Review – The Gift
Which gift matters to most?
Background
As a Star Trek fanfiction follow up to Pacing, I wanted Doug‘s second Christmas gift to Lili to be a huge surprise (as of the writing of this blog post, I have not yet written their first Christmas together).
In Between Days
For Lili, this will be the culmination, as her dreams truly do come true and she gets what she’s always really needed, ever since she was nine years old – a home.
Plot
Lili is sleep-deprived and anxious, as Joss is still a young baby. She’s barely functional, like a lot of new parents are.
Doug hands her an article wrapped in paper, which she opens. Annoyed, she announces that her present is a wooden spatula. She then proceeds to place it into the holder with all of her other wooden spatulas. It seems the essence of a thoughtless, last-minute present. She is getting upset. Doug is going to have to salvage the situation.
Then Doug tells her that the spatula does not matter in terms of the present; instead, it’s the paper it’s wrapped in.
That paper turns out to be his own crudely-drawn plans for their house.
And that house, eventually, becomes a possession of the Temporal Museum on Lafa II. Much like the family, it endures. Eleanor even gives tours of it.
Story Postings
- The Gift on Fanfiction.net
- The Gift on Fictionpad
- In addition, The Gift on Wattpad
- The Gift on the G & T Show forums
- The Gift in context
Rating
The story is Rated K.
Upshot
I like this short story as a direct sequel to Pacing, as it fulfills the promise of the earlier piece. Both stories also prefigure a great deal of the In Between Days series, and begin to set the stage for more of the series. I like how it turned out.
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