Gift from the Grave

[Glenn]

Gloria had waited so long, so, so long for this package. She had waited so long and now she had some reason to think it would never come. Some promises were just too important, too powerful, for anything to stop; either that or they were just set in motion before other things.

The package would arrive with a note attached.

Gloria,

People dis agree alot about what makes some one a MYRKENITE ITE ITE ITE ITE ITE but one thing every one agrees on is that to be a MYRKENITE ITE ITE ITE ITE is to some times make some bad choces be cause you know it is right |right not rite or write or wright or raiyetet so shut up| in your heart and this is a stupid choice and if you get this then i did not make you not make it so i guess in this way you are more of a MYRKENITE ITE ITE ITE than you were yester day so here you are moron and do not stab your self except in the tongue be cause then i do not have to hear you.

Elliot

[Rance]

One could not often control the trajectory of a hand-delivered package. This one had suffered particular damage, splattered with streaks of mud and its twine broken three, four times by the clumsy hands that had meant to deliver it. It was wrapped in wrinkled butcher's paper, and when it came to her, the courier apologized profusely. "Forgive the state of it," he said. "It was meant for arrival over a week ago, but that fool Gobbins, damn Derry fool, he dropped it off the cart on the roadside. We was fortunate to get it back. During another route."

"Did it go through a war," she asked, tilting the package carefully, keeping her fingers off a particularly crude smear of brown.

"Just some unfortunate delivery is all. Pigeons," he said. "Pigeons would be more relaible, I say."

She said, "A pigeon couldn't carry this."

"Ants could, sera. Flugging ants could, I'll have you know, which means a pigeon could. A pigeon'd do quite well."

When she was alone with the package, she chewed the twine to break it and balanced the parcel carefully on her lap. She folded back each ear of parchment, and then beheld the note and the sharpened edge of the promise he'd made.

The blade was slight and fragile, more ornamental than efficient. It had a handle wrapped in stiff leather and a cap on the pommel of hammered tin. The shard of mirror was an unorthodox blade, scarcely longer than her hand and affixed to the handle with a hardened swath of molten iron. For a moment, her eye caught her own reflection in the shard--

"How long have you lived here," a young Myrkener boy asked her.

"I was born here," she said, and again: "I was born here."

And it was the truth--

--before she wrapped the knife back in its paper to keep her curiosity from anymore falling across the enchanted shard of mirror that made its blade. The reflective glass was a jagged, pointed sliver like Niall's, like Cherny's. A product of the Storyteller's silvery tongue. She steadied her breath. Knives. She despised knives, but that it was not made of pure steel...

The seamstress read the note several times. And like a keepsake, she folded it and slid the paper into her sleeve-cuff.