Care Package
A slice of life from an old Star Trek RPG character of mine from her days in Starfleet Academy.
Visual reference for M'Sharaay is located at this link
This story was originally a submission to FurAffinity's Thursday Prompt writing group.
Care Package
By: Dankedonuts
https://dankedonuts.sofurry.com/
Cadet M'Sharaay hobbled toward her quarters. The Catian's ears flat against her head, felinoid tail-tip twitching jaggedly. Golden-orange paws and arms laden with too many things. A standard-issue attaché case that couldn't hold everything her instructors insisted she needed for every class. A handbag full of little tools. Her tricorder. A clattering collection of textpadds; Astrophysics, Stellar Cartography, Advanced Sim/Modeling, Basics Of Federation Standard. And a blocky assortment of projectors and isolinear chips that constituted this weekend's holo-engineering project.
And of course it was a matter of time before she'd have to haul a phaser around everywhere too, now that the rotten Klingons had withdrawn from the Khitomer Accords. For a people who wrapped their whole lives around 'honor,' they had a very fluid understanding of the word.
Each step felt harder than the last. The whole course schedule was designed to cater to Humans, Vulcans, and other species that could stay awake from dawn til dusk non-stop, so she was constantly exhausted. And when she actually managed to squeeze in a half-hour to take a catnap today, she got a gruff talking-to from the groundskeeper for climbing a tree to do it!
The quarters were divided into a common area behind the entry door, a common head behind that, and two doors to either side. Their private bunks. But the budding Space Scientist didn't bother hauling any of this junk to her personal space. She just dumped it all on the common table to sort through later. Replicator! Food! Now!
She got three steps away from the pile before her green eyes narrowed with realization, "Oh, no, wait! Surprise inspections! Can't leave a fool thing out of place for one moment! Hssss!" Could this first year get any worse? She plopped herself down on the couch to sort it all out.
. . .
M'Sharaay never made it to her bunk. She awoke atop the couch, with a mostly-eaten meal sitting on a plate atop her belly. Groggily she shoved the last three bites of Denobulan beetleloaf into her mouth in one go, atomized the rest of the plate in the replicator, asked the computer what time it was, and stumbled towards her bunkroom.
Nearly tripping over the box at the foot of the bunkroom's door. Steely grey, about half a meter long, the top covered in her people's native pictoglyphs. Attached was a note from her roommate: "This was waiting for you when I checked the mail - Sohn." Moving the note revealed the origin. Belliax III. The words her parents were in charge of terraforming!
Eager, but maybe a wee bit too jaded of late to be elated, she knelt down to inspect the contents. The wariness fell away with the first whiff of the inside. Nillocakes! The smell of a favorite treat came up from underneath a squarish package. The cake-tin was loaded with the spiral-shaped treats. The first taste told that they were divinity cooked by the hand of Vh'Saal, one of the project heads.
With the taste of the treat still upon her rough tongue, the cadet opened the package she had removed. It was a web of family photos. Distant relatives to the outside edges, great-cousins, family elders, and such. Closer ones further in. Her elder sister and her family on Versa Colony. Her elder brother, on his medical ship. Her littermate, off on his first real botanical expedition. Wide, deep mountains behind him, glowing with green.
And in the center, the largest picture. Her mother her father, and her younger sisters who still lived with them, Ch'Chyr'sss and M'Urr. They were standing before a shelter window, a bleak landscape behind them. But not as bleak as it has once been. The sky was bluer, and there were clear lines of dirty-brown and greyish yellow on the ground outside. Lines of life, taking root on the planet. A project that had started well before she's submitted her Starfleet application, and would still be going long after she became a Science Officer. "So, you finally worked up slime-mold that would take and kick off the soil cycle, eh?" she smiled, proud of her parents. She couldn't help but wonder if Li'Saar had found the solution for them.
She ran a finger over each of the images in turn. Choked up by memories, lit up with curiosity of how their presents were. The answers to that were readily there to explore. The space opposite the cakebox was crowded with letter and well-wishes from other members of the terraforming crew. Even some paw-print art from the outpost's youngest inhabitants. A god hour or more was spent reading through them all, laughing and crying happily, and dictating replies.
Finally, M'Sharaay found the bottom of the box layered with four more treasures. Each of them wrapped. Each marked with a glyph to state whom they were from. Mother, Father, Sister, Sister. But she'd save those surprises for another day. When she'd need another pick-me-up. Rather, she entered her bunkroom to fund a place to hang the pictures of her family. This had turned out to be a pretty good day after all.
. . .
When M'Sharaay's roommate next returned hours later, hauling with her own pile of texts and supplies, there was a share of nillocakes waiting for her on the common room table.