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"A Strange Necessity" by drifbilim
It was altogether a rather strange experience. Addie couldn’t have foreseen it. Nobody could’ve. She was altogether very average, very plain, easily missed. She volunteered for the Soup Faerie, she donated her unused belongings to the Money Tree, and was sure to thank anyone for their kindness. Nothing remarkable, or noteworthy. She could—and did—live with that. It was fulfilling, and the kindness she received in turn made it worth all her while. Which made the golden ticket in her paws all the more strange. Addie stared. A ticket to the Annual Chocolate Ball, her full name written in a neat cursive script. The enclosed ticket came separate from her regular mail, someone presumably had knocked on her door and left the ticket waiting on her doorstep to find late on Sunday evening. It was something right out of a faerie tale, something she might’ve been inclined to read to her long gone brother Enzi, back when he still lived with her. Addie would’ve said he moved on to greener pastures, but his recent Neomail suggested that he was in the Lost Desert for some reason or another. She had already sent him a baffled Neomail with a picture of the ticket as an attachment, but it would be a few hours yet before he got back to her. In the meantime she wasn’t sure what to make of the invite. It was most definitely a prank, although she wasn’t sure who would bother to prank her as only a pawful of people knew where she lived and had her full name, and all of those people knew her only on a strictly professional level. And she certainly could not see any of them—the Soup Faerie for one—going through the effort of writing up a fancy looking ticket when there was so much to be done, like feeding the starving hordes of Neopets lined up outside her door, for example. The ticket proclaimed that the event was a week today, and that it would be held in none other but the Chocolate Factory. It had no dress code, but it would be foolish to go in anything but her Sunday best. It was one of the most anticipated events of the year, despite how few were actually invited. She was to RSVP at her earliest convenience, which Addie knew to mean as soon as possible.

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