letters from nook

To Whoever’s out there (Preferably Someone with a Plan), Right. Let’s get the obvious out of the way. I appear to have fallen through a portal. Not in a grand, heroic, chosen one, kind of way. I wasn’t mid-battle, I wasn’t deciphering an ancient rune, and I certainly wasn’t doing anything remotely adventurous. No, I was having a coffee. One moment, I was sitting comfortably with a book in hand, the next, I was hurtling through the cosmos and ended up face-down on a cobblestone street, spitting out dirt and questioning my life choices. Apparently, I’ve ended up in Nook. A town that is, for lack of a better description, mildly magical. Magic does exist, but it works about as well as bad Wi-Fi; temperamental at best and completely non-functional when you actually need it. I watched a witch try to summon a familiar the other day, and instead she conjured three deeply depressed frogs. No one even blinked. There's no grand prophecies about me. No dark lord for me to defeat. I’m just stranded in a town where quests are found on the village notice board and nobody seems particularly concerned that I fell out of the sky. I asked a local how often this happens. He shrugged and said, “not often, maybe once or twice a season”. Then he wandered off like it was the most normal thing in the world. Now, I know what you’re thinking, how am I sending this letter? Enter Grimbold, an ancient, perpetually grumpy wizard who has graciously agreed to let me rent a room in his tower in exchange for me doing some odd jobs (which mostly means doing things he is too old for or can’t be bothered to do). The room comes with a bed, a window and an occasional reality shift. Grimbold isn’t exactly a conversationalist. He has, however, provided me with one vaguely useful service: a way to send letters back home. No promises they’ll arrive in the right place, or even in the right century, but hey, it’s something. SO, if anyone back home happens to receive this letter and knows how to un-portal me, do let me know. In the meantime, here I am with no battery on my phone, no money to my name and no clue what I’m doing, trying to survive small town gossip; questionable denizens and the sheer force of my own confusion. Yours questionably, Frankie Goodwyn