Rating: K+
Summary: Delilah Stirling is back with a few letters for the mail-less of Atlantis
Disclaimer: I own none of the Stargate Characters but I do own Delilah and her mad family
Authors Notes: Another First Line Challenge from the When Plot Bunnies Attack forum, this is 122: She smiled as if she had a secret and it is Smut free, for once.
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She smiled as if she had a secret as she swept past the table of scientists, who muttered jealously at the two bulging envelopes under her arms. Everyone knew the city's head astronomer Delilah Stirling got more mail than the rest of the city put together, coming from a very close family and having a wide circle of friends her mailbag was always full, but this was extreme even for her.
She made her way up to the briefing room, hoping to catch everyone in the meeting before they went their separate ways.
"Dr Weir...um...I'm not intruding am I?" Lilah asked
"No Dr Stirling we were just finishing" replied Elizabeth Weir as Sheppard, McKay, Lorne and Zelenka made a move to get up.
"No it's ok, this kind of concerns you lot too" Lilah replied
"Ok, what can we do for you?" said Elizabeth indicating for Lilah to sit, she dropped the envelopes on the table and sat in the chair
"Well I've sort of started something that's...um...kinda snowballed and...Um..." she started
"Oh my God what have you done to your lab? What have you destroyed?" said Rodney who was starting to panic
"Nothing, keep your hair on Rodney this has nothing to do with my lab, my work or Atlantis but it does have a lot to do with my nieces" said Lilah looking guilty.
"You haven't told them about Atlantis have you?" said Sheppard
"Oh no, as far as they're concerned I work for NASA on some secret project". Lilah took a deep breath "the last time I was on Earth I visited Lili at Cambridge and...Oh that reminds me, hold on" she fished around her pockets and pulled out a bulky letter which she handed to Zelenka "she asked me to pass this on to you, I think it's photos from her vampire hunting trip in the Czech Republic. Anyway I digress, so I mentioned to Lili that I tend to get a lot more mail than most people...," she said
"No kidding, Colonel Caldwell says that if you get much more he'll have to start bringing the Odyssey with him" interrupted Sheppard. Lilah smiled
"Well I said that a lot of people didn't seem to get any mail at all and it was a bit of a shame so she said she'd write to someone and could I pass it on to a deserving cause," said Lilah. Elizabeth's eyes widened
"Your niece wrote all those?" she asked, Lilah laughed
"No but she did get her housemates and some of her friends to join in and they obviously passed the word round to more people, the idea was popular with the Astrophysics and Astronomy courses apparently and...This is the result," she said with a sigh.
"All those letters came from Cambridge, do they bother studying?" asked Lorne. Lilah laughed again
"Only that one came from Cambridge" she pointed to the left hand envelope "this one comes from Katie at the Academy of St Martin-In-The-Fields, Lili told Katie what she was doing and Katie got in on the act too" she replied. Elizabeth's head was spinning
"Who's Katie?" she asked
"Lili's twin sister" Lilah replied
"She's studying at St Martin-In-The-Fields, wow, she must be good" said Rodney.
"She wants to be an opera singer like her mother" Lilah replied
"Well if she's half as good, I want tickets," said Rodney, Lilah grinned at him
"I'll let her know" she replied
"Huh" said John looking confused, Rodney tutted
"You wouldn't understand you prol," he said with a sigh. Lilah giggled
"Someone's been reading 1984," she said
"Huh" said John again
"Big Brother, Ministries of Truth and Peace, you never read it?" said Lorne. John shook his head
"I'm still reading War and Peace," retorted Sheppard
"I preferred Down and Out in London and Paris myself" said Lorne
"Animal Farm was the only Western book we were allowed to read at school" remarked Zelenka. Elizabeth sighed
Could we leave the book club discussion and get back to the matter in hand, Lilah you told your niece that some of the people here didn't get any mail so she and her sister and their friends took it upon themselves to write a bunch of letters to us" she said. Lilah nodded
"That's about the long and short of it, only I had no idea they'd go this far there's got to be a hundred or so letters here, I'm sorry I had no clue what they were up to" Lilah replied. Elizabeth smiled
"Don't apologise I think it's a very nice idea, John, Rodney I'll leave this in your hands, tell any member of your departments that would like a letter to help themselves" said Elizabeth.
The meeting broke up and they went their separate ways, Lorne jogged to catch up with Lilah
"I know you said the twins 'Marched to their own drummer' but isn't getting your friends to write to a load of strangers a bit weird, even for them" he asked, Lilah grinned at him
"This is one of their more sane endeavours" she replied.
"Why? Why would they go to all that trouble for a bunch of geeks and flyboys?" he asked
"I think it's because they can't understand why no-one would write to family or friends. Ever since they were kids there's always been letters, postcards, notes, cards and latterly email from all corners of the world, when Lula was on tour and they couldn't go with her because they were at school there were letters coming almost daily for them, I guess they can't comprehend someone having no letters to read" she explained. Lorne thought about what she had said
"I can see the point in that, I'd go mad if I didn't get any mail from my family" he replied.
"Do you think their effort will be appreciated?" she asked. He pointed to Sheppard and McKay dumping piles of letters on tables in the mess hall and them eagerly snapped up by the population of Atlantis,
"I'd say that's a yes" he said with a smile
"They're a good pair my nieces" she said with a sigh.