NEW PRE-DS9 A Child of Faerie 1/1 [G] (B&f)

Title: A Child of Faerie
Author: Paula Stiles (thesnowleopard@hotmail.com)
Website: http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Andes/3071/arch.html
Series: PRE-DS9
Part: NEW 1/1
Rating [G] 
Codes: B&f

Summary: A woman contemplates the changes in her young
son.

Disclaimer: Nope. Don't own the characters or the Trek
universe. They belong to Paramount. Michael Crichton has
popularized some of the ideas in this story. The story itself is mine.

Archive: Yep. If you ask, first.

Note: This is a prequel to "The Night Before Christmas,"
but can be read on its own.

Many thanks to Valerie Shearer for taking the time out
from finishing her story 'Surrender' to beta this for me.




				A CHILD OF FAERIE


     She contemplates her son. He watches the colourful
little dinosaurs hemmed off by forcefields to either side
of the path. The juvenile Velociraptors have been
carefully engineered, pieced together from fragments of
DNA found in insect-impregnated amber. Why is it right
and acceptable to make prehistoric monsters, but not to
help a lonely boy?

     This is her son's favourite part of the
Palaeontological Museum in Sydney. The Mesozoic Guided
Tour is any child's fantasy. Giant ferns arch over the
path, creating a cool tunnel in the midday heat. A blue
forcefield sparks as their fronds brush its roof. An
enormous dragonfly, escaped from the Carboniferous
exhibit, buzzes past her through the ferns. She jumps.
Uneasy, she watches her son mirror the tiny, lethal
creatures bobbing along next to the path. He loves the
dinosaurs, all of them, large and small. He imitates
their chirps, tries to copy their rapid gait. How she
hates this place.

     It is a sin against nature to recreate such
creatures, she thinks. Millions of years ago, they died
by an act of God. But, rather than accept their
extinction, Humans gave them new life. Humanity plays God
every day. Scientists engineer new viruses as easily as
they do extinct creatures. Starfleet's ships can deflect
an asteroid like the one that burned the dinosaurs from
the face of the Earth as easily as they can travel
hundreds of lightyears in a few days. She's even heard
rumours of devices that can create entire new planets,
complete with their own biospheres.

     Her people now balk at only one thing, one sin-the
bioengineering of sentients. The cloning and genetic
enhancement of humanoids, alone, are taboo. Six months
ago, watching her stunted, bewildered son stumble through
life, she resented that one ban. Now, she isn't so sure.

     *What have I done?* This child who skips gracefully
beside her looks like her son, walks like her son, wears
his body--but is he her son? She can't tell, anymore.
Where has the boy who wandered down this path but six
months earlier gone?

     She can't even blame the change on somebody else.
Who would she blame?  She plotted the entire thing with
her husband. She kissed her son and saw him off with his
father on the ship to Adigeon Prime. She hid her
husband's absence for two months, spinning more and more
outrageous lies as she masked her own anxiety. She
accepted back the new, improved little boy, hugged and
kissed him as if he had not changed at all, as if he
were still her son.

     It's his fault least of all; but she blames him,
anyway.

     "Jules," she says, too sharply. "Come along. Daddy
is waiting."

     He cocks his head, birdlike. "Yes, Mummy," he
murmurs. He is always polite and obedient. The perfect
little boy. He trails along in her shadow as she flees
the park. Her own personal dinosaur. Her own personal sin
against God.

END