Ronan felt more confident than ever in his decision to take his car to work, setting aside the habit he’d formed of walking home every other day. There were far less opportunities for him to get eaten when he was encased in metal, though with what he’d seen lately he wouldn’t entirely rule out the possibility of something able to bite through the metal. Or just materialize in the passenger seat. Who knows. Multiple things had tried to eat him in the past few months after twenty seven years of nothing trying to eat him. To be perfectly honest he was pretty disgruntled at breaking that streak and if these monsters had a manager he would very much like to file a complaint about their rudeness. The ridiculousness of the idea made him smile in spite of himself.

He made a face at the sight of his slightly overgrown lawn, mowing it wasn’t ideal after a frost so he was waiting for a reasonably warm day to take care of that. Until then it made the front of his white house look far more untidy than he’d prefer. Sighing at the stalemate between himself and the weather, he made his way up the concrete walkway to his dark green door nearly tripping over a paper wrapped package sitting on his doorstep.

“Dammit!”

He scooped up the box and tried to remember what, if anything he’d ordered recently before deciding that he would deal with it after he’d dealt with the rumble in his stomach and carefully set it on the counter. A few slices of reheated pizza later, Ronan remembered the odd package that had nearly broken his neck. Liberating its contents with a pair of scissors brought him one step closer, though the presence of a smaller box within was a bit confusing. As were the several even smaller boxes that followed. Just as he was beginning to wonder if he was the object of a prank and about to find himself on the receiving end of an explosion of glitter, a strange and vaguely human shaped figurine confronted him.

“What in the hell?”

He pulled the creepy little thing out and examined it, turning it around in his hand before setting it decisively down on his coffee table. It was rough, seemingly made of clay with an imperfect cream and dark brown glaze. Its contours sketchily resembled that of a woman, coils of long black hair falling to her back, a floor length dress (robe maybe?) cascaded downward from a visage that somehow seemed to be staring at him despite the absence of a face. With a grimace he turned it away from him before looking back into the box to see if there was a note, a name, a letter, anything.

Yellowed paper protruded from one of the folds in the bottom and he carefully pulled it out. No answers waited within, only more questions. Impossible to answer questions it seemed, just a random string of numbers. Nothing that meant anything to him.

47,0,14,22,65,29,5,65,33,1,4,19,14,18,111,121,82,69,77,84,83,195,77,82,80,81,75,75,209

Goddammit. Why couldn’t he be better at math?