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This time of year is the busiest for mail deliveries; it’s not uncommon to receive the wrong package. On your doorstep is a box that looks like it’s from a completely different era; it is wrapped in brown paper and tied with dark twine. It has scuffs and scrapes and a yellowed name tag--with your name and address on it. There is no return address and no indication where it came from. If you open it up you will find some sort of timeless item that feels as though it is easily decades old. It may not be particularly valuable, but this item seems to have been lost to time--and somehow ended up in your possession. Any time you look at it you are filled with the same sensation of timelessness.
Packages were not uncommon this time of year; Samir had already had a few unopened ones already--some presents for himself, some presents for others, some necessities for the shop, some materials he needed. In his younger days he might have been keen to tear open the packages with reckless abandon, but these days he wasn't in much of a rush at all.
For the most part, he knew what was coming. There wasn't as much excitement in tearing open packages when you knew what you were getting.
When he arrived home from his errands, a package sat on his doorstep; he'd had a few deliveries from different places while he was out sitting on the ground but he knew that there was something immediately different about this one. He picked up the two cardboard boxes without really looking at them and shoved them under an arm. The third, he held in his free hand, examining it as he stepped into the house.
Crispy brown wrapping, like stale paper. It was brittle under his touch and seemed to crumble in places when he moved it. He questioned how someone could have wrapped this paper so neatly without breaking it, and couldn't quite figure out how it had gone through shipping without taking damage if merely touching it seemed to threaten the stability of the wrapping.
The twine that wrapped it had frayed, and the paper seemed pale and yellowed in spots. He turned the lights on to examine it better, both other boxes now outright neglected on the counter. His dogs had run to him, needy and excited and desperate for attention, but he couldn't seem to pry his gaze from the box. The door was open and they let themselves out when they were tired of running and sniffing.
No return address was written anywhere, and no stamp that he could tell--though, there was some smudged black writing in the top corner that made him question if it might have been some sort of ink at one point in time.
Curiosity got the best of him in a matter of seconds. He couldn't help but peel the twine; it uncoiled like it had never been tied at all. He tried to carefully open the paper but it crumbled in his touch. He did what he could to preserve his name and address--at least, so he might try to compare the handwriting to anyone he knew; thankfully, the paper in that area held up and he was able to tear it off and hold to the side.
Inside was a simple brown box--wood, though, which only piqued his curiosity. There was no hesitation at that point; he removed the lid and paused.
Inside was a dagger--dusty, but otherwise spotless. He picked it up carefully, drawing the blade from the sheath. It glistened like it had never been used, and yet there were small nicks and chips, as though it had at some point in its life taken a beating. It was lightweight, but heavy enough that he figured it couldn't have been some sort of prop. The gems embedded in the hilt were cool to the touch and caught the light in a way plastic and glass couldn't, and if he'd had to guess he might have figured the sheath have utilized a polished tortoiseshell.
The only padding in the box were weathered patches of straw, and they seemed closer to dust than anything.
"Huh," he mused, rolling the blade over in his hands. There was no note, no letter, no identifying marks of any sort inside--and truthfully, he couldn't figure out where this thing had come from.
Holding it made him feel young--boyish, like he wanted to go play with it. Like he wanted to solve the mystery. It made him feel old, like he understood the gravity or importance of this item that he held--even if he didn't understand where it came from, or why.
He pondered it for nearly fifteen minutes, examining every detail of the blade, the box, the wrapping. The dogs had let themselves back in and were roughhousing again by the time the number of people who might have finally managed to tear his attention away, and even then he seemed a little too enamored to think clearly.
The list of people who might have offered him some sort of generous gift like this was short--and, even then, shorter still was the list of people who might have provided him this gift without needing to utilize any sort of mail system. He'd never received anything like this before--and he had seen more packages than he could count.
Someone had gone through immense trouble to give him this gift--though, he was still struggling to understand how something that looked like it had been sitting in an attic for fifty years just ended up on his doorstep. If he'd been smart, he should have installed some sort of camera on the doorstep, but the idea of someone spying on his house while was gone didn't bode well for him.
So then, where could it have come from? The dogs barely seemed to pay the package any mind--and yet, they had almost completely knocked the other two packages off the counter by nudging them with their noses.
Whoever had sent the package didn't leave many clues, so the next best thing was just to assume that it was someone close to him that must have worked very hard to give him such a unique gift. His passion for blades was not something he tended to keep private, and anyone who knew him well enough to know where his doorstep was most certainly would have known that much about him.
But this?
He flipped the dagger over in his hands again, admiring how easily it fit into his hand.
This blade was gorgeous. In impeccable condition--so much so that he couldn't rightly place just how old it might have been. Weight and craftsmanship indicated it was worth taking good care of--and he fully intended to do so.
...After he went through his contact list and tried to sort out where it had come from.
