"Another day, more letters and me. How tired I am..."
So began another day as a simple office worker, Esher Wales. His job was simple and straightforward - sorting letters for the letter carriers to deliver to their addresses. The job required no thinking effort, but merely a matter of going through letter after letter, sending them to different baskets. Each basket was a different district of the city.
After all the letters were sorted, Esher had to place each basket in its corresponding glass tube and pull the lever. The letters were sent by the force of wind and traction up and along the entire office to another part of the post office, directly to the mailmen. Then Escher had to sit at his desk again and wait for a new batch of letters. And so it went on day after day. At first, he found it interesting to read the addresses, to fantasize what the letters might have contained. A declaration of love? A death notice? Or maybe a conversation about work? But unfortunately it was time-consuming, and the post office demanded efficiency.
Interesting work had turned into a hateful chore that made Esher ready to hang himself. But he couldn't. Having moved from a small industrial town, he went to college to study law, but to continue studying, Escher had to live somewhere. Rent was expensive for a mere student. Esher went to work. But alas, work and school could not exist together. While he worked, he didn't attend classes, and if he reduced the number of days he worked, he didn't have enough money to pay for housing.
"This is hell," Esher decided, sitting as usual one day sorting letters.
His studies had to be abandoned, fully immersed in his work. Esher couldn't quit his job. Finding a job is extremely difficult. And without a job there's no money, without money there's no place to live.
"I'm not going back home!"
That's how Esher Wales got stuck in this post office as a regular clerk.
Pondering his hard fate, he didn't notice a new box of sloppily dumped letters placed in front of him. In front of his desk stood a short girl with dirty blond hair and lively gray eyes.
A small scattering of freckles splashed around her face, but they were not beautiful freckles. They were like drops of dirt and road dust, which always made her face look unwashed.
- Esher, sort out these letters before lunch! - The girl said in an orderly tone, without any greeting, and gave Esher a scornful look. - You are always so slow! I'll complain about you to the boss.
"And you're always an hour late, but I don't report it to that toad..." Esher tsked to himself in his thoughts and silently accepted the box of letters. Without waiting for a reply, the girl snorted and quickly turned and walked away. With a jerk, a thin, sloppy braid that looked like a rat-tail hit her shoulder and hung down again, twitching in time with the girl's steps. "How I wish I could quit..."
Sighing silently, Asher pulled the box toward him and looked inside. There were a lot of letters.
"I won't get lunch again." sadly concluded Esher and got up from his desk. He stacked the boxes of sorted letters on top of each other and carried them to the auto mail room. After placing a box in each glass tube, he closed all the glass doors and pulled the lever.
The bronze-rimmed corners of the crates suddenly vise iron cutters, securing them to the platform.
Nodding to himself, Esher next pressed a small button at the base of each pipe. A click sounded. And before the man's eyes, all the letters that lay in the boxes rose into the air and flew swiftly down the pipe. No one ever worried about the safety of the letters. It was not a stiff fierce wind, but a soft flow of magic that the skillful hands of the craftsmen had created. At the expense of "time," the currents of air did not tear the cheap paper.
Emptying the crates, Asher gathered them together and carried them to his desk. After standing for a couple seconds, as if trying to figure out what to do next, he arranged them on the desk just as they had stood before. The sorting of the letters began again.
Time flowed slowly and agonizingly. Letter after letter. Look up the address, check the map, identify the neighborhood, throw the letter into the right box.
Time stretched slowly, the minute hand crept inexorably forward, approaching the time of the lunch break. The office, filled with the same clerks as Esher, was slowly becoming empty. People were leaving for lunch, happy to be able to stretch their legs and backs that were stiff from sitting at their desks for so long.
After putting another letter in the drawer, Esher grabbed the next one and immediately stopped. The appearance of the envelope was different. The dark bluish paper contrasted brightly against the yellowish-white envelope, and the gold seal with red veins only reinforced the effect.
Esher turned the letter in his hands. There was no sender's address or delivery address. There were no names either. Feeling the envelope in his fingers, Esher felt nothing, as if the envelope was empty.
"How strange. How did it even get here. With no sender's address and no identifying marks..." ran through Esher's mind. The signet caught his eye. A strange snake coiled around a thin eye with no eyelashes adorned with lilies. Esher couldn't remember any crest similar to this one. After hesitating for a moment, Esher slipped the envelope into the back of his vest and continued sorting through the letters. He had to finish his work before evening.