brain partially resetting and losing a lot of what made her a different person now as opposed to a year ago.
She hated it.
Maybe it was only tweaking and mending and making better, but she had liked the old tweaks, the scars she’d accumulated over the past year. They had memories associated with them. For now.
How she envied the phoenixes. The actual phoenixes. At least they only had to do this regeneration thing every decade or so, unless something killed them.
Her people had to do it every year.
And on top of that the phoenixes got to go down with a flame, and be born from the heat of the ashes. She had to spend a week in a freezing void, being torn apart and put back together again, never quite the same.
The irony was that the regeneration was the thing that would probably kill her one day. It happened. Almost every year someone didn’t find their way back to their body. A risk they had to take, a price they all needed to be prepared to pay for having their body completely heal itself once a year, for neverending youth. Well, neverending until they were the one who couldn’t find their way back.
No!
Suddenly she could feel some of the most important memories she had slipping away from her. She didn’t think she would have noticed, but she was keeping a tight mind on them, in between the thoughts of frustration of having to go through all of this again.
No. You’re not taking Kat. Whoever whatever is deciding which parts of me will remain to make it to next year, keep your hands off Kat. She’s mine, and you’re not taking those memories. Even if you take every other bit of who I am, I’ll fight you till the end for her.
Kat, who always made her laugh. Kat, who understood her when no one else did. Kat, who made Lea feel young again, despite the fact that she had been through hundreds of regenerations in her life. Kat, whose smile would make anything better. Kat, who made her better, in ways that this stupid regeneration would never be able to.
“We just have to make it through regeneration. Then we can be together another year. Promise me you’ll find your way back. To me,” Kat had said. Lea had promised Kat she would. Kat had promised her they would be together, after.
She couldn’t lose those memories. They were everything that mattered to her right now. She wouldn’t let the world take this away from her. She wished she wouldn’t have to go through the regeneration, even if that meant getting old. If she was with Kat, she wouldn’t mind. Kat was worth it. But it wasn’t up to her. Her ancestors had made the deal. There was no way for her to get out of it.
She had met Kat on one of the first days of the previous year. Or maybe they had met earlier, but neither remembered. It happened. Eventually, after hundreds of regenerations, people would barely remember who their mother was. But no, she was sure they hadn’t met. She would remember. There was no way she would forget her, like she would not forget her now.
Kat had sat down at her table in the mess hall and smiled at her. Lea had looked up at her, confused that a stranger would sit at her table, and that she would smile at her.
“Hi,” the stranger had said, “I’m Kat.”
“Hi,” she’d said, still too confused to say anything else.
“You look confused,” Kat had told her.
“Because you’re talking to me,” Lea had said, stupidly, after a moment of silence, because her brain couldn’t come up with absolutely anything else to say.
Kat had laughed, a sound that was like the first tiny, happy stream in the spring.
“Yeah,” she’d said. “It’s a new year. Time to make a few new friends.”
Lea hadn’t known what to say to that.
“So, you are?” Kat had asked after a moment of silence from Lea’s part.
“Lea,” she’d said. Her brain had mostly caught up with the situation during the silence. “Why do you want to be friends with me? I’m just a random person in the mess hall.”
“You look like a person worth knowing,” Kat had said, and shrugged, and given Lea a smile that had almost made her heart stop. She had smiled back, then. She hadn’t been able to help herself.
They had spent the year together, practically inseparable. She ran through the memories of her in her head. The snowball fights that everyone won, because they were followed by hot chocolate, made with Kat’s secret recipe. (It was the best hot chocolate Lea had ever had.) The first day it was warm enough to use short sleeved dresses, when they lay in the new grass, telling each other the best and most hidden parts they remembered from their old lives. The summer midnight walks that turned into summer sunrise walks, the morning dew in the grass making their bare feet wet. The way Kat’s skirts swirled as she ran into the July rainstorm, laughing, shouting for her to follow. How they competed in who would be able to gather the fallen autumn leaves into a bigger pile. Just sitting, at home, by the fire, under thick blankets, cuddled together, when a snowstorm whistled in the corners of the house.
You. Cannot. Have her.
The world was a better place, with Kat just existing in it. Kat even made regeneration bearable. It felt like forever, for longer than it had ever felt before, because this time she couldn’t wait to be with Kat again, but just the existence of the memories of her made it all easier to bear.
For an eternity she held onto Kat. Held onto the memories she had of her. Running through them in her head, checking and rechecking that the most important ones were still there. Often she could feel one of them start to get fuzzy, and it took everything she had to not let the memories slip and disappear out of her reach, forever. She almost forgot the freezing emptiness around her, spending all her focus on Kat, and their time together.
And then, finally, Lea felt her body was ready for her again, calling out for her to return. So she drifted, pulled towards it by its call.
She blinked. The world was very bright. She shaded her eyes with her hand, and sat up, slightly dizzy, like every year. It would pass.
She spent a moment simply getting her bearings. She was ok. She still felt like herself. Then again, she always felt like herself when she woke up. She never knew what had changed, because she couldn’t remember what she had lost. She looked over her body. The scar she had gotten from the hot pan while making pancakes with Kat last winter was gone. Of course it was. She had somehow hoped it wouldn’t be, even though she knew better. It had been the day she had understood she loved the woman in front of her, helping her cool the burn. The knee she had skinned when she fell as they were climbing the mountain had no mark on it either. But she had made her way back to her body, and she remembered.
She was here and remembered. And that was all that mattered.
As soon as the dizziness passed, she headed out. She had to find Kat. She had to tell her she had made it through. She had to tell her she was still here, that she loved her.
It didn’t take long. She hurried along the paths, breath steaming in the air, towards the main hall of town, where they were all to gather after waking up, to officially begin the new year, and to mourn anyone who had been left behind. Kat was already there. She spotted her gorgeous brown hair, with just the barest hint of red when the light hit it right, in the crowd easily. She would know her in any crowd. Others would say she didn’t especially stand out, but all those people were wrong. Lea's heart soared at the sight of her.
Kat was talking with some people, some of whom she had seen before but didn't know. Making some new friends for the new year, no doubt. Lea slipped into the circle next to her.
“Hey, you,” she said, and Kat turned to look at her.
That look made her heart stop, her blood freeze in her veins, her stomach drop all the way to the center of the Earth.
“Hi,” Kat tilted her head, thoughtful. “You look familiar. I’m sorry. Maybe we knew each other last year? I’m Kat.”
