“Did you have to text her in the middle of my experience?” Chloe sat back with her arms crossed, side-eyeing him.
He looked up from his phone, saw her pouting, and his expression softened. “Ha, sorry. It’s just nice to get instant feedback for once. You know how our Q-net is always spotty.”
“Dr. Mendelsohn said she knew you.”
“She does. We ran into each other a few times after the Collapse. Thankfully always on the same side, but seems she saw right through me.” He took the piece of paper off the paper table. “Okay, that’s enough.”
“That was fun,” Chloe said, staring at the typewriter. “But still not Christmas.”
“Well it’s mainly things happening at around this time. Which is Christmas time. But the engine unit can also be a bit fickle sometimes and show past or future events. Exceptionally dangerous.” He turned the dial back down, causing the pink glow and gas to fade.
“That second one had nothing to do with Christmas whatsoever. Just some guy drinking amniotic fluid. For some reason”
Shapes flitted across his dim-out curtains, and Lachlan pulled his drawer open to retrieve the trio of rolled and stamped letters. “Go read A Christmas Carol.” He left the study, walking in between the kirin-fur couch and the giant holographic television console to reach the front door of their cottage, which he easily unlocked and opened.
Outside, the mist had yet to settle for the morning, like most mornings in the north of what used to be the very tip of Scotland. That was no matter, however, as he simply curled the fingers on his hand, brought it to his lips and blew under the arches of his digits. The fog rolled away from the path that wound up the nearby hill, towards a small cairn made out of heavy stones that stood at the edge of a cliff.
He whistled to himself as he walked, taking in the fresh air of the morning. Maybe an afternoon picnic - with Christmas treat no less - would do to calm Chloe down a little bit. Food always got her going. As he neared the cairn, the various wooden perches, each carved out of a different type of wood, were visible, staked into the ground next to the stone structure. He knew there were almost twenty in total, and on a busier non-holiday they would have mostly been occupied, but on this Christmas Eve, he only had three guests.
The first, on the mahogany perch, was a large stork with a scar across its upper bill, to which he gave the first letter after checking its contents with a quick peek.
“Haxalon,” he said.
The stork nodded in understanding, and took off with the letter in its mouth, gliding off the edge of the cliff before the Cairn and diving towards one of the other flying islands below, closer to the surface of the ocean.
The second was a stock albatross, sat on a perch of dethaumified ironwood, ruffling its dark feathers impatiently. To this he gave the second roll of paper.
“To the Gefnia.”
Understanding immediately, it also took off, disappearing below the edge.
The last bird was another stork - and to be fair, the messengers were mostly storks - but this was a beautiful Marabou stork on its personal fraxinus perch, one Lachlan only ever used for important messages. He had always liked imagining what his recipients would think upon the arrival of each type of bird. Would they be disappointed? Elated? He had no way of knowing what they had assigned each one, but for convenience, he always kept his side of things consistent.
“To Doctor Karina Onari, Skevia, Earth, A03.”
The stork didn’t budge.
“Are you deaf too now?”
It still didn’t acknowledge him, instead looking past him, a colour reflected in its eyes.
Lachlan spun around to find the cottage glowing a bright pink through the reformed mist, far brighter than any local light source or probably on the planet. He now registered the sound of a powerful gale, brought on by what must be the swirling gas from the machine. He shoved the last scroll into the talons of the Marabou, scratching himself in the process but not drawing blood thanks to his subdermal membrane.
Not that he cared.
“Go!” he shouted, causing the stork to fly off.
The sound of the miniature tornado was growing now, and even the mist was shrinking away from the cottage, bathed in an otherworldly pink.
“Chloe!” he called, and began to sprint.
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