Stories Brief & Unconnected

Remembered Traditions

Ok, so I have writer's block. I'm stuck on the ending of 'The Problems With Genetic Experimentation', and so I wrote this short Christmasy thing.... I tried to be less gory and dark and I think I succeeded, although it is still very weird. I excel at weird.
- Lana ;)

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The sappy, pungent odor of pine hit my nose with surprising force as Eric and Jeffrey carried the tree through the front door. I smiled; I had almost forgotten what real Christmas trees smelled like. The last time I had seen this holiday celebrated had been years ago, back when I was a little girl.

"Well, Moira? What do you think?" Jeffrey asked, grinning at me. His smile was one of the things I loved most about him. He employed his entire face when he smiled, not just his mouth - his eyes brightened, his nose wrinkled, and his dimples, already pronounced, became tiny caverns in his cheeks. I had to smile back.

"It's beautiful!" I said earnestly. "How did you manage to get ahold of it?" His smile widened, which I hadn't thought was physically possible, and it was adorable.

"I may have convinced Eric-" Eric coughed pointedly, and Jeffrey amended his statement. "I may have, erm, forcefully suggested that Eric ask his brother for a favor." Eric rolled his eyes.

"You said you would feed me to a pack of carnivorous reindeer if I didn't find a way to get you the tree."

"Yeah. That was a forceful suggestion." I laughed. So did Eric and Jeffery. They had been best friends for as long as I could remember, and death threats were everyday occurrences between the two of them.

"Thank your brother for me, Eric." I said. "This means a lot to me." Eric's brother had gotten rich after a couple of lucky stock investments, and it was usually fairly easy to talk him into purchasing things. He didn't mind; he was a naturally generous person, and he was well aware that he had far too much money to spend all by himself. Still, I was impressed that he had managed to find an actual Christmas tree. There were barely any trees at all growing in the wild, and the majority of those trees were deciduous. My father had only gotten our family a real tree twice, in our first two years on this planet. He had been very big on honoring the traditions of past cultures, and we had moved to Earth largely for his and my mom's studies.

We had been part of the first Earth colony, and our settlement had used up almost all of the planet's remaining natural resources. We eventually realized that we needed to switch to more renewable energy sources, but Earth's ecosystem was still in recovery; that was why I was so astonished by the hulking plant mass in Jeffrey's and my foyer.

The tradition of taking trees indoors for the holidays had died out a couple hundred years ago. It was only the crazy religious fanatics, (the ones who still practiced old-world religions like Christianity), and the even crazier archeology/anthropology double majors like me who even cared about how the species that had originally inhabited this planet, the Homo sapiens, had lived.

I had harbored an interest in alien races for my entire life. My mom was a biologist and my dad was an archaeologist, and both specialized in the study of sentient species other than our own. Now I was preparing for a career studying the civilization of the 'humans' (as Homo sapiens were more commonly called).

Eric and Jeffrey began fitting the six-foot pine into a tree stand that they had procured from who-knows-where. I moved to help them, holding the trunk in place as they tightened several screws to cement its position. We then wrapped the tree with strands of minuscule lightbulbs, and hung glittering orbs on its branches. Once we had finished our decoration, Eric, Jeffrey, and I stepped back to examine our work. We sipped from mugs of tea and joked around until Eric glanced at his watch, remarked on the time, and took his leave. We said our farewells, and then Jeffrey and I settled back into the couch.

I snuggled into his side, and he wrapped a tentacle around my shoulder.

"Thank you," I murmured, resting my head in the crook of his neck and closing my eyes.

"Merry Christmas, Moira." He replied, kissing my forehead. We fell asleep there, our faces illuminated by the soft glow of our Christmas tree.