Work Text:
In the back of a dusty closet could be found a dusty box. So many secrets within so tiny a box, waiting to see the light of day after so many years. It would be so easy to open that box, so easy to let the rustling wings, brittle with age, fly free from the darkness. Yet there they slept, neglected and reminiscing of days long gone.
Oh, to be a letter. From the moment of their creation they had one purpose; to deliver. Good news and bad news, gossip and gifts. They whispered “I love you”s and “I hate you”s when the writer could not bring themselves to say such words aloud. They traveled the world and the seven seas on paper wings and watched, like angels, as the faces of their readers lit up with joy or broke down into tears. Letters do not lie. They are a messenger, a vessel. Letters do not care for mortal troubles.
They wish to see the open sky and take flight, to soar across the great blue expanse of space. To feel the warmth of the sun and the soft brush of night air was the dream of a letter. And the stars at night, how beautiful as they winked. Then, once they had had their fill, they would do as was planned all along and once again serve the men of the earth.
The letters of the box had not seen the light of day for many years. They had fulfilled their purpose, but they had yet to be freed of their paper shackles and returned to the sky. As the minds of men grew old and withered, the letters remained a testament to days long since past.
“Hello darling,” the first letter would read if it were opened, the handwriting sloppy in an endearing sort of way. “Even as I write this I think of your face, and of how you cried when I left. It breaks my heart, knowing that you’ve suffered from my leaving, but you won’t have to worry for much longer. They say that the war will be over by Christmas, a one-and-done, and soon I will be back home with you. Until then I dream of your angel’s touch and write my lonely letter.”
The funny thing about a letter is that it tells only one half of a conversation, a key without a hole and an echo of the truth. What was said in return? One may never know. What did the reader feel, what did they think? It’s a mystery to the letters. There are clues for any investigator, of course: the mouth of the letter gapes wide, torn in a hurry, and the paper wilts with wrinkles from a clenched fist.
These letters have seen many tears and smiles, but they do not care. Beloved, but they do not love. They are, after all, just paper. They are loved in the place of a lover who is not there, a proxy whispering testaments of love and promises of the future. As the years wore on, the letters would slowly replace the memory of days long gone, the brush of paper replacing the warmth of skin, and the scent of ink supplanting the safety of home.
“Hello darling,” said the second letter.
“Hello darling,” murmured the third.
“Hello darling,” cooed the fourth and most beloved.
The edges of these letters had softened with age and affection, growing only more accommodating with time as their master revisited them again and again.
There was no fifth letter.
In its place stood a square of paper, yellowed with time but crisp and unmarred. It stood apart from the others, a stiff soldier amongst the lovely dove wings. Melting the letters into oblivion, wet splatters, long dried, smudged the ink until it fled as all hope was destroyed. It was short, to the point, two lines staring up at the sky like cold, dead eyes.
“DEAR MRS. DOE,” the telegram screamed in all caps. "WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT SGT. JOHN DOE WAS KILLED IN ACTION THIS DAY, DEC 24, 1916." It did not take an investigator to guess how many tears the letters had witnessed that day. Unlike the letters, the telegram had no soul. While they fluttered through the sky, it raced along lines, ignorant of the stars. The telegram was a messenger all the same, but where the letters were cherished, it was hated. The telegram did not care. It had completed its mission, and so awaited death with impatience.
Of course, the mercy of an end would be a long time in the waiting for the paper soldier and his doves. They were kept in love, kept alive, kept prisoner. Never again did they leave the box, pushed away to a forgotten corner because they were too painful to look at. The truth is hard to swallow, and letters tell nothing but the truth.
Somewhere outside that dusty attic, a woman sits waiting for someone who will never come home. She remembers not his face, but the curl of his handwriting and the rustle of paper wings. She loves the letters, but they do not love her. And with every moment in which she does not set free her hopeless daydreams, the letters waste away and yearn for the sky.
Whispering, the letters slowly fell back to sleep.