When next Glenn Burnie finds himself at his office in the meetinghouse, there is a note folded and tucked into the edge of his door. Whether he finds it in time for its contents to mean anything is, perhaps, another matter.
Even without his seeing the signature inside the note itself, the splotchy, sloppy handwriting on the outside of the note ("Governor G. Burnie, Myrken Meetinghouse" with a wavy scrawl of an underline below Burnie where the ink was smudged by a fatty hand) is obviously that of the fellow whose office is just a door or two down in the Meetinghouse: Aloisius Horatio Treadwell, the man with far too many titles under his belt.
The paper unfolds neatly enough, with minimal blurring of the text given that the ink had (mostly) been allowed to dry before the page was folded, sealed with a waxen blot, and the wax smushed in with a simple "T" seal from a signet ring.
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Glenn,
Come the first day of next week (that's in three days, mind you), I'll be leaving out in the morning to go home to Westenford, on the Amasynia coast, for all of the better part of, oh, about a week, give or take a day or two. Travel by carriage takes a bit over land when dealing with a slow, elderly horse, but I digress. I have a bit of business to attend there involving a property settlement--specifically, an inheritance of a house and tailor shop there from one of my cousins in the Drivel side of the family. For some reason, it seems that my cousin Regis thought it a good idea to leave all of his earthly goods to a man twenty years his senior who happens to live most of his time about as far away as he can be in Myrken Wood!
Well, I can't say that any of the Drivels have ever had a lick of sense in their heads.
Either way, this won't take me too terribly long, as I said. I'm not leaving anything here undone--the taxes are catalogued and counted up for the first half of the month, my toy shop will be locked up in my absence, the Tubbians have my subordinates to oversee their affairs here, my dear wife Alice and our children are being taken care of by our staff at home and by my physician, and this office of mine could stand a few days without me in it.
If there's anything you would care for me to bring you back from Westenford when I'm done there, or if you want to join me for the ride and actually get to see the ocean for a few days instead of stay cooped up here in these abominable woods, do send word to me at home. You're certainly welcome to come along; if nothing else, it would mean that the trip up there and back wouldn't be so long and dull.
Respectfully,
Aloisius
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