Piper stood at her window and flirted with nature. It was there, just on the other side of the panes, evident in the shoots she saw popping up from the terrain. Over the last few days, someone - in all these years in Rhydin, she had never seen a person working in the garden - had raked the ground on the property across the cobbled road, though she noticed it only now. Tiny white flowers were visible amidst the grass, and those fearless little ones that hugged themselves close to the ground, the names of which she could never remember - the little yellow and pink ones - sprouted from the freshly turned earth.

She opened the windows and felt fresh air flood into her overheated studio. It brought with it the scent of new growth or rising sap or whatever it was that led to spring fever and an atavistic urge towards happiness. Birds, she noticed, were busy on the ground, no doubt pleased to discover that the worms had somehow been lured to the surface. Two of them squabbled over something, then one flew away, and Piper watched it disappear to the left of the stables.

So it was on a crystalline, perfectly deep blue evening in July, after a day of angry pewter skies and the threat of driving rain, she was preparing to end hers. The scene all around the walled in garden was a palette of greens. It was as if this were the first evening of the world, perfect. Even the garter snakes slithering under roots, over rocks, over roots to seek out their warm beds for the night seemed a part of the evening's jubilance. Fireflies caught her eye as they darted about the quiet setting, starlike.

However, if she had learned a lesson from life it must surely be that it was fraught with insecurity and could change drastically in the space of a few days.

A couple of crows cawed back and forth, announcing her advance into the garden with a mug of steaming Irish coffee in one hand and the earlier delivered missives in the other. Her previously and mysteriously missing journal, newly found tucked behind a loose stone in the hearth, was folded under her arm and held there with slight pressure. A slim sliver of sharpened coal was also tucked into the mass of hair pinned atop her head.

Gazing up at the darkening blue sky, she searched for the black birds she heard. She listened, counting the crows by their caws. One for sorrow, two for mirth. In her pocket, she possessed a piece of thick oval-shaped hardtack, sailor's bread so hard you could snap a tooth off trying to bite through it. As a rule, she kept a piece in the front pocket of her dress when in the garden. It was a gift for the fairies should the tiny creatures appear fluttering before her.

She settled at the sandstone table nestled under the weeping willow tree. With the items spread out before her on the table, she allowed herself the selfish indulgence of doing absolutely nothing but gazing upon the kiln across the expanse of the rather large walled in yard and garden. Her personal oasis from the madness of the multiverse.

After a moment of reflection, she reached for the first missive and thumbed the seal free with the tip of her thumbnail. As she read over the words, that ghost of a smile stole over her lips. "Haydee"My sweet, sweet mysterious friend.."

Placing the letter aside to be answered once she finished the soothing pleasure of her evening in the garden, she lifted the next missive and opened it in the same fashion. With evening came the darkness. She tilted the letter upwards and to the side to catch the light spilling out of the windows of the studio behind her.

My dearest,

You do not know me but I know you! I have been watching you forever so long from afar: wishing, hoping, dreaming ??".. With each exclamation point her eyes grew wider until she was sitting up straight. "What the devil!?"!?