From Wordwielder: Gingerbread

"Mummy, I want to hold the gingerbread!"

Beth Lestrade smiled at her daughter, eyes flickering away from the gentle snow falling outside to focus on the little face staring pleadingly up at her. "Let's move it down to the table, Cathy. Then there will be room for you and your brother."

Cathy screwed up her face, nose crinkling with displeasure. "But Ben's too small! He can't help!"

"You helped last year, didn't you?" Beth reminded her as she carried the first tray of gingerbread pieces over to the kitchen table. "And Ben's the same age as you were then. This gingerbread house is for both of you."

"No it's not!" Cathy protested, following behind her mother. "It's for daddy!"

"Daddy!" Ben squealed, running into the room. "Daddy here?"

Beth leant down to caress his dark curls, an inheritance from his father's side of the family. "Not yet, sweetheart." She stood upright again, returning to the kitchen counter for another batch of gingerbread. "Now, shall we build this house?"

"Yay!" Both children cheered, running around her to the table and climbing onto the chairs surrounding it.

Beth laid down the last tray of gingerbread, and within moments the little family was hard at work. Cathy, having made a gingerbread house the previous year, considered herself an expert, helping her little brother to glue his pieces into place with the sticky icing. Beth intervened only when one of the children were at risk of falling or when an argument seemed inevitable, which fortunately was not often. Soon, they had a pretty little gingerbread house sitting in front of them, sticky with icing, and crumbling on the edges, but otherwise intact.

"Eat time!" Ben cheered, reaching for a piece.

Cathy slapped his hand away. "No, you can't eat it yet! Now we need to decorate and make it pretty."

"Don't hit your brother, Cathy." Beth stood up and brought another tray from the kitchen counter, this one with coloured sugar, more icing, and some little squares of fudge. "And don't use all the fudge yet, save some of the fudge for later. That's daddy's favourite."

"Daddy here?" Ben turned big brown eyes up at his mother.

She smiled at him. "Not yet, sweetheart." Still, she couldn't stop her eyes from flickering over to the door.

"But it's so dark, and this is his favourite part!" Cathy crossed her arms. "I want to wait for Daddy."

"Daddy won't mind," Beth told her. "Go ahead and start decorating."

"No!"

"No!" Ben echoed.

"Well, I'd like to decorate, so I'm starting now." Beth sat down at the table and picked up one of the little bowls of sugar.

The front door creaked open, letting a flurry of cold wind into the house, followed by something – or someone – else. "I can see you've been busy!"

"Daddy!" Cathy and Ben jumped off their chairs, taking off across the dining room to wrap their arms around Lestrade's legs. Beth wasn't moving slowly either, getting up to kiss her husband before he could even take off his coat. She then chivvied the children a little further back, giving Lestrade just enough room to take off his wet outerwear before they were on him once again.

After a few minutes more, Ben and Cathy finally released Lestrade for long enough that all of the little family could take a seat at the table. "You've done excellent work," Lestrade told the children seriously. "There's just one thing left to do."

Anyone looking in the Lestrades' window that cold winter night would have seen the small family lit by lamplight, laughing and smiling as they sat around the kitchen table, decorating the prettiest gingerbread house their family had ever seen.