You’re snacking on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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I must tell you; this is a fairy tale.
Nights past, by the speed of light of other stars; when fabulous pageants of creatures prowled the catwalk in robes of talon and broadcloth; when cauldron-owning old ladies enchanted mallets with glimmering magic, and blocks of food-missing prisoners enchanted mushy beans with rationed salt; when absent kings and dragon queens set forth unbreakable, unquestionable, un-considered laws; in the place and time where and when such things were, there came, by way of the Regular Sunshine Post, a Notice of Not Existing.
The Notice maintained healthy, arm-length by hand-width proportions, and a varied diet of letters and numbers, all of free-range ink. It wore the envelope appropriate to its class. It wore the accompanying badges of postage across its folded ‘waistband’. In its whole appearance, in its content no less, our notice met the standard; to the letter.
The Notice had no place in the grander events of this narrative. This narrative would not be, however, but for the Notice’s journey. As a dedication to a worthy missive, here follows the brief adventure of the Notice of Not Existing.
Beginning - respectably - at its conception, the Notice of Not Existing entered existence on a cold, cloud-covered night. Starharbor became its birthplace, in the brick-and-mortar Mausoleum of the city’s Regional Justice Center. The address, quill-stitched in blocky letters on its envelope uniform, directed the Notice to the Change of Address department of that same Regional Justice Center. The linear distance between its birthplace and its own anticipated place of Not Existing was a short flutter of a dozen building stories; dwarfish stories too. Yet, like so many who sprout and expire in the same place, the Notice took a long time and traveled a great distance to arrive.
From the Regional Justice Center Mausoleum, the Notice mounted its middle-age on the ground floor. It passed through set after set after set of fingers; universally grimy and mostly complete. The Notice pursued the course in existence expected by government convention. A government employee delivered it to the government-assigned Regular Sunshine Post. As the nearest Regular Sunshine Post office was several city blocks distant, the Notice summarily shipped out. Away from its destination.
A series of changing hands and conveyances followed for the Notice. The Notice passed from Sunshine Post to Sunshine Post, sometimes shivering among the dusty top bins of a sorting shelf for eons, sometimes catching only brief breaths before some new set of grimy fingers whisked it away in their clutch.
Between these stops, the Notice toured grandly across Starharbor, catching all the city’s sights. Crumpled and squeezed against a Post-coach floor - filthy with compressed straw and street jelly - the Notice distracted itself with the slanted shutter view through the window. It watched the roaring flamelights of stilt houses, high in the sky, doing battle with clouds. In the hands of foot passengers, it heard steam vents send hissing plumes of inky vapor, wetting the stoop dwellers huddling around the vents’ poisonous warmth. Sometimes, The Gaunt, Brooding, Hungry Wind would swipe at the Notice, trying to steal it from the carriers’ hands or the floor of the coach. But the Notice escaped the Wind’s gusty grasp, through heroic parchmentary will. And a little luck.
Crossing through geometric shadows let down by the looming gables and arches of lower-class housing; crossing through caustic fumes of malignant sewer odor; crossing parchingly-dry factory streets and streets changed to jelly-rivers; the Notice at last reached the Regular Sunshine Post destined to deliver it finally. Much time later it completed its last ascent, arriving at a spot directly above its birthing room.
Thus, the Notice of Not Existing traveled both a great distance and a minute one; earning two new records through bureaucratic support, where only one might have been achieved.
Thus, the Notice of Not Existing terminated its own existence in the Change of Address department. It ended in a cramped corkboard cubicle, huddled with other cubicles, on the plain metal desk of a senior Pencil Pusher.
Upon this plain metal desk sat a plain metal Toblerone. And the name, ‘Mr. Grey’ was stamped upon its teeth.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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That was marvellous. Loved the lyrical writing, especially the opening paragraph.
Very enjoyable read. I liked the part about 'heroic parchmentary will'. Old-fashioned letters did seem to embody that sense of strength and resilience, for sure. They'd pass through many hands, travel through all weathers and across continents and arrive intact. It's a shame you don't see them so much these days... 😎