*Many years later*

Sherrie St Clair sat alone in the chair in the front window.

Behind her the empty house was very quiet, though from the media centre in the corner floated the familiar, ageless notes of Adeste Fideles. Recorded in a cathedral somewhere, the echoing quality of the pure, soaring voices brought back the carol services in St Matthew's Church – closed several years ago when the cost of the upkeep of its ancient fabric had been deemed too great to be justified. There was a multi-denominational service in a newer church, not much further distant, but she had never attended it; she was more content to be left with her memories.

She was too old for change.

Outside, the garden was dark, stripped, deserted. Hardly any traffic ever went by in the lane, and the world beyond the neatly trimmed hedges was fading fast into the midwinter twilight that seemed to come so early that one had barely registered midday before the light began leaching from the sky.

Since Edward's death seven years ago she had kept herself busy; she refused to be one of those widows who sank into gloom, using their bereavement as an excuse for self-pity. She was active in her community; she had a wide circle of friends; she played golf in the summer, and went hiking all year round. On most weekends she could be seen hacking around the roads on one of the local stable's livery horses.

That morning, however – for the first time in many years – she had rung the stables and said she would not ride. It wasn't the first time she would have ridden out alone on this particular day; for the previous two years she had gone out alone, while beside her the frost-blanched grass had remained untrodden by a second set of hoofs. There had occasionally been other years, too, when the exigencies of her nephew's career had prevented him from coming home to the land of his birth for the festive season. But those had been different. Those had been the innocent years. This was Monday the twenty-fourth of December in God's year 2153. Christmas Eve.

She looked up towards the sky. The clouds had hung low all day, full of a snow that refused to fall, but now as night closed in one or two powdery flakes had begun to idly sift down. Somewhere out there, far beyond those lowering clouds, her beloved nephew was among those who had set out to save Earth.

The newscasts speculated endlessly on the doings of the starship in which he served. His masters were sparing of details, so every titbit they released was seized on and discussed at length. She tried not to watch, but the dread clung to her and would not be calmed, and that was why she had rung the stable this morning. On each of the two previous years his presence beside her had been so palpable that more than once she had almost turned to him with some item of conversation, and the realisation of her own foolishness had set her laughing; he was following his dream, out among the stars.

There had been danger in that, of course; she was no ninny, refusing to see what was obviously there. But now the whole world was waiting, their poor wounded world, and somewhere out there was a threat that could bring everything to an end. For all that she despised her own superstitious dread, she had not been able to shake the fear that the presence beside her today might be more than the product of the memory of so many happy Christmas Eve rides; that the slim upright figure on the shadowy horse might be the farewell message from a man whose body was now floating lifeless and frozen in space, millions of miles from his own star.

"Stupid old woman," she muttered, twitching irritably at the crocheted blanket she was working on. Of course nothing had happened to the ship. Her fool brother would have let her know – well, Mary would have, anyway. It was unlikely the news of an isolated death would have been generally circulated (morale was being kept up by a steady stream of optimistic reports of the starship's progress), but surely the next-of-kin would have been privately informed?

The declining daylight activated the sensors governing the house's lighting. The extra lamps behind her came on gently, banishing the dusk from the lounge. The Christmas tree lights were already twinkling; ever since that first occasion when the children had been left with her it had been a feature of the season, and now even when they were living their own lives it was a link to the happy times of the past. It was time to shut the curtains and turn to the armchair by the fire, and her book waiting there. Already the scent was stealing from the pine branches, and the now rather faded baubles that had given the children so much joy were lent magic again by the subtle lamplight.

Nevertheless, as she made to rise, she saw a van pull up beyond the garden gate. It was too late for any standard deliveries, so she watched in puzzlement as a young man she did not know walked up the front path, a small white rectangle in his hand.

Still, it was something that would break the anxious tenor of her thoughts, so she went to the front door. Even if no signature would be required for whatever this was, she could open it at once.

A signature was required. She provided one, a little shakily, while the pleasant young delivery-man made conversation about the likelihood of a white Christmas and joked that it wasn't this cold at home in Jamaica.

As the van pulled away and disappeared into the falling evening, she moved to her armchair. There was a letter knife there, on the little side table where she always opened her mail; it had San Francisco engraved on the handle.

The packet – it was too bulky to be an ordinary letter – had a printed address label and a second label stating For Delivery Monday 24 December. It had a Starfleet postmark, and as she recognised it her heart rushed into her mouth.

She sat down a little heavily in the armchair, and reached for the knife. A quick cut opened the envelope, and from the open end a data-chip dropped out.

Her fingers were ridiculously unsteady as she picked it up from the table and inserted it into the slot on the media centre.

There was a small computer screen on the unit for vid-mail. As soon as the internal workings recognised the chip's communication protocol, the familiar Starfleet chevron appeared. And after a moment, the face of her nephew followed it.

He looked so much older, and so burdened. Her heart contracted as she took in his pallor, worse than it had ever been. The lines between his brows and around his mouth looked as though they had been incised with a knife.

But he could still smile. Somehow the face contrived to produce one that had in it the same warmth from all those Christmases ago as he leaned forward a little to ensure his voice would be picked up properly by the microphone.

"I won't be able to make it this year either, Aunt," he said. "But I'm going to arrange for this to be delivered to you on our day, so that at least you won't be entirely deprived of my sparkling company.

"I'm recording this in the assumption that we won't be home for Christmas. Also that no news of our untimely demise has come in between times. So as you watch this, you'll be at home, alone, waiting for Christmas.

"There's not a lot I can do about that, Aunt. Except tell you that if fate allows, I'll be thinking of you, when today comes, wherever I am. And about Uncle Edward, of course. And about all the Christmases Maddie and I spent at your house.

"You told me once that I was very special. If there's anything special about me, Aunt, I owe it to you. I wish so much that I could be with you today. I believe you're expecting snow. The lanes would have been so beautiful, with the trees all covered in it. I'll just have to imagine the two of us riding side by side, enjoying it.

"Unfortunately, I don't have nearly enough time to say all that I ought to say. Except to thank you, and to wish you Merry Christmas, and to tell you I hope that next year all this will be over and I'll be able to fly home and visit.

"Until then, dear Aunt, I will be thinking of you.

"God bless."

The grey eyes softened and squeezed almost shut as he pantomimed blowing a kiss.

The Starfleet chevron winked onto the screen again. The recording was over.

She switched off the unit, stood up and moved to the window. Outside the snow was falling more swiftly, the flakes ghostly in the lamplight.

If there's anything special about me, I owe it to you.

"Oh, Malcolm, you foolish, foolish boy," she whispered. "You're the special one of this family. And maybe when all this is over, even that stupid brother of mine will finally realise that."

The weather forecast said the snow was unlikely to be severe. On Boxing Day morning she would ring the stables and ask if there was a horse available. If there was, she would go for her usual ride, admiring the beauty of the snow-dusted landscape, and a shadowy second horse would pace alongside with a slender, upright figure in the saddle: not so much a memory, and certainly not a ghost, but a prophecy.

Enterprise would come home.

Victorious.

The End.


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