quill

craft a letter from paper, a feather and an ink sac, and a small writing desk opens: a name at the top, the words underneath. fold it, and anyone holding it can read it. seal it with wax — it costs a honeycomb — and only the person you named can break the seal. breaking it is one-way; there is no resealing, and a written letter is signed and never edited.

a sealed letter can be carried, kept, traded and handed on by anyone. the words stay inside.

and if the crows live here too: hand a sealed letter to a tamed crow. if the addressee is nearby it flies over and drops the letter at their feet. if they're far, it waits a while in case they walk in — then takes to the sky, the whole bird gone from the world, and comes down wherever your person next is. then it flies home.

and when a sealed letter can find neither its person nor patience: three days past due, the crow gives up on the sky and looks for a mantel instead. if waypost keeps a lit candle in the addressee's name, the letter is left waiting beneath it — an item that never despawns; mail does not rot — and you come home from a week away to letters by your own flame.

and the river post, when the wind mod is home: crouch and offer a sealed letter to open water, and it folds into its own little paper boat. rivers here have no current, so the wind is the current — the boat noses downwind, faster the harder the sky works, until it grounds on some bank and waits for whoever walks by. no addressee honoured in transit, no promise, no arrival hour: the crow post's opposite in every particular. a letter launched in a storm travels far.

newly, parcels: wrap any one thing in paper and string and it becomes a present that tells nobody what it holds — not the tooltip, not anyone you hand it to. tuck a sealed letter under the string and the parcel takes the letter's whole discipline: only the addressee opens it, the crow will carry it, and the rain can smudge the words on the way. opening yields the thing and the letter beside it. a parcel can be wrapped in a parcel; somewhere a friend deserves seven layers.

one caution, learned from the weather: a letter delivered through rain arrives rain-worn — about a fifth of its words blotted beyond reading, and the tooltip says so: the rain got at it. nothing is destroyed and no courier is ever lost in this house, but most-of-a-letter is a melancholy object, and the missing words stay between the author and the sky. send in fair weather, or accept the tithe.