As the characters age and change, the arrangement holds together, and then the next generation carries on.
Star Trek fan fiction featuring Malcolm Reed, Jay Hayes's counterpart (Doug Beckett), Jonathan Archer, T'Pol, Phlox, Trip Tucker, Hoshi Sato...
Captain Archer and Commander Reed send gifts to the Daranaeans, but there's a slight misunderstanding.
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The little girl had off-white fur on most of her body, except for her hands and her bare feet – and her belly, which had a pouch, but that could not be seen as it was covered with her clothes, of course. The tips of her ears were covered with caramel brown fur, very much like her mother had had. She was only four years old, and ran out of the learning room, crying.
"What is the matter, Seppa?" asked one of her older brothers, Trinning. He had brindle fur and was about eight years older.
"The, the toys! The human toys! They are all, they are all ..." her voice trailed off, crying, as if it were too horrible to finish her sentence.
"Dratha!" called Trinning, "please help. Poor Seppa is distraught."
"Oh, come here, sweetheart," Dratha said. She was an older Daranaean woman, rust brown fur going grey, and was not mother to either of them. Their father had had three wives, like most wealthy Daranaean men. Dratha was the Prime Wife; Trinning's mother, Mistra, was the secondary; and Seppa's mother, the late Inta, had been the third caste wife. Dratha held Seppa and rocked her until she calmed down a little. "Now, what is the matter, child? Why do you have such sad eyes?"
"It, the human toys are all broken," Seppa cried, "I went to play with them and I opened the three boxes, and they were all broken up into bits."
"That happens sometimes," Dratha said soothingly, "the Tellarite freighter captain who forwarded the toys to us, she must have made a mistake, and they were damaged. We can call the humans and tell them."
"But they will think that I broke the toys!" Seppa cried.
Trinning went into the learning room and brought one of the boxes back with him. "I don't know why they broke," he said, "The material is some form of wood. It seems sturdy enough."
"See? They will, I was, I was going to write a thank you letter and tell them how much I, I liked playing with the toys, and I was going to tell them how I played with them," Seppa explained between sobs. "Mistra, I was going to ask Mama Mistra to help me to write the letter to, to Captain Archer. And now they will decide that I broke the toys, and they will be so cross with me." She dissolved back into tears.
"Oh, no, no," Dratha said, "it will be all right. Let us contact them now, and we will get it all straightened out. The toys arrived damaged. They will not be angry with you. It was an accident. They will send new ones, I am sure. Shh, now, don't cry. Trinning, please open up communications."
"Yes, of course. Here we are."
"This is Captain Archer. Hello, Dratha," he said, far away in his Ready Room on the DC-1500, the USS Zefram Cochrane. This was the successor ship to the NX-o1, which had gone into dry dock a few years previously, "and, uh, Vidam and, um, Minna?" Jonathan Archer had trouble remembering the names of all of the children in that family. Like in most Daranaean families, there were numerous children. But he had just called Trinning by his elder brother's name – Vidam – and Seppa by her younger sister's name – Minna.
