Lost and Found [Mingle]

[ourearth]

Date: 23-30.3.19
Characters: Open

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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

[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."

[saveournpcs]

The man shakes his head. "I am helpful. It's in my name, is it not?"

[scarsolderthanyou]

"There are other, more helpful, and less ridiculous things you could be doing," Sam comments. "And how do you even know which of us to return things to? You aren't doing this for the entire city. Do only some of us have that 'good sense' of what goes where?"

[saveournpcs]

Oh! This sounds like good input might be forthcoming from this man. "...What else do you think that I should be doing if I want to be helpful?"