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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?
They would be moving into their new house soon. It was strange to think how after living in this dump of an apartment for years, he and Lovely would not just be moving into their own house, but their own custom built house. Ilian was still having trouble wrapping his mind around the fact that Lovely had a trust fund that allowed them to get a house to suit their needs.
And their wants, seeing as they were having a room specifically for recording music included.
It was difficult enough trying to get through their tiny apartment without tripping over something, so having any kind of space would be… probably difficult to get used to. Maybe they should have gone with less square footage. Would they even have time to keep everything cleaned?
In preparation of the move, Ilian was trying to pack up non-essentials into boxes, and get rid of things they didn’t need or that they could easily replace with something new and better. Lovely already told him that he refused to go looking through thrift stores for furniture for their new house. They would have everything bought or custom built to their tastes.
Really it was to Lovely’s tastes, because Ilian had gone practically his whole life accepting what he could get without complaint, because that was what it took to survive.
He still had Sorin’s old things, which really wasn’t much since they didn’t have many possessions in foster care. But Sorin had managed to get out of that shithole before him, and managed to convince the courts to allow him guardianship of Ilian to save him from the system as well.
A lot of good that did, seeing as Sorin was killed not long after.
Ilian was sitting on the floor of the tiny close he and Lovely shared because it was easier to go through everything there without lugging it up onto the bed. There wasn’t exactly much space to move around the room after Lovely got them a king sized bed to share.
There were old music books and notes Sorin had kept. His ideas and scribbles for potential music to compose. Ilian could tell it was from before the accident, because Sorin’s handwriting was a lot better.
His heart ached as he flipped through the pages, and tears welled in his eyes as he thought about his brother. His parents he could barely remember now. Another reason he was hiding in the closet — to avoid Lovely seeing him so emotional.
Unable to throw any of it away, Ilian carefully packed the books into a box. There were old envelopes too. One contained proof of guardianship for Sorin Jones over Ilian Jones from the courts. He still remembered that day and was so proud to have Sorin as his brother. He’d borrowed one of Lovely’s suits for the occasion because he didn’t have anything better to wear. Some other envelopes seemed to be damaged by water, possibly in the move, or even in the car crash.
One caught his eye only the second time he flipped through, mostly because he didn’t recognize the name the first time. It didn’t help that the whole thing looked like it had been soaked and then dried.
Carefully, Ilian peeled back the envelope flap, glancing at the smudged ink on the ruined pages inside. He recognized his parents’ first names, but…
Something didn’t seem right. It wasn’t a will; he’d already been told his parents had nothing but debt, so any assets they had were given to the state. But it looked official. The water had really damaged the pages, so he couldn’t peel them apart without damaging everything further, but what he could make out was.
“Name change decree…?”
A name change? His parents changed their last name to Jones? It was hard to tell, but it looked as though the date was before Sorin was even born. Why would their parents need to change their name? And what was their name before? Ilian scoured the paper for any other information, but most of what was legible was just legal text and not the important information of what their name was before.
Unable to come up with any answers, Ilian slowly placed the papers back in the water damaged envelope and put it into the box with Sorin’s things.
Under the papers was an old photo of his light haired father and mother with her darker features and curly dark hair holding a toddler Sorin on their lap and baby Ilian in their arms.
The photo was set aside to be framed. It was the only photo he had of his brother or parents. And now he wondered what secrets they took to their graves.
Word count: 792
