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Wilbur isn’t sure what to think when the letter appears on his lap.
He’s sitting cross legged in a grassy field, barely a hundred blocks away from his house, surrounded by Friends, their blue coats standing out in this location.
He hasn’t done much all day, but he had found a wardrobe in ‘the dump’ as he’d dubbed it, and it came flush with his clothes. His soft, brown trousers, his white shirt and yellow sweater, his burgundy beanie and his white battered converse. His rounded glasses sat on one of the top shelves.
He’s been here since he died, this open plain, and this is how life has been for him. He finds the things that appear in the dump, and he he builds himself a home. Every thing that dies appears in this little world he’s carved out for himself.
So it’s a surprise when this letter appears before him,
It burns in reverse, slowly coming into existence, uncurling, unsmoking, ink forming on tattered paper.
Until finally, the wax unmelts, and the full letter is formed before his crossed legs.
Friend 4 wanders over, and Wilbur has to brush him away, trying to convince both Friend 4 and Friend 2 from eating this odd thing.
He reads every letter that comes into this place, every burned message, every hope and dream that is somehow destroyed, and this one will be no different surely.
Except he knows that wax seal, and he knows the scrawled handwriting that reads Wilbur.
This is Tommy’s.
-
He stands, pushing the Friends aside, and makes his way to the ball, the house he’d tried to build so long ago, that had died.
He ignores the camarvan parked beside his house.
Slowly, almost tentatively, he sits at his desk, turning over the letter in his hands. Spinz, Spunz and Spoons are awake now, and they buzz by his ears, floating, as if they want to read the letter too. He gently brushes them away, and they find the flowers on the nearby windowsill instead.
He finds another excuse not to open the letter by brushing his yellow sweater up his arms, suddenly feeling quite warm. His forearms are exposed to the solid oak desk. There’s a crack down the middle, perhaps Techno smahed it in a rage? The craftmanship is definitely that of his brother’s.
He almost doesn’t want to read it. This is Tommy’s thoughts, Tommy’s writing. Is it right to pry like this? He doesn’t know.
But it’s addressed to him so surely-
No.
Tommy didn’t know it would come here. This is Tommy’s confessional, Tommy’s explanation. This isn’t Wilbur’s to read, Tommy burned it for a reason.
But you’ve read the letters and goodbyes of millions of strangers, why should this be any different?
Tommy isn’t a stranger.
Isn’t he? How much do you truly know about him? How much did you want to see? And regardless, this letter didn’t appear in the dump, it appeared before you. Emotional charges Wilbur.
-
The sky is always yellow here. The grass a dull kind of green. The trees are healthy, but every leaf is orange. It’s a world tailored to him, as he decided it.
There’s a steam train that comes past every half an hour on the dot, and taking it only leads to pain.
Taking it shows him Ash, his madness, trapped at a tube station with doors that don’t open.
Taking it shows him Soot, who is trapped within the walls he himself built. Soot got the remenants of that L’Manburg.
Taking it leads him to Schlatt, in a run down apartment surrounded by the stench of alcohol and sex.
Wilbur isn’t sure why he got somewhere different, but he will not risk this place, he will not complain.
Wilbur likes it here, with his red steam train and his open fields. He likes the wheat field to his right, and he likes the small market, that appeared sometime after Schlatt did. The stalls are Tubbo’s work but the cloth tops are so painfully Tommy.
Tommy, who burned a letter.
Tommy, who wrote a confessional that now twirls between Wilbur’s gentle fingers.
Tommy, whose beautiful stiching wrote a letter weighted with pain.
He can feel the pain through the envelope, can feel the pressure of the quill on paper, the admittance in each word. There is a weight to his little brother’s envelope Wilbur doesn’t want to feel.
Henry approaches quietly, placing his head on Wilbur’s lap. He’s somehow always where Wilbur is, and the same goes for Phil’s crows that have passed into here.
Some of them don’t stay, dancing the veil between life and death, there’s weight to the title, meaning behind the ‘angel of death.’
It’s almost like Henry’s supposed to be his version of Tommy, his version of that comfort. He’s met Mushroom Henry as well, but Mushroom Henry is a lot less emotive, a lot quieter, and still. She only eats if Wilbur asks her to, and she doesn’t take much caring for. She doesn’t want a corner in his house filled with blankets, won’t take the plushies he offers her. For the most part he leaves her to wander in the fields, and she’ll only come in for shelter when Henry drags her in.
Briefly, he wonders where she’s gotten to. Perhaps she’s still in the wheat fields. He should go check on her. After he’s read this letter.
After he’s read this letter.
He knows he’s delaying. He doesn’t want to see each broken line, each weighted admittance. Each explanation of feelings that Wilbur knows will kill him a second time.
He’s finding any excuse to not do this, but he feels a duty to do it as well. He can’t just abandon the pain of his brother. It’s not right. This letter is dedicated to him, and he has to read this. Whatever pain he’s feeling, Tommy is feeling worse, Wilbur has no right to keep delaying.
Fine.
He pulls a letter opener from the mug he’d broken when Tommy was five, and opens the letter.
Dear Wilbur,
Puffy said I should write down my thoughts and feelings cause’ it’ll help me organise it or some shit. I didn’t wanna do it, but I guess I’ll give it a try...