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Prompt 4: The mail is always bad this time of year, but it seems like something's gone a little extra wrong. An old letter arrives shows up with no return address, no name on it; it's impossible to tell who it is from or how it got there, given that it might have arrived in your mailbox, your front door, or maybe it even just showed up inside your house. If you open it, the letter is dated from decades ago and contains some surprising information; it is a letter lost to time and contains some secret. The content of the letter are up to the player; it might contain a confession of love, an admission of guilt, the secret of some crime--no matter what the letter contains, it leaves you with news to reflect on. Do you try to seek out anyone mentioned in the letter? Do you investigate or try to hand the letter over to someone else? Does the content of the letter reflect your life in some way? ...Do you have to worry about someone breaking into your house to leave strangely coded messages?
The Christmas season was one of his favourite, if not his favourite, and his family knew this all too well. He had cards everywhere, from nieces, nephews and distant aunts. Once upon a time he had placed the cards on the mantlepiece but now that he had so many he had deemed it necessary to display them in another fashion. At first it had started with string across the mantlepiece with several layers of cards woven like tinsil above the top... And then his beloved Mauvians had walked in, taken one look at his handiwork and despaired.
Namielle had promptly banished him from the sitting room and with nothing better to do with his time he had taken to loitering in the kitchen. A stack of mail sat beside him, but given it had been highly likely they were yet more cards, he had thought better of opening them until he was ready to hang them up. Alas, whatever the Mauvian was up to in the sitting room was taking longer than he had assumed it would take and with nothing in his kitchen to entertain him, he eventually did turn his attention to the pile and began to sift through them.
He could identify the cards relatively quickly by the stiffness of the envelope and he began to place those in a separate pile, bills went to another one (ick) and junk into a third. He had almost gotten through them when one still in the now dwindling pile in his hand fell from it, fluttering to the floor where it 'gazed' towards him almost expectantly. Alright, so an envelope couln't necessarily 'gaze' at anything or anyone, but there was certainly a looming 'something' that nagged at him to pay attention to what had fallen.
More magic? Probably not.
Niggling curiosity that any normal human being had? Most likely.
He succumbed to it eventually and set the remaining pile in front of him as he lowered his hand to pick the wayward envelope up. When he finally gave it a proper look he couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at what greeted him. The envelope had no name on it, no address and it hardly seemed to be 'new' by any means...and yet it had somehow ended up in his mailbox. Had someone accidentally left it in his? He flipped it over to check for an address and with none forthcoming he furrowed his brow. Last time he checked tampering with mail was considered a crime and yet if he left this one unopened then it might become stuck in limbo.
He picked apart the envelope carefully and having finally pulled out the envelope he gave it a quick glance. No names, no addresses, not indication of who should have received it and yet several paragraphs lay in front of him. A quick glance towards the door of the sitting room, one that remained firmly shut, indicated that he would still be here for a little while yet. With time to kill he returned his gaze to the letter's contents - somewhere in those paragraphs there may be something he could pull apart and perhaps with enough information he could rummage through some records when he had time.
And sure enough, he did.
Though no library and no records here, were likely to provide him with any help with this one. Truth be told he wasn't entirely sure that he knew how to respond to what lay within himself. He settled for slipping it back into the envelope for the time being. He'd look at it again later and maybe something would come to him, for now though, he was drawing a blank...
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