The Letter That Changed Everything

By Kendall Wasko

As I rub the sleep from my eyes, I shuffle towards the kitchen. I didn’t get much sleep last night so I get one of my large pink mugs, one of the big ones you use for soup or hot chocolate on a cold day. The pink color contrasting beautifully with the deep brown of my hand. The light green coffee pot sitting on the counter was filled half way, set to a timer so when me and my partner wake up for work it's freshly brewed. I take the floral noted coffee and fill up the mug. I pour the milk I got out from the fridge into my coffee. Once my ratio is right, the cold liquid turns the coffee a light brown. I slide my fluffy slippers on from where they are sitting by the living room and walk outside to check my mail. Standing on my porch I take in the dew-covered trees and grass, listening to the birds chirp, I take a sip of my coffee and let out a small sigh. It’s spring, on the brink of summer, and the early morning smell of just bloomed flowers, and coffee, makes me smile.

I leisurely start down my garden's stone path, to get to my marron mailbox. Para, my girlfriend, had me paint it last year. She said it was so that it didn’t blend in as much with the cute white iron fence that surrounds our property. I make sure to always check it for mail in the morning just in case anything urgent comes overnight. Pulling down the door to the mailbox I peek inside. A cream envelope stares back at me. 

‘“Oh there’s a letter” I say, my voice spiked with tones of confusion and surprise. I didn’t think there would be anything in there, it's almost always empty.

 Reaching my hand inside, my fingers brush against the paper as I pull the envelope out. The paper is crumpled and the wax on the envelope isn’t fully sealed, almost like the letter was rushed. Turning the paper over to see who it’s from I see the name Clouse written on it in his loose scrawl. He's one of my closest friends. 

‘Hmm I thought he and the others were still at Baus cottage for their birthday trip. Did something happen?’ A little bit of panic runs through me with this thought, since my girlfriend and so many of my friends were on the trip with him. 

My eyebrows furrow in worry and I start walking back up to my porch so I can put my coffee on the small side table and sit down. But my curiosity got the better of me and before I get there I open the letter and- 

       CRASH

My mug slips from my fingers and shatters on the floor. Shards of pottery and hot coffee fly everywhere, but I’m frozen in place, except for my now free hand slowly trembling and reaching up to cover my mouth. The floor rushes up as my knees give out, making me fall to the coffee soaked ground, mug shards cutting into my legs. My eyes rapidly dart from side to side down the page hoping that the ending I had glanced at before has changed by the time I get there. But as I get further down the cream colored page, tears start to pool in my eyes clouding my site and my throat hurts from holding back a wail. The paper crackles from the grip I have on it while I desperately read and reread the last part hoping it’s not true, that it’s one of those trick papers and the words will magically rearrange and the letter will end happily, saying, just kidding. A sob chokes out of my throat and tears are now streaming out of my half open eyes. 

“No no. Not her. Please. Please.” The crack in my voice resounds through the yard while I plead for this to not be happening to me, to her. 

My sobs ring so loudly against the silence around me, echoing back to me from the trees, and even the birds have stopped singing. The cursed letter falls from my hand and displays itself against the ground in front of me, Clouses scrawling handwriting changing everything. 

Dear Etoile, 

I know how disappointed you were when the Head Alchemist said he needed you full time at the shop during the same week as Baus' birthday trip. So I took it upon myself to sit and write down all the most interesting and fun things we did, so you can feel like you were here (I’m writing this part on the Monday we got out here). I know, I’m so thoughtful and the best of friends, thank you, thank you. So I’m planning on each new paragraph here to be about a different day, and I’ll probably send it a few days before we leave so that it can get to you before we do :)

Ok so I’m writing this two days later because nothing really interesting happened yesterday, so I thought I wouldn’t bore you with it. But today we made Bau a birthday cake and it went absolutely terribly so I thought I’d recount the mess to you. Like in the beginning we were all trying to do things orderly and everything was organized, you know like how bakers are. And then your girly Para decided to stop sifting the flour over the bowl and use her magic to lift it up and sift it on top of our heads. What happened next is, you know, expected of us adults when something like this happens. We obviously started throwing eggs, and flour, and sugar, and basically all our ingredients around the kitchen at each other. Stuff got knocked down, the whole kitchen was a mess and we spilled the only jar of vanilla syrup we had. This resulted in having to flavor this cake with the small amount of syrup we could scrape off of the side of the jar and the top of the counter, so it wasn’t good. At all, like imagine eating a block of damp sand, that's how bad it was. But yeah that's all that happened today, so I’ll be writing tomorrow, maybe, bye.

We went to the most beautiful waterfall todaaaay! We all wanted to get out of the house and explore the woods behind it so we did! Para and Bau used their crystal pendulums to lead us to all of these different crystals and mushroom circles. Don’t worry we made sure not to step in any of them just in case, well except for Para. She accidentally stepped in one that we hadn't seen in time but then she said “it's fine I don’t believe in the Fae” Just between you and me, I don’t think she means it. But yeah so after that the pendulums lead us in this one direction for a while and we start hearing this roar, so naturally we sped up to see what was making the sound. It was super loud as we passed through this arch of trees and on the other side was this waterfall. Like it was so pretty, I don’t even know if I could describe it to you, it was just immeasurable, it was so magical. As we all emptied out of the trees it got kinda eerily quiet, but none of us really said anything about it since it was so pretty. The sand around the bank was so soft and sparkled like there was crystal dust sprinkled throughout. Needless to say we all stayed there for a few hours and then headed home so that we wouldn’t have to go through the woods back in the night. There's nothing else I don’t think so that's what we did today. I'll come back tomorrow, we only have 3 more days here so Saturday is probably going to be the last time I write and then send it on that day as well :)

I’m writing this while walking so ignore the shaky handwriting. I’ll give you context first, so I 

noticed today that Para was acting weird, we all thought that it was just exhaustion from all the walking yesterday. Once she started to, like, mumble her name over and over and moving really weird and fluidly we realized that she might have stepped in a fairy circle yesterday. We all thought she was faking, trying to get a reaction out of us, but around 6:00 or 6:30 we couldn't find her. We think it's just like a game or something but we can’t find her, so we all split up and are in the woods looking for her, I’ll add on later.

It’s a little later and we found her but she, she’s gone, if that makes sense. When we found her she was shaking sitting on the floor in the biggest fairy circle I’ve ever seen. She has this glazed look in her eyes and she's not moving and we don’t know what to do. A fae must have gotten to her before we could… she's definitely in there somewhere but we just can’t get through to her. I'm sorry, we're going to stay out here until we figure out what to do but… I don’t think she's going to come back quickly, or maybe ever, if the stories I’ve heard have any truth to them.

Don't come out here. I know you want to but I think it's better you don’t see her like this, keep yourself busy at work.

Please don’t worry to much - love Clause