Postal Pals: The First Letter

      He started to walk forward but was stopped when his eye caught a glint of gold from a balcony on the third floor. Bringing up a paw to shade his eyes from the bright sun, he looked closer. Just as he focused he saw a powerful golden Eyrie leap from the edge of the balcony and launch itself into the air, effortlessly harnessing the softly blowing breeze with its great wings. It banked slightly to the left and Obian could see the sack of Neomail it had slung over its back in a special harness. The sun shone and highlighted the pet's magnificence as if indicating its approval with every mute touch of its brilliant rays. Obian followed the Eyrie's arc across the sky until its luminescent golden wings mingled with the blinding light of the sun and he was forced to squint and look away, leaving the Eyrie to continue its task unobserved. The small blue Kougra left far below in the grass had spots in his eyes for several minutes which he had to led fade before he could continue on towards the building in front of him.

---

"What can I do for you, young master?" The clerk leaned on his elbows and looked at the pet before him expectantly.

      Obian spread out a newspaper clipping that he'd been clutching for the past half hour. It was an ad cut from the Neopian Times asking for applicants for postal positions.

      "Ah yes..." The speckled Nimmo eyed him curiously and the barest hint of a grin touched the corners of his mouth. "Ye best take that to the office down tha' way, eh?" A spindly green finger pointed to a door off to the side with plaque that read 'Post Master'.

      The clerk's look struck Obian as odd but he simply nodded a thanks and carefully refolded the piece of newspaper before heading in the indicated direction. Sounds of paper shuffling, voices conversing, and pens scratching down words overlaid the soft music coming from the speakers up by the ceiling. Everyone here seemed so purposeful and precise.

      By the time he reached the door with the plaque he was starting to have second thoughts. But before he could act on any ulterior intent, the door swung open to reveal a weighty Tyrannian Tuskaninny standing only a couple feet from the much surprised Kougra

      "Where is Hertian? Tell him to get his feathers in here!" Words bellowed from him like a volcano. "Who are you?" His gaze had shifted down to encompass the pet before him.

      "Obian, sir."

      "Obian-sir?" He grunted. "Well what do you want, Obian-sir?"

      "I'm here to apply for---" His clipping was abruptly snatched out of his paw.

      "A postal position? You?" The laugh that issued from him shook a nearby clock and mug of coffee. "You want to work at the post office, do you? Just what do you think you can do?"

      His initial nod was timid but the ridicule merely fed his determination and actually helped him fight the nerves that were causing his paws to sweat. "Yes... sir. I do wish to work here. It's always been my dream to be a postal carrier."

      The Kougra's spirit struck the post master and he grinned with amusement. "All right. Well you'll have to fill out an application first." He scooted Obian into his office with a flipper and rummaged over his desk to pull out an application which he handed to him with a pen. "Just sit right there and fill this out, then we'll see if you can help out around here."

      Obian sat and started reading over the form:

      The Neopian Postal Service is a non-discriminatory employer. Please fill out all blanks and print legibly in blue or black ink.

Name:
Age:
Species:
Colour:
Can you: carry 50lb__, fly__, ice skate__, shred things__, speak Tyrannian__, swim__
Please list all previous work experience:

      Obian filled out the top then blinked and looked at the rest of the form not quite sure what to make of it. Just as he was about to ask there was a knock at the door and a cloud Pteri wearing a blue, hard-billed cap strode in. "You wanted me, boss?"

      "Ah, yes. Hertian. We have a special delivery for Fyora. Pick up in shipping bay 4."

      "I'm on it boss." He smoothed his feathers and turned giving the Kougra a dismissive glance before swaggering out importantly.

      "You finished yet, Oboe?"

      "What? It's Obian. And yes..." He put an X next to 'shred things' and handed over the form.

      The post master took the paper and looked over it, rubbing his chin appearing deep in thought. "Hmm... yes. I know exactly what to do with you. Follow me."

---

"Welcome to the team, Obie." With one flipper the Tuskaninny clapped Obian on the back and with the other he held open a door to the basement on which there was a rusted sign that indicated this to be the way to the dead letter office. He gave an overly enthusiastic shove propelling Obian down the stairs and shut the door behind him with a slam that echoed down the stairwell.

      He was going to complain but had to focus his energies on keeping his balance instead. This wasn't what he'd been expecting. Visions of proudly bearing the correspondences of one person to another crumbled scene by scene with each step he took. Right then he would have even been happy to deliver something to the Snowager.

      Voices floated up the stairs from the darkness in front of him. "What was that?" "More junk probably." "No, I hear someone." "Who'd be coming down here?" "I'm going to find out." "Be careful."

      The contents of three different voices tumbled on top of each other but ended abruptly with a light clicking on in the stairwell and a pair of unduly round eyes suspiciously peering around the corner up at Obian.

      "Um... hi. I'm Obian. I'm... uh... I'm supposed to work down here."

      The eyes blinked and Obian realized they had glasses in front of them which made them appear so round. There was a silence that seemed to stretch for an eternity, during which he didn't move but let his foot hover above the next step down, and the pair of eyes below seemed to be studying him.

      "New guy!" The sudden exclamation made Obian jump.

      "Oh, is he cute?" A high pitched voice reached out curiously from around the corner.

      "Just what we need." Another voice rolled slowly through the air, bored.

      "Come on, come on. My name's Norbert." A stubby green Quiggle waddled up the stairwell a few steps and held out his hand, an impossibly huge grin spread across his features.

      Norbert practically pulled Obian down the remaining stairs in his welcoming enthusiasm. When they made it to the corner at the bottom the site that greeted them was a veritable disaster. Bins, boxes, letters, and dust littered every surface and in the middle of it all were two other people. One smiled shyly and the other rolled her eyes and tried her best to ignore him. The shy smile came from a yellow Elephante who stood daintily and approached looking to Norbert as if she expected to be introduced before she could address the stranger.

      "Yeah, this is Chloe and over there pretending we don't exist is Lumi. Don't mind her, she's just crabby sometimes. So what's your job?"

      Obian stood dumb for a moment trying to take things in as the mass of a yellow Elephante pushed its way in front of him and fluttered her eyelashes. "Greetings Obian. I am Lady Chloe. You will have to excuse the manners of my companions. We do not often get company."

      "Um... yes. Thank you." His mind told him to run, but his feet wouldn't move.

      "Oh back off guys. You'll make him as neurotic as the rest of us." Lumi had finally turned to them and spoken.

      "You're a--"

      "Faerie? Bingo. Give the sucker a lollipop. Does Mr. Scorchlock have any other brilliant deductions for us?"

      Norbert coughed. "Be nice, Lumi."

      "Why?"

      "Because you'll make friends better that way." Obian finally managed to collect himself and was staring at the fire faerie with his paws on his hips and a challenging smile across his lips. She rolled her eyes and he changed topics. "So what's the deal down here?"

      "Well..." Norbert began, "this is the Dead Letter Office and we take care of all the letters and packages that can't be sent for whatever reason. I sort them, Chloe..." The Elephante made a sound of disapproval. "Sorry, Lady Chloe smash--" another disapproving noise, "...compacts the packages and hands them to Lumi who combusts them for easier disposal."

      "What about the letters?"

      "Those have been piling up. But that's what you're here for, right?"

      "Why don't you just burn those too?"

      "Ah, well, we could but they like to use the scraps as padding and stuffing."

      "I won't ask. So wha'do I do?"

      "My but this one is brilliant." Lumi picked up a letter out of a pile addressed to Safsaf and tossed it at Obian with a flick of her wrist. "Catch, big boy."

      The Kougra, surprised by the sudden approach of the letter, reflexively put up his paw and managed to snag it by piercing it with his claws. Chloe giggled and clapped delightedly, "Oh that was a wonderful catch."

      Obian looked at the perforated note then at the massive pile of its companions against the wall. "You can't be serious?"

      "Learns fast, doesn't he? Welcome to The Dead Letter Office, pal!"

      Obian groaned.

---

Minutes, hours, days, weeks... letters kept arriving and Obian kept shredding them. His paws were sore. Nowhere seemed to be safe from paper cuts. Norbert sorted. Chloe crushed. Lumi flamed. Obian shredded. The pattern never ended. Sort, crush, flame, shred. Sort, crush flame, shred.

      Obian prayed that someone would come down the stairs to tell him it was over, that his trial period was through and he could get to work for real. But it never happened. All that came was more letters, more and more letters. Pasty white envelopes danced mockingly in his dreams at night.

---

A gentle thudding sound drifted through the basement. "Tombola T-shirts." "Moldy socks." "Faerie cupcakes."

      "Why aren't you guessing what's in the box, Obian?" Norbert turned to his companion as he shoved a messy pile of letters at him.

      "Because I'm tired."

      "Ah the grumpy stage. That settles in just before you start to accept all this and get as mental as the rest of us."

      "Shut up, Lumi. Come on, Obian. It's fun. Just play along." The Quiggle pushed his glasses up and smiled.

      "I don't want to play along. I want to do more than this. Don't you guys want to do something other than sort and destroy mail in a dingy basement?" He flung a blue paw around to encompass their work space.

      Norbert shrugged. "I used to be a handwriting decipherer, the best there was." He blinked through his coke bottle glasses.

      "There is nothing other than sorting and destroying mail in a dingy basement, not for us anyway. We're not grand enough, in case you hadn't noticed." Lumi absently blew a spark onto a flattened cardboard box and watched it start to dance in flame.

      "Oh, I was right... cupcakes!" Chloe had the tip of her trunk digging at the edge of the squished box scooping up traces of icing as it oozed out. "Chocolate!"

      Obian rolled his eyes and threw a pile of letters addressed to Chet Flash up in the air. They rained back down on him like reprimands from above. "I can't do it! No more!"

      "He's finally cracked." Lumi's face shone in the firelight, a grin caressing her features. "You should be proud of yourself, Obian. You've lasted longer than almost anyone else."

      "Oh my, what a mess. I do hope you're going to clean that up. How very ungentleman-like." Chloe still had the tip of her trunk tucked into her mouth to retrieve the last of the icing.

      Norbert blinked a couple times then knelt down and started picking up envelopes. "Oh dear. Dear, dear, dear." His head wobbled from side to side.

      "Stop it, Norbert. Just stop. I'll pick them up. I'm sorry." He gently pushed his friend aside and gathered up the paper littering the floor.

      "You've missed one." Chloe pointed to a letter lodged in between the boards of the ceiling.

      "Strong toss ya got there, kid." As usual, Lumi's interest was sarcastic.

      Obian sighed and pulled out a stack of boxes so he could climb up onto them and retrieve the errant letter. The boxes tottered dangerously and were it not for a certain green Quiggle grabbing the base of the stack, there might have been an even larger mess adorning the floor of the Dead Letter Office.

      "Urg... got it!" He stretched and just barely managed to catch a claw in the corner and pull the envelope from where it was peeking out through the ceiling.

      Still up on his impromptu ladder he turned the letter over and looked at the address. "Hey, wait a second. This isn't a dead letter."

      The envelope was a cream colour made of crisp good quality paper. The address wasn't a mess of hand scrawled letters but was typed neatly. Dust muddied it's appearance, having been acquired from untold ages stuck in its peculiar hideaway.

      "What is it?" "Who's it addressed to?" "Are you going to come down yourself or wait until you fall?"

      Questions fired up at him and he had to hold the letter with his teeth to keep from doing just as Lumi had suggested. Back on the floor he was greeted with excitedly curious stares.

      "Come on, who's it for?" "Yes, my dear sir, please do make haste. We are all quite anxious." "Why not just open it?"

      "We can't open it!" "He's right. We are trusted with a weighty responsibility as postal employees." "It's in the Dead Letter Office, isn't it? It's a dead letter. Who cares."

      "Donna. It's for Donna." The Kougra beamed as he held the letter in his hands as if it were a treasure beyond any in the hidden tower while the others squabbled around him. "And I care, Lumi. This letter has to be delivered. This is real mail."

      The others stared at him wide-eyed and silent. Eventually Norbert took a step closer to see and the other two followed, quickly converging on Obian in a disarrayed mass of feet, bodies, and wings.

      The pile persisted for several moments before a rumpled Kougra managed to fight his way to the surface, hugging the now creased and perforated envelope to his chest. "Stop it you guys! Come on, we've got to get this delivered! Don't you see. This is our chance to get out of here, our chance to do something."

      Norbert, Chloe, and Lumi composed themselves. Lumi somehow made it appear as though she'd merely been caught in the stampede and was innocent of any rash action.

      "Oh, an adventure!" Chloe's wings fluttered excitedly behind her.

      "How can we deliver it? We belong down here." The Quiggle was bending his glasses back into shape and peering squint-eyed at the world.

      "Why should we deliver it? The thing's obviously ancient. Whatever it says is useless by now." Ever pessimistic, Lumi's words dampened everyone's spirits.

      "We have to deliver it. It's our duty. They've forgotten about it." He nodded towards the ceiling were the rest of the post office carried on their business. "And we don't know what it says so we don't know if it's still any good."

      "But who'll take care of all the sorting and things?" Norbert looked almost panicked.

      "Well... you guys don't have to come. But I'm going."

      Chloe wadded her way through the piles of mislabeled and unreturnable packages and batted her eyelashes. "Well I certainly cannot let you go alone. That would be unthinkable."

      Lumi just rolled her eyes and Norbert bit his fingernails.

      "All right, just the two of us. Come on. We need to get a hat first, or no one will believe we're real postal carriers."

      Chloe giggled and they headed for the door. Just before they started up the stairs Norbert caught them up at a waddling run. "Wait! I'll come, I'll come."

      Obian smiled and clapped him on the back. "Good. I was hoping you might. All right, look... while Chloe and I get a bag and a cap you stay down here and rig a chute system to take care of the mail. Make it split so the letters go down one way and the packages go the other. Lumi can burn the packages since she'll still be here and the letters can hit a grate with sharp sides that slices them up as they fall. That way no one will miss us. Can you do that?"

      Norbert blinked then smiled and nodded. "Great idea. Then I'll meet you out front."

---

"All right, if the beautiful Lady Chloe can distract the stock clerk I'll go get us some official attire."

      The back office was relatively empty as everyone was out to lunch but a stock clerk, a skunk coloured JubJub, was sitting by the door to the stock room idly filling out a crossword puzzle with his pencil deftly clutched between his toes. Chloe fluttered her wings and held her trunk high as she approached the other pet and interrupted his mental exercises.

      "Excuse me..." she fluttered her eyelashes and leaned her ample girth over towards him.

      Obian watched them for a moment and chuckled. Sneaking into the stock room was trivial with such an encompassing distraction on his side. Finding a cap proved much more difficult, and he rummaged through box after box trying to find his target. It took him a full 3 minutes to put his paw on a blue cap with a hard black brim, but just as he did his heart sank. Outside the room someone screamed and voices began to pile on one another rapidly.

      "Fire!" "Put it out!" "How did that start?" "Get it out!" "Here!"

      Obian dashed for the door and grabbed one of the hanging carrier bags on his way out, stuffing the cap and the letter inside as he pressed himself into shadows trying to go unnoticed. Fortunately people were rushing towards a desk who's compliment of papers had somehow caught fire and no one saw the blue Kougra Even Chloe missed him and let out a squeal of fright as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her from the gathering crowd.

      "Come on." He hissed at her, trying to force her to follow his lead towards the door as he took advantage of the unplanned distraction.

      "What happened? Did you get the items?"

      "I don't..." Obian's words were cut off by a sight caught in the corner of his eye, but all he could capture was a single image of a fire faerie grinning smugly before she turned and was gone.

      "You don't what?

      "I don't think that was an accident." He chuckled quietly to himself, a smile spreading an amused crease across his face.

---

"Where were you? What's the noise going on inside? Did you get caught?" Norbert was virtually hopping up and down in his agitated excitement, his glasses teetering dangerously on the verge of instability.

      "Relax, it wasn't anything we couldn't handle." Obian confidently strode across the walkway in front of the post office. "Right, Lumi?"

      "Huh?" Chloe's and Norbert's confusion was expressed in concert.

      "Admit it, you were surprised to see me." The faerie appeared from around the side of the building and walked towards them, her arms crossed in front of her chest. "If I hadn't done that you'd have been walked in on by that self important peacock, Hertian."

      Obian just watched her for a moment and grinned, "Welcome to the gang, Lumi." She just rolled her eyes and he continued on. "Come on guys, we need to get to Earth Faerie Close!"

---

"91, 93... 95! 171195 Earth Faerie Close. We're here!" Chloe clapped her hands and Norbert skipped in excitement as Obian rechecked the address on the dusty, perforated, and crumpled letter.

      "Not much here." Lumi looked skeptically at the property.

      "Probably doesn't spend much time at home. All right, here we go." The Kougra took a deep breath and carefully placed the cap on his head. "How do I look?"

      "Wonderful. Very official. Just..." Chloe walked up to him and moved his cap slightly, giving it a jaunty tilt, "...there, perfect."

      "Thank you, m'lady." He bowed deeply then smoothed his fur and walked up to the door and knocked.

      The door stood mute and ignorant of the blood pounding in Obian's ears as his heart raced to beat out his nerves and cause him to collapse. There was no answer. A second knock brought a reply and Obian felt his heart skip as the door opened.

      He finally forced himself to speak, "I... I have a letter for Donna Williams." His paw shakily held out the mangled letter. "I apologize for the tardiness and state of the correspondence."

      "Um... yeah. Whatever." A purple Zafara shrugged and took the paper. "She's not here but I'll give it to her. Thanks. Bye." With that the door shut and Obian could breathe again

      He had delivered his first letter.

---

"Thyassa, what's this?" Donna picked up an abused looking envelope from the table.

      "What? Oh, a new post guy delivered that separately. Apologized and everything. I was going to throw it away. It's probably junk mail."

      A curious hand broke the seal on the letter and she read silently. One moment later she shrugged and smiled as she tossed the letter back on the table carelessly, "Adam says 'hi'."

The End

Author's Note: Comments and criticisms are always greatly appreciated and valued. I would especially like to know which (if any) character(s) you would enjoy reading about again in future. Have fun!