Return to Sender

RP Date: 2026-10-25

Location: Post Office

Participants: Lucian, Rory

Summary

Rory continues to investigate the Morse Code machine, and realizes it can not only receive messages, but send them.

This archive was published after approval by all listed participants.

Roleplay

Lucian strolls into the Post Office, plucking out agitated discordant notes on his guitar. He nods when he sees Rory upon entering, adjusting his playing to resemble an acoustic Beatles riff. "Merlín, how do you do? Getting on?" A quick glance shows Lucian's cubby to be empty.

Rory looks like he hasn't been sleeping much. His clothes are mostly clean, but there are circles under his eyes and his dark hair is messy and hangs around his face, longer now than it was when he arrived. He has a full bottle of rum on the edge of the counter, just close enough to be within reach but far enough not to spill any on his work. "Hey, mate!" he calls cheerily to Lucian when he strolls in.  "Been grand, just another day in Grimwych, eh?  Where've you been?"

Lucian taps his fingers on the body of his guitar, Humming just long enough to give Rory the impression that whatever his response is, it includes all of the given shortcomings of their overall shared predicament. "Out and about. Finding more mysteries than answers."

Rory watches Lucian like a hungry cat might watch an owner expecting food, all wide and imploring eyes.  He has a glass at his right and takes a drink of it. "Rum?"  He gestures to the bottle, and steps a little unsteadily in that direction. "Hey, did you ever see that movie <i>It?</i>  The Tim Curry one with the clown and the kids?"  As the machine churns out another paper, Rory plucks it up, squints at the message. "Huh, this is a different bit.  One second."  He jots the message down in his notebook, sets that paper in a little pile of its own and turns back to Lucian. "Find anything good?"

Lucian eyes the rum warily for a moment, then shakes his head. "Too sweet." He fiddles with the strings of his instrument, and lets out a quiet sigh. "Eso. I liked him better in the Muppet Treasure Island. Did you hear about the shadow monster? Maybe Cosa Mala and the shadow monster are a Tim Curry."

Rory has to set his glass back down to get the second paper, and he squints at it.  He has memorized most of them, and this is familiar....ish. "Someone is not here by accident," he muses.  Breathing in slowly, he looks over at the glowing writing and starts spelling out loud. "L-U-C..." That's about as far as he gets before a lightbulb goes off in his head and he passes the paper to his compadre. "Looks like it's you, mate.  Cheers." He raises the glass a second time, for another drink, and then sets it down. "Morgane was up the hill shouting about it, but yeah, I saw it out in the night four, maybe five days ago?  She loves the theatrics, that one.  Panicking over that dead guy is the first bloody normal thing I've seen her do here."  That prickling is back on the back of his neck, and he grips the edge of the counter instead of reaching for more booze. "Well, if you saw the movie, the villain wasn't just Tim Curry as a clown, it was some kind of shapeshifting monster.  It popped up every thirty or so years and caused a bunch of disasters, and then went to sleep again.  I remember..."  He closes his eyes and scrunches them up, trying to really remember what he's forgotten. "The whole <i>town</i> was the monster somehow, and the only way they children could defeat it was because they had each other."  Rory has not read the behemoth volume of<i> It, </i>and is at the mercy of the cinema adaptation. "My dad was a big King fan.  He used to read them at work.  <i>Carrie.  Salem's Lot.  </i>He had a whole shelf of them."  Rory can picture that shelf now, all of the books secondhand, their pages dog-eared.  "I used to read them to my sister when my mum would run off.  All the mums were crazy."  He scratches at his neck, looks out the window, tries to remember his train of thought as a breeze carries in the smells of outside, of old blood not far off.  Not too old, and not too far. "I was going somewhere with this."<p><br /></p><p><br /></p>

Lucian accepts the strip from Rory, then spends a few moments translating it against the glowing letters on the wall. With a grunt, he crumples it up and raises his eyes toward the sky, "Cállate, Cosa Mala." He gives Rory space to muse, not having his own parental memories to commiserate with. "Well. We have each other. And we have faith." He smiles brightly and glances to the ceiling again, "I, for instance, have a deep faith that you are hiding in the shadows because you must. And if you must hide, you are afraid. And if you are afraid, it is because we can hurt you."

Rory slow blinks a couple of times. "Faith is what killed the clown.  They believed their tactics could hurt It, so they did.  They killed a monster with an inhaler and some silver earrings, and the power of friendship." It sounds corny as fuck, but gradually stirs Rory back to where he was going. "Ka is a wheel," he mutters. "The Dark Tower.  All of the worlds and dimensions and pieces of the world are connected by one central point, and that's why Marw Foxx can speak Latin and Morgane can read French, because everything is real.  Or nothing is.  You know in the last book, the guys went back to kidnap Stephen King, because they realized they were all fictional characters and he was writing their reality, and they wanted him to continue doing so?  Wouldn't that be a head trip."  It's a heavy thought, and he sucks in a breath as Lucian speaks quietly to the ceiling.  There is an uneasy flicker in his dark eyes. "Maybe," he says more quietly, less boisterously. "It's more afraid of hurting <i>us.</i>  Not every monster asked to be."  He swallows an uncomfortable lump in his throat, wipes his hands on his pants, and picks his wand out of his pocket. "So, these guys.  The machine likes to put out a lot of the same messsages, so we have:  <br /><br />RORY/LUCIAN IS NOT HERE BY ACCIDENT <br />COME HOME RORY.  PLEASE.  <br />DO NOT TRUST HER.   <br />DID MY PARCEL ARRIVE YET?  OPEN IT IN SECRET. <br />YOU ARE NOT THE FIRST PEOPLE TO WAKE HERE. <br />WHERE ARE YOU, LETTIE?  <br /><br />"  As he speaks each, the words in English appear below the dots and slashes in Morse Code. "This is the first time since I've been collecting that it's mentioned you, but this is also the first time you've been here since I started collecting."<br /><br /><br /><br />

Lucian nods and pats the knife at his waist, "I have deep and abiding faith that Cosa Mala is no match for steel." He looks over the messages, frowns, but shrugs, "This is...como se dice... disinformation campaign. Propaganda. Turn us against each other. If we are strong together, it wants us apart."

Rory lowers his wand and shoves it back into his pocket, turning towards the machine instead. "Maybe," he agrees. "It would make sense.  That's why Morgane pitched human sacrifice right out the door.  If you make the world kill or be killed, you'll never trust anybody."  He breathes in slowly, through his nose and out through his mouth. "Did something happen out at the market that I don't know about?  It smells rank down there."  He can scent it on the breeze, that faint but niggling stink of old blood, several days old.  "But this one's new.  Leeeet me try something. "  He starts tapping at the machine like someone who is very okay at typing on an early-2000s era computer.  None of that screen swiping for him.  He types one word.  <i>WANKER.</i>

Lucian shakes his head about it all. "No clue. I have been delving into interpersonal mysteries. And apparently shadow monsters are real. Did you know shadow monsters are real? In my world, we only had vampires, and those I was surprised to find." He raises an eyebrow while Rory engages with the machine. "Did you have elves in your London?"

Rory plucks the piece of paper, which does not read "Wanker" at all, but "Rude(something)  Tosser."  He cheerily flips the machine the bird for the time being. "Interpersonal mysteries?" he questions, a bit more seriously. "What's that mean?"  He scratches his neck some more, and then rolls up the sleeve of his coat and scratches at his forearm, where there are more scars. "Kiiind of?  We had these sort of shadow creatures that would feed on the joy people felt, but nothing like what I saw this week.  We only had normal humans, same as you, mostly.  There were like...magical creatures, but no elves or dwarves or any of that fantasy trope stuff.  I figure my London is the same as your London, we just all lived under everyone else's noses."  He taps the machien a few more times.  <i>SORRY.  TESTING.  IS MANCHESTER WINNING?</i>

Lucian watches Rory getting some sort of breakthrough with the machine. "Oh, just. Someone might want to volunteer as sacrifice. I'm worried they'll say something publicly, because that would seem like an easy solution to the conundrum."

Rory reads over the paper that comes through at the end of his typing. "Bloody hell," he breathes. "It writes back to you.  That's something."  He has no way to verify if the information from the machine is true or not, but it is information that did not come from his own head.  He scratches as his arm a little more. "So she wants to kill herself, but is too afraid to actually do it.  Sounds like she needs a counselor to me."

Lucian shakes his head, not giving much credence to the machine, having already written it off as the propaganda arm of Cosa Mala. "I don't know that they do want to die. I think they're trying to help the rest of us."

Rory hasn't written it off as propaganda, but entertainment of some sort, to be sure.  It's connected to something, somewhere, and it works.  Shame it cut off before he could ask who in Grimwych had the best tits. "Then maybe they could walk around and look for hourglasses and document them.  Where are they, are they upright, on their sides."  Rory frowns a little.  Without the continuous stream of rum he is also sobering up very quickly. "That's what I'll do once I'm done this.  Maybe your friend and I can find something."

Lucian nods, "I don't know who they are," Lucian fibs easily, with absolute conviction. He gestures to the cubby. "Anonymous submissions for how to choose the sacrifice."

Rory cuts his eyes towards the indicated cubby. "Should we really trust those?  If we're all receiving parcels from unknown sources, can we really trust that any word left and submitted there anonymously isn't the village working against us?  Our It?" 

Lucian waves his hand back and forth. "I think, we can't base decisions on them. I got in trouble recently due to a mixup with a friend. They thought something Cosa Mala left them was from me, and I thought something they left me was from Cosa Mala."

Rory nods very slowly. "Huh."  All he has been left is a sausage roll and the letter A in Grimwych Morse Code.  "So it's leaving you bad things."  He reaches for the glass of rum again, but pauses to look out the window.  The eastern horizon is already starting to darken with the setting sun. "Your friend's gonna win this thing.  Her and maybe Axe-Girl."

Rory says to Lucian, "They won't accept defeat."

Lucian nods and reaches out to chuck Rory on the shoulder, winking. "I know. I make friends with winners, Merlín."

Rory laughs lowly. "Then what the hell are you doing in here with me,<i> amigo?  </i>Slumming?"

Lucian raises an eyebrow, "You have rescued me multiple times by now, Merlín. What is our debt at, I owe you one and a half now? You have solved the mystery of the Morse Code? You are no loser, compa."

Rory scratches at his neck a little more softly. "That may be one of the kindest things anyone has ever said about me," he remarks with a low laugh.  He sweeps the Morse Code papers back into a larger pile--all but today's gatherings, which he pockets. "I'll give you one more.  Keep your friend in the village when the moon rises, and stay inside until the sun comes up.  Something's out there."

Lucian rolls back his shoulders, patting his knife again and not quite catching all of Rory's intended meaning. "It will not be my first time braving the dangers between dusk and dawn, but I will be cautious."

Rory tears a couple of pages from his notebook and copies down both the Morse Code ABCS and a list of the different messages. He offers them to Lucian. "Keep these in case I lose mine.  Maybe they can keep Carlita company until she gets rolling again."

Lucian tucks the notes away, to join Carlita and her sisters later. "Ahhh. When Carlita wakes up, that will be the day Cosa Mala learns to weep, Merlín." He smiles and pats his guitar. "I will be seeing you."