Solar Flares and Witches’ Snares

By Marisca Pichette

From #CHM 73 July 2026

I.

Measles mans the prow. Her wart-hands curl with uncounted fingers around a star-studded Wheel. Blue flames, red sparks, yellow lights from cores of all ages, their billions imprisoned to serve her delight. She built the prow herself, constructed this first third of our ship to darkness. She steers.

II.

Mumps conducts the belly. Growling bowels and starving midriff. She lines the windows with sealant and charts each nebula we cross. She calculates how far we’ve come and how far yet to go—though that second figure alters as often as the first. While Measles navigates asteroid fields like mountain wildflowers, Mumps immortalizes every crater in lovingly crafted code. In her, we are never forgotten.

III.

Rubella guards the stern. She sweeps currents in the clouds and jettisons messages to afar. In her care rest our escape pods and stasis chambers, cauldrons of conscious and unconscious choice. From corrugated steel flooring to polarized glass, the final third of our home hums in time. We are never lost.

IV.

There are no maidens, no knights in space. Here in the vast void, chivalry and innocence devour each other until nothing worthy of story remains. You will not have heard our names, nor this particular tale. We sail not in the name of Wonder, but Contagion. Meet us and maybe we’ll make a trade that—if not fair—is fitting nonetheless.

V.

Measles has need of stars for her collection. Can your system oblige? Red dwarf, yellow, white doesn’t matter. She desires most of all the elusive black, if you can tell her where one dwells. And you should tell. Tell, tell, tell her all. Your reward awaits in the rivets of her Wheel.

VI. 

Mumps walls herself in screens, but she still remembers the old ways. Paper, bark, skin. Not just any vellum will suffice to hold her words. Chitin and tortoiseshell require careful carving. Offer her extinct specimens thirsty for ink, iridescence that rivals even her finest LEDs. Arrive empty handed, and another material must serve. She’ll turn you over and down, check for blemishes and scars that might cause her records to smear. She’ll slice a page from your palm and a cover from your back. There is, of course, another way. If you know of others whose casings long for script, you’d be wise to share their names.

VII.

Rubella fuels us. Oil is outdated and heavy metals sparse. Spin her a story of renewable energy and essences of plenty, and she may spare you a listen. Does your home planet harbor nectar in its heart? How much would you sell it for? And if your blood should boil…she is careful to catch the fumes.

VIII.

Few have seen us sail the starry sea. Our triplet ship eases past gas giants and tandem moons. Its three witches look out on an aging universe and ponder how the tales have twisted. We waited—oh, we waited so long—for hapless damsels and dreary woodsmen to stumble their ways to our door. But villages migrate and forests retreat. Knocks lost their delicate frequency and we grew hungry. Over eons, our knuckles tired of weaving. Our legs wearied of dancing in cast iron boots. At the tail end of an age, we convened.

IX.

Measles brought the fire, kindled in the dimples of her spidery hands. Mumps carried the mirrors—magical and broken and casket-heavy. Rubella dusted off the brooms, lashed them together, and spelled us a raft away from all that withered in our wake. Mumps charted our course in shattered silver. And with a flame on every finger, Measles set our sail alight.

X.

We have learned three things on our voyage across the expanse. Stories are cheap. Lives? Cheaper still. But magic—oh, magic—burns brighter than any star.

* * *

Marisca Pichette is a queer author of more than three hundred pieces of short fiction and poetry, appearing in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Vastarien, The Deadlands, Nightmare Magazine, and many others. Her poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Elgin Awards. Their eco-horror novella, Every Dark Cloud, is out now from Ghost Orchid Press. 

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