The Bear and Barnacle

The usual disaster area of journals, yearly catalogues, parcels of ingredients, and work orders comes, today, with a grubby, much-handled, once cream-white envelope that makes Severus want to burn it away, starting with the stupid, ornate seal and ending at the hands of the senders, using just the ice-hot daggers from his eyes which he keeps especially to shoot at people. Who deserve it. Like whoever sent him an official envelope. Even the people who can't transfigure one should know how to make an ordinary one from paper and glue, and have access to both. It is to snarl, yea, and possibly bite heads off in the return post if they bleeding well manage to deserve a reply.

Because why would he (that is to say, Veris P. Braendon-Clayborn) be getting letters from Hogwarts? He was home-schooled. He has no connections there except for Slughorn, through his late cousin Severus, who had made Slughorn promise to use the official Slytherin stationary on all harmless outgoing mail, that people might begin to dread it less again (best not to ask when this promise was required of him, mind), and the occasional owl from Poppy--again, on the infirmary's stationary--ordering potions. Neither of them would send such fingerprinted mail, and the occasional idle note from Filius or Pomona is, at his request, on unmarked paper, in unaffiliated envelopes.

( So, clearly someone needs to die. It's obvious. One or two someones. )

"I'm still considering, you lantern-eyed, infinitesimally elephantine piece of irritatingly obsequious misery," he snarls at the first letter in frustration. Although it's tempting to put it up on the wall for a dartboard, he leaves it out for Minerva to see. The two questions it raises do rather invite her input, and this is as good an excuse to bring them up as any. Not to mention potentially finding out out whether she knew the elves all call her Mistress Queen (Mrs. Norris not qualifying for the title, having been long since spayed).

"What a cozy little triumvirate of house-elves, Snivvy!"

His face doesn't twitch a single muscle, but there's nothing he can do about the color going out of it. He was never going to have to hear that loud, jovial, smirk of a voice again. Black--Sirius--had shown him that he wouldn't. There are not expletives foul enough. He will not turn.

Dora has gotten bored with the olives. No one seems to be ordering drinks that will give her the opportunity to spear them with the little plastic swords she talked Iago into getting. So for a while she tried slipping them into Iago's pockets but he caught her and sent her off to to make bugs out of the olives... He even joined her between customers to make her a caterpillar out of some toothpicks and olives. That lasted until The Minister swooped by and grabbed it, and proceeded to eat the caterpillar's olivey head.

So she drags out her box of markers and paper from behind the bar and decides it's time to draw something for Xellos. Her brow furrows as she tries to figure out what to draw him, but she can't decide on anything so she asks Iago for help. She likes his advice so she plops down at her table in the corner and draws.

When she's done, she adds a note then rolls them up and slips an elastic around the tube to hold it tight. She pulls an olive out of her pocket and throws it across the table at the back of the parrot who is still pulling olives from toothpicks. "Oi. There's post!"

The bird squawks indignantly at being pelted with food but he still obligingly turns around to stare at her while she waves the rolled up paper at him. He squawks again, "Rrrraack don't hit me, Iago!"

She giggles. "'m not Iago. And I'm not going to hit you."

He eyes her. "Traitor in the ranks!"

"I am not! You and Iago can keep fighting all on your own. I don't like wars." When the parrot says nothing, she pushes the rolled up drawing at him. "You have to take this to Xellos! And don't get it wet!"

The Minster reaches out to take it with one of his feet before taking flight. As he goes over Dora, he drops an olive onto her head. "OI!!!"

( Iago said to draw you some place warm! )

Zel's memories weigh heavily on him, but he generally pretends that it's the weight of his stone body which presses down on him, a freakish body that he's imprisoned in thanks to Rezo. The occasional gaps in his memory are Rezo's doing too. So Zel does his best to focus on finding a cure rather than on just how much his existence is the fault of Rezo and his damned inability to fight off the possession of Dark Lord Ruby-Eye. His focus is just not that successful.

He wishes Rezo would just send letters like normal damn people rather than appearing as a vision before him, more often as a disembodied eye or floating head than a whole man, to tell the boy to expect him in the next few days. The irony of the forms Rezo chose was never lost on Zelgadis.

Warning: Memory contains underaged dubcon/noncon.

( A letter telling him not to expect Rezo for a few months would have been ideal. )

The Joker had discovered that there was something very useful about not calling Gotham home. It wasn't. At least he doesn't think it is. No where is. He goes where he goes. He may have lingered in Gotham longer than other places, and he'll probably go back some day. But it isn't home. That precise thinking means that he has had no issues with contacting Gotham and those in it since arriving in Margate. He could probably go back whenever he wanted. If he wanted, which right now, he doesn't. But there was no denying that there were some things he just couldn't get here. Not the real deals. So he'd placed a phone call to an old henchman's number. The henchman had been able to connect him to Harley's latest number.

"Harls? Need some stuff here. My regular supplies. No, don't know when I'll be back. Yeah, uh, whatever, you too."

( He checked the mail impatiently every day until the box arrived. )

There is a tap on the glass of the study. As Lucius looks up over his reading glasses at the dusky eagle owl on the other side of the window, beak full, he tries to stifle the hope that begins to rise within him. He reaches forward and opens the latch on the window, allowing the owl to step inside onto the desk.

"Horatio, you devil, you've been gone ages." The owl tilts his head at Lucius, large yellow eyes staring. Reaching for the letters, he plays a breif tug of war with the owl before it releases them. Rifling through the small stack, the hope fades again. There is a letter and catalouge from a new supplier he is looking into for Victoire's shop, a statement of account from Gringotts, and a letter from an aquaintance who is a bookseller. On the bottom of the stack, returned unopened, is one envelope labled "Narcissa Malfoy, Malfoy Manor..." in his own hand. He places it absent-mindedly in the second drawer of the desk, which upon further inspection would be found to contain many similar letters, addressed to Draco or Narcissa, directed to the Manor, Draco's last known flat, the cottage by the sea Lucius and Narcissa had been staying in...

With a soft hoot, Horatio nips at Lucius' arm. Lucius glances up again and offers the owl a treat from a jar on the desk. Taking it, Horatio flies back through the open window, towards his favorite perch to nap on. Quashing down on the settling sense of lonliness, Lucius settles back into his routine of business correspondance with a sigh.

There are quite a few songs about letters. Some are happy (My Baby She Wrote Me a Letter) and some are sad (Please Mr Postman and Return to Sender), but nothing can quite convey the giddiness one feels upon first seeing that owl and parchment (or the envelope). Good news or bad? You can’t ever really know until you open and read the thing. And sometimes, what seems like some of the best news ever can go so abysmally wrong you just can’t credit it.
( Read more... )

Val weaves across the lawn at a dead run, dodging patches of sunlight that would make him more visible to aerial attackers. The disguised hole in the hedge is ahead; he reaches it, drops flat, folds his wings tight, and crawls through at the cost of a few feathers that were coming out anyway (he's almost too big for the hole now; it was a perfect fit when he discovered it). On the other side, he skulks along the hedge, surveying the area before he leaves cover and makes a mad dash to the neighbors' front porch. He wedges his arm through the hole and then there's a storm of barking -- damn it, he's been seen! He seizes the prize, tears his arm out of the opening and flees. No stealth this time -- he has to get to safety.

Back on his own turf, he pauses to take deep, calming breaths. The next stage of the mission is not so easy.

He sneaks around the corner of the house, slowly, carefully, trying to avoid the view of the neighbor's windows. Two enemies are within; a girl his own apparent age, and her mother. Either could chance to look out the window at any time. Stealth is of the essence.

Creeping along in the shadow of the front stoop, he watches for any sign of motion, then attacks. Adrenaline making his heart race, he drops back to the shadow, but he can't run this time; he must sneak back, darting low from tree to bush to flowerbed to hedge, sticking to the shade, moving only when he's sure he's unseen.

Mission accomplished, he plops down on the driveway and reviews his loot. From the family on the right, three flimsy envelopes of junk mail; from the elderly couple on the left, what looks like a greeting card and the real prize, their water bill.

He takes the contents of the neighbors' letter boxes inside and climbs on a chair to leave them in the coffee grounds, where they're sure to be found soon.

Stealing the post shows how low he's sunk, for a former priest of War, but it gives him something to do.

This month's topic is the post!

What do you get in the post? Have you ever gotten anything really exciting? How does the post work where you're from? Americans, like Jack, call this the mail instead! *waves at Jack* What do you send? And to who!?

Ooooooo! You call all send me something here at the pub or at my house!


Sorry for delay. I've just gotten hp_april_fools up and going so my iJ time was eaten by that and the sudden death of my mentor. :(

The tag for this is "the post". You can talk about this in general or even more exciting, show us your character's mail/post for any given day, either from here in Margate or your character's past.