Maddy watched Mint separating mail into two piles. Those for proper residents of Hell, Texas, and the 'dead letters' meant for no recipient this side of reality. The man sorted them quick as a Vegas poker-shark dealing out cards. Maddy wondered if he'd memorized the names and addresses of every soul in town. Seemed likely. Mint had to have learned something while getting so old. Personally, Maddy would rather learn guitar. Or French or karate or Babylonian irregular verbs. Anything, anything but all the names of all the folk that all her life kept asking 'who are you again?'

She sighed, returned to giving the front windows a good cleaning. Satisfying work that allowed a body to keep busy while thinking about something else. That was always the best kind of work. She sprayed cleanser and scrubbed at a stain on the glass that defied her. Mocked her, even. It resembled a lich in Moonshrike. Same bony grin and empty eyes. Maddy hated liches. Couldn't abide them. To hell with game faction points with the Necromancer's Guild. She'd sing a snare cantrip on a lich soon as she met them on a game path. Follow up with wither and a fire spell, finish 'em off with her +5 for undead long knife.

She was just Maddy Rupert in Hell Texas. But in Moonshrike she was someone significant. Valentine the Bard. She had a guild; the Crystal Einherjar. A small group, but full of folk who respected her. Valentine was high level; and more important she was competent. Anyone could work their way up levels. Heck, some people actually bought a maxed-level character online, then jumped into the virtual world as a master wizard or barbarian fighter.

Their mistake. You watched those posers tangle up their spells, agro a vampire dragon and get taken down while an entire zone of players laughed. Else they'd run screaming across a zone while leading a train of zombie rats and NPC guards. It took skill to use the spells and weapons of a high-level player. More, it took experience not to panic when things went south, with monsters pouring out caves and the party's best fighter down and spell points near spent. Valentine the Bard had a cool way of dealing with crises. Making her a popular choice for quest groups and dungeon crawls. And bards weren't usually so respected. Hard to be taken seriously when you're strumming 'Kumbaya' on a lute while everyone else is whacking and hacking at goblin spawn. But Valentine could heal, she could empower, and when push came to push back harder Valentine moved damned quick with a long knife.

She scrubbed at the stain that grinned like a gaming monster. Squirting more cleanser. It remained, somehow becoming more distinct. Heck, she realized; the stain was on the other side of the glass. She sighed at her mistake, then laughed.

Some change in sound made her turn. Mint had stopped sorting letters. He stood with an envelope in his hand. Frowning at what he saw. Ha. A name he doesn't know, thought Maddy. But no, he did know the name.

"Letter for you, kid," he declared.

"Me?" she squeaked. "From who?"

He stood staring. She took breath, tried again in a reach-old-ears voice. "From whom?"

Mint shook head. "No return address. I'd have tossed it to the dead letter pile, but for the name." He held it up to the ceiling as if to see past the envelope into the message within. "That's one collectable stamp there, though." He put the letter onto the counter, returned to sorting.

Maddy put down rag and cleanser, approached the letter. The envelope looked yellowed as the newspaper clippings her dad kept hid in back of his sock closet. Ancient announcements of a wedding, a birth, a death. She poked it. Wrinkled and stained to say it'd made a long journey to reach her.

She didn't get many letters on real paper. Her aunt in Theory sent birthday cards. The postmistress in Heaven, Oklahoma sent Christmas cards. Everyone else had the sense to email or text. Not that anyone texted Maddy. That whole business of teens spending all day online, gossiping, sending embarrassing selfies was just myth, far as Maddy knew.

She picked the letter up. It felt heavier than mere paper. Wet, maybe. She sniffed, caught a smell like the wind around the oil rig fields. That leaky-stove smell of methane and matches. She eyed Mint, who eyed her right back, still sorting mail. Pretty good trick.

She growled, tore open the letter, pulled out a sheet of yellow-brown paper. Kid's paper, the kind with lines across it to help keep the letters straight. The writing itself was cursive, letters flowing and beautiful as something penned by elven scribes on a magic door.

To Madeline Rupert

I would like to go with you to the mid-summer dance. I am learning how to dance. Also to write letters and to walk. I was a stone. I was a stone in the base of a pillar. A pillar at the bottom of the earth. At the bottom of the earth in the abattoir below existence where fire and worm consume all except that which perishes not. There among the remains of angels and devils and monsters. There in the fragments of broken war machines of the gods. There with the stones. I was a stone. A stone at the base of the pillar of the world.

Till Spark came. He has many shapes. He is a flame. We talked. I had never talked before. Only screamed. All the stones of the pillar scream. Spark says they are in pain. When I asked, 'what is pain'? he spoke of fire, weight, compression, fragmentation, oblivion, a stone screaming. But that is just the world. 'Pain' is just the world.

Spark told me I had a letter. He read it to me. Now I am curious of s'mores. I am curious of dancing. I am curious of summer. I am curious of Madeline Rupert. I was a stone. A stone in the pillar at the bottom of the world. It has very many stones. I was among the very lowest stones. And I was very weary.

Spark pulled me free. I rolled away. The pillar of the world weakened. The earth above us shook, I did not care. I felt strange. A naked thing without form, without place or purpose. Rolling across an endless plain of fire and fragments of broken forgotten things.

"Where is summer?" I asked. "Where is dancing? Where is Madeline Rupert?"

Spark said if I wish to learn of summer and dancing I must become more than a stone. He went away. He searched the wrack and dreck at the bottom of existence. At times he returned with pieces of face and form, limb and organ. He stitched and joined these things. After I gained eye and hand I helped. We joined together pieces of beings who fought wars between the highest heavens and lowest hells, between the dark of the stars and the hearts of the stars. These pieces still lived, still twitched, unwilling to surrender to fire and oblivion. We sewed. We fitted. I became what we created. It hurt very much.

After ages of sewing and screaming I stood a thing completed, formed from imperishable tatters of destruction and loss, war and oblivion. Much of me is angel. Much of me is devil and monster and machine. I feel these parts at war within me even yet. But they obey me. I am strong. I was a stone who held up the world. I can master this patchwork self.

My left eye is an angel's. It shows me things that make me weep and laugh. My right eye is a crystal from a race that wished to own the stars. They ended in the abattoir. That eye tells me secrets. Names of stars and planets and cities and peoples. But my heart is a mirrored ball of impenetrable glass. It does not tell me anything. Spark says it holds the light that is me, taken from out the stone that I was.

Oh, and I have wings. One dark and leathery. One light and white and feathery. Do you have wings, Madeline Rupert? I find them tedious. Mine never fold comfortably. They twitch on their own, and sometimes they fight one another.

But now that I stand I am going to find my way upwards from the abattoir. Spark warns it will not be easy. Each being I meet shall be my foe, commanding me to become again a stone at the base of the world. Each step of the stairs shall be a battle. But I will not return.

Spark has found me a sword. It is very sharp and hot. I believe it can talk, but it is shy and will not yet tell me its name or story. More later.

Sincerely,

He that was a Screaming Stone but is now the Tatterpatch Angel.

Maddy read this letter over twice. Then she folded the letter up, put it in her pocket. Saying nothing to Postmaster Mint. She went back to scrubbing the front windows. The lich stain grinned. She ignored it till she'd scrubbed every speck on this side of the glass. Only then did she go out the door, find the grinning stain on the other side. Applying cleanser and rag, she wiped it entirely out of existence.