Letters from a Strange Box

The mid-afternoon sun glazes over your bedraggled homestead, as the light shines in through your blinds and awakens you from a deep, deep Sunday slumber. You attempt to pull the blankets over your eyes to stop this but they have already fallen to the ground, and so you forfeit and decide to finally get up, crunching chip packets littering the ground as you do.

After dressing, brushing your teeth, and eating breakfast yet certainly not in that order, you make your way downstairs and you see through your frosted glass windows surrounding the front door, a strange package. You haven't ordered anything in some time.

Bringing it inside, it is heavy and carved out of a strange thick wood. The bark smells faintly of lavender and salt, and is embossed with strange runic symbols that glow with a dull white light. The symbols seem to follow a sort of numerical pattern on each side of the rectangular package, with 1 rune on one side, 2 on the next, all the way up to 6 on it's base. It seems to resemble a six-sided die, although not cuboid.

After some fiddling, you manage to figure out that pressing the 1-side rune does nothing apparent, and none of the others aside from the middle rune on the 5-side do anything either. However, the middle rune on the 5-side causes a tiny hatch to open up on the box, just large enough for your hand to fit through. Reaching in yet remaining cautious in case some kind of wizard has decided to play a seemingly expensive prank on you which could have been done with a cardboard box, you grab onto something, a small cylindrical roll.

Pulling it out, you find a scroll, and as it is exposed to the fresh air it expands to about A4 size. It has a strange beige-colored wax seal which has a similar dull glow to the lights of the box, and pressing it opens the seal, releasing the scroll.

As the scroll unfurls you begin to read, and are quite puzzled by the missive, as it writes itself upon the paper in real-time;

Greetings, Nikalov!
I have finally arrived in this world of yours you speak of so highly, and I must admit I am utterly amazed! The colours, the sights, the sounds, all of it is wonderous! I was almost jumped and mauled by a savage-looking beast with the head of a drake and body of a cock, before I found this humble tavern known as the Bumblebee's Bosom. I sent this missive through an enchanted lavender-wood crate provided by the tavern barkeep, and he said it should make it's way to you through the whims and wishes of Lady Fate within a day or two. I trust you to send a return letter and come meet me when Wheel aligns with the Alabaster Sundial, as I am truly missing you in this strange and foreign land.

Fret not, as I have not forsaken our fatebond and we shall remain comrades throughout this. I know you told me that you had most pressing business to attend to and would most likely be unable to make it, but it still saddens me deeply as you are a great and true friend. In the meantime, however, I thought that we may as well maintain contact through this box. I have loaded it with another parchment similar to this, and when you press the corresponding rune it shall make it's way to me through our bond.

I am also going to be documenting my journey through these realms, and I thought you may help me with that. As this is an unfamiliar land to me and you know my penchant for documenting, I shall be crafting my latest encyclopedia on this fantastical world of yours. What do you call it, again? Tell me in your response. At any rate, you should tell me of any worthy sights, monoliths, beasts, witcheries, or other such interesting delights of nature and magic and I shall note them down to be added to my scriptures. I may even send you some of my notes back through this box, with my own magnificent sketches displaying these sights you know and love so greatly. You may even stick one above your hearth, and it's roaring dragonscale embers.

I hope this finds you well, with a full belly and a good pot of mead by your side.
Many blessings,
Your most truest friend,
Fatebond partner and fellow Wheelmonger,

~Runicio

P.S. I attached a sketch of that strange beast I encountered, although it is a little rough.

You are utterly staggered from this message, but you make sure to shake out that sketch to see what it looks like.

Well...



It's not the greatest you've seen, but considering that this seems to be genuinely real to whoever this is... You're not entirely sure how to process any of this, really.

You are not Nikalov, and you do not know what any of this means. You are simply an average person in 2018 living in a semi-modest apartment with a shitty day job and a penchant for incense and other scent-related products.

You pick up the phone that's been ringing for the past 20 seconds as you stared slack-jawed at the arcane purple text before you.

"You're late, again. Rin, please tell me why I keep calling you to come to these things considering you've never even shown up to one?"

You stammer out a reply, "Look, I've jus-"

But Sara interrupts you with a harsh "No. You haven't." and a sharp *beep* as the phone is hung up on you. You briefly muse on how much more dramatic that would've been had she been calling you from a landline, but you lift yourself from that ludicrous fantastical scenario.

Now, to real, pressing matters. What the hell are you going to write on this letter?