A Letter, Still Sealed

A letter found in the cold cellar, addressed to the Foldfast family in a town hand, its seal never broken — it came after they had already gone, and no one who stayed could read whose news it carried.

(The letter is dry, water-stained at one corner, and sealed. The direction on the outside is all that can be read without breaking it, and breaking it tells you nothing the dead can use.)

To the household of Foldfast, at the steading on the castle road — by any hand that finds them, with thanks and a coin for the carrying.

(The seal is whole. Wherever the Foldfasts went when they took the livestock and left the furniture, the answer to the only question the steading asks — where are they now, are they well, did the new place hold — is sealed inside a letter that reached an empty house a season too late, and there is no honest reason to break another family's seal. You can carry it out, or lay it where they last measured their children, and let it stay theirs.)