Chapter Text
This year, your secret friend is:
Harvey Everett.
Don’t tell anyone! The feast will take place on the 25th from 10AM to 2PM at the town square. See you then!
-Mayor Lewis
Damn it. Why did it have to be the doctor?
You had been wondering what Pelican Town did to celebrate the Feast of the Winter Star. Winter was already more than halfway over and you hadn’t yet seen any decorations being put up or heard anyone offering the usual seasonal greetings. In the city all of that usually started from late Autumn, but a lively festiveness (and disgustingly catchy pop songs) had yet to infect the town you had lived in for almost an entire year. The talk in the valley recently had been about the annual night markets that came through just after mid-Winter. Or at least, the talk of everyone you routinely spoke to.
Which brought you back to your Secret Santa recipient. Doctor Everett was the only person in town that you didn’t exchange friendly words with whenever you saw them since you pretty much only saw the good doctor while he was exercising in places around the valley he apparently thought were secluded, and you, honouring his clear wish not to be disturbed, did not go and introduce yourself. The fact that he exercised like a normal adult (including his attendance at Caroline’s aerobics class that was otherwise only attended by ladies, as Abigail giggled to you one afternoon) was essentially the only thing you knew about him, beyond his profession as a general practitioner.
You had yet to require a visit to his clinic because ever since your first encounter with the wizard M. Rasmodius you noticed that you were healed every night of any injury you had acquired, although a man of science like Doctor Everett would probably want to send you to a psychiatrist if you told him that you genuinely believed you had access to “forest magic” ever since you woke up in front of the house of the reclusive forest man immediately after he sent you on a hallucinogenic trip.
If you thought about it, outside of brief polite greetings at community events there were only two occasions you’d exchanged any words with him at all.
The first was within days of your arrival. You had visited your great-uncle George to find him mid-conversation with a man you didn't recognise, and felt indignation over this stranger's attempt to kick you out of your relative's house until you realised he was right to do so in order to preserve doctor-patient confidentiality. George had then insisted you stay to provide a second medical opinion you were definitely not qualified to give. You went full great-aunty-Evelyn-mode and told him to just follow his doctor’s advice because honestly what did you know about George’s medical conditions? You’d never attended any appointments with him prior to that to even know what his problems were, and even if you did and then spent a few hours at a computer looking it up online, that wasn’t a substitute for Doctor Everett’s eight years of university education. You didn’t hear the end of it from George for the rest of Spring, but it wasn’t all bad since Evelyn baked you extra cookies for your troubles.
The second had been late last month when you had literally dragged Shane's arse back from the cliff edge he was about to roll himself over and all the way back through the drenching rain to the medical centre where you hurriedly handed him off to Doctor Everett before fetching Marnie and then spending the rest of the evening distracting Jasmine by playing dolls with her and Penny. Neither time had been pleasant conversation for conversation’s sake, but focussed entirely on someone else’s medical needs.
All of which again brought you back to the unfortunate position that Mayor Lewis, through whatever process he used, put you in by allocating you the responsibility of needing to find a gift suitable to give in public to the person you knew less well than the librarian Gunther, or even Marlon and Gil up in the Adventurer’s Guild. And to think if Lewis had just told you about this not even twelve hours earlier you could have picked up something suitably exotic yet inoffensive from the night market. You had a sneaking suspicion that Welwick actually got it wrong this morning when she said that the spirits were very happy today.
You would have asked Maru, since she was employed part-time in the medical clinic, for what she thought would make a decent gift, except that Lewis’ letter swore you to secrecy. There were only two other people besides the good doctor in town professionally bound to keep the secrets professed to them in the course of their work, the bartenders Angus and Emily. Not only did they have a great deal of experience providing discrete advice for problems of all kinds (except medical of course, the town still needed Doctor Everett for that), but since even Doctor Everett was known to drop by the saloon on the occasional evening, perhaps they knew the man well enough to suggest a half-decent present? You figured you had nothing to lose.