Lost and Found [Mingle]

[ourearth]

Date: 23-30.3.19
Characters: Open

---

It starts slowly, one by one: Items are being returned to people. Specifically, they are delivered to their mailboxes.

The items are very varied, and either pushed through the letter slot in the door or, if they're too big, just left on the doorstep: A wallet that was stolen last year, a coin that was dropped into the sea last week, or a toy that was left on a bus, a time capsule buried in the ground, an unwanted present purposefully forgotten at the train station. The only thing that they have in common that they are never perishables. It's all non-food items.

All items that are being returned must have vanished within the Mossgate Echo Boundary, but they can have vanished long before the person whom they are returned to gained their first echo/got access to the network.

They appear throughout the week, and then abruptly stop the evening before Mother's Day.

Comments

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I know a lot of people in this town. I knew Benjamin's grandfather before he died." He shakes his head, then turns back to the stranger. "I don't know you, though. I'm Sam." He's starting off more polite, this time, than he was with Mr. Evil. This guy has been relatively okay, so far... no messing with bombs. Only people.

[saveournpcs]

"I'm Mr Helpful." The man returns the polite tone, gives a friendly smile, and offers a hand for a handshake.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Sam pauses, hesitating just a moment, before putting his hand into Mr. Helpful's for a brief shake. "Uh, you don't happen to know a Mr. Neutral and a Mr. Evil, do you?" Because the naming convention seems pretty, uh, obvious there.

[saveournpcs]

He hesitates for a moment, looking a bit uncomfortable. Then he sighs, and nods with a mildly disapproving expression. "...I am aware of them, yes."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Did you guys all pick out your own names?" Sam has to ask. "Because they're kinda... interesting. Unusual, you might say."

[saveournpcs]

"Oh, no." He chuckles and shakes his head. "I would never think of picking a name other than the one I've always had. That just would not feel connected to myself.

...

Did you pick your own name?" There is a faint confusion, like he's trying to figure out if there's another source to the question than the one Sam gave, because it just doesn't seem sufficient to him.

[scarsolderthanyou]

"My parents picked my name," Sam shrugs. "But I can't imagine anybody's parents naming them 'Mr. Helpful' or 'Mr. Evil'. Kids would make fun of them, and anybody, nobody wants to call their kid 'mister' unless they're in trouble."

[saveournpcs]

He shakes his head. "Nobody has ever made fun of me for it.

Did your parents not try to pick a name that would suit your well? That is what my name is."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I was a baby, they didn't know what I would be like," Sam says. Was this guy never a baby? A child? "Where are you from? I don't recognize you, so you must not be from around here."

[saveournpcs]

Another shake of his head. "I'm not from around here, no. I only arrived a few months ago. I'm glad I came, though. It's beautiful here.

...You don't seem to be from around here, either, are you? Your speech sounds a bit different."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I'm from New York, across the pond there, as they call it." He nods at the ocean they're on the edge of. Wrong edge, but still. "It's a nice place. Here, not New York. What brought you here?"

[saveournpcs]

"Oh, I am looking for someone. Or perhaps looking after someone... it is rather complicated." He shakes his head. "In a way that's fortunate though, since it brought me here. I have never before lived at the seaside. Have you?"

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I've lived all over. I've lived here for a couple decades now, so I'm pretty used to it," Sam says. "Who are you looking for? Maybe I can help out."

[saveournpcs]

"A man with no hair and a scar here," he indicates a line from his right eye down over the side of his chin, ending at his jaw. "I haven't been able to find him yet, but I have good reason to believe that he is somewhere around here."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Oh, yeah, he's here somewhere. And tends to disappear at just the wrong times. That's Mr. Evil, you said you knew him. He set off a bomb here a while ago, and left us all coal at Christmas," Sam says, a bit grumpily. "Though I'm less annoyed about the coal than I am about all the things you delivered to my doorstep this morning."

[saveournpcs]

A painfully startled expression falls onto the man's face, much like a child that carefully plucked flowers to make a bouquet for their mother and can't understand why the mother is angry that the prized front garden flower bed was diminished.

"Why?"

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Because I got rid of those things on purpose," Sam explains. "I didn't want them back. They belonged to my wife, and seeing them again was...." He pauses, grimaces, and finishes, "Not easy."

[saveournpcs]

"...Why would you get rid of things that belonged to your wife?" There's no malice, only honest, plain confusion, and perhaps a bit hurt in his tone. He just wanted to help! He didn't mean to cause hurt.

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Because losing her hurt me," Sam answers. It's like dealing with a child. Reminds him of talking to Nel about the same subject. "And seeing things that were hers, that were special to her and reminded me of her, made the hurt feel worse. Grief is weird like that." He pauses, then adds, "Not to mention I did give some of those things to charities, so there might be other people missing them by now."

[saveournpcs]

"I made sure to not return anything that seemed to belong to someone," he points out absent-mindedly, still puzzling over the rest of it. "But why did they remind you of the loss, and not the good times that you had with her?"

[scarsolderthanyou]

God, it really is like talking to a child. "Because human brains are weird," Sam shrugs. "When you're sad, you think about the sad things more. And losing her made me very sad. So when I think about her, most of the time it's more about her death than anything else."

[saveournpcs]

"..." He nods, mulling this over some more. "I will see to nothing else returning, then. Sadness was not the intention."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Thanks, I appreciate that." Better than it could have gone. Sam tilts his head, and asks, "How did you even know what to return, anyway? It wasn't like it had our names on it."

[saveournpcs]

"I could tell anyway," he explains, and then shrugs apologetically. "I simply... have a good sense for what goes to whom, I guess. I can't really explain it."

[scarsolderthanyou]

Interesting. Sam has to ask, "Why did you bother? Even if you can tell what goes with who, that had to be quite a job, especially when you're supposed to be looking for somebody, you said. You brought stuff back to a lot of people."