ILLUVATAR. ( @theenigmaticadvisor. )
Say what you will about London’s governance, there is one thing that everyone, regardless of political affiliation, can agree on: the postal service does a damn fine job. This fact is particularly salient, because one intrepid member of said office was swimming away from Oliver, having just delivered a crisp white envelope to him, despite the fact that he is drifting a not inconsiderable distance below the surface of the stolen river.
The envelope itself is coated in a stiff wax, an interesting alternative to reaching a drownie, the more standard option being, of course, patiently waiting for them to return to shore. But, upon turning the envelope over the entire scenario makes a great deal more sense; in piercing blue ink is written Oliver, the handwriting clearly that of his mentor, Illuvatar. Inside is a small, again wax coated, card, it read
Oliver,
It has been too long since we’ve met. Would you care to join me for a dinner and discussion? I would be positively thrilled to have you, and if the wine is good enough perhaps we could even exchange some poetry. I will await you in my yacht at Wolfstack.
Yours,
Illuvatar
A letter? For him?
How novel! How strange! How utterly delightful! Ordinarily, such correspondences would be stuffed into the drafty slot beneath the door in his attic home, there to wait, or be carried away by one of the many felines that have taken up residence with him. There’s no telling, truly, just how many letters have gone astray in just such a manner; he doesn’t begrudge the cats that, certainly not, though he knows them more than clever enough to know what they’re doing. He likes to think they behave in a manner according to their beliefs of what is in his best interests; but then, they are cats. Perhaps his trust in them might be ill-placed.
But still! How good of the postal worker to go to all this trouble, slogging into the river to find him; he thanks the person with a wave, a smile that seems to startle the poor worker for some reason, and some sea glass that has found its way into the bed of the river. He takes to the surface, then, though the air feels wrong in his lungs, too dry, and it makes him cough, makes him heave; though the wax coating makes it quite possible to keep the letter undamaged in the water, nothing that gives off light, down there, is anything that he wishes to be near.
Instead, he sits on the dock, sopping wet, dripping water onto the wax-coated surface as he skims the invitation; dinner! Discussion! Wine, poetry! An evening more than promising enough to coax him from the water’s edge. There’s a diving suit waiting for him, waiting for a bit of the river to come with him, and, in as short of order as he can manage, Ollie has set off. Perhaps, should he retire early – though such a thing is rare when he meets with Illuvatar – he might even catch Miss Liza on the docks. It is always such a joy to find her there.
It is not quite evening when he arrives, a bottle of wine in hand; though the other had made no allusions to the fact that anything of the sort should be expected of him, there had been such a sweet – and incredibly insistent – merchant along the way, and oh, it hadn’t done him any harm to part with a small few trinkets, anyway.
He knocks, and sloshes, and announces himself at the door with a quite friendly sounding burble.
I look at you and I know what Van Gogh meant when he wanted to feel yellow inside"