How the Email Found Me

The email has found me hanging green and scarlet baubles, bathed in the gentle glimmer of festive lights. Sweat gathers at the back of my neck as I stare resolutely ahead, trying to ignore the glint of garnet-red eyes, the rustle of clawed paper. I’ve always hated The Presence under the tree.

The email has found me learning to carve The Ice Runes. Halvard is the foreman at the Dwarven mines here, grey-skinned and dour, his missing eye replaced with a ball of quartz. If you have already completed your training in Ice Runes, please pick up your certificates from Martin.

The email has found me in the crowd gathered at the lake’s cracked lip. The summer’s been so hot it drained away to a bed of baked mud, revealing old walls and stubby gravestones like broken thumbnails. Perhaps that explains the hollow cries that echo over the water sometimes, even on bright days.

The email has found me waiting knee-deep in still water, cold to the bone, mist rising like a sentient shroud from the fen. Soon, if I’m patient, the Hall will appear. Vast and timbered, where a woman in gold sits by the light of bright torches, and weaves the clouds.

The email has found me swathed in midnight robes, a dark hymn on my lips for our profane Mass. We welcome a new brother with a prayer said backwards, a wafer dyed black upon his tongue. That reminds me, I forgot to tell Brian that two of the conference attendees are gluten free.

The email has found me dressing for the job I want: encased in a cold power suit of the new synthetic ice. I gaze implacably at the Teams meeting through my visor, hearing only the sound of my own breath and the click of biometric scanners. Mike from IT looks really freaked out.

The email has found me chiselling vast gold fangs from the mouth of the statue of Aion, each shining tooth as long as my forearm. I know it’s marked urgent Sue, but the winged god of Time will come alive when the sun sets so I’d better crack on, can you ask Graham to reschedule the coffee morning.

The email has found me staring into the microscope, hardly able to believe my luck, as I make a breakthrough translation of the symbols fossilised in ancient amber tablets the size of my thumb. They are - as I suspected! - the complex funerary rites for a long-extinct species of ant.

The email has found me welcoming all these lovely new followers! Please avoid conference room C for the time being until the clutch of man-sized amber eggs has been safely removed. Best regards.

The email has found me at the village fair, cautiously judging the vegetable competition. Mrs. Bartleby wins hands-down again this year, her HorseRadish has savagely bitten two volunteers and thrown a child from its back.

The email has found me following a trail of sherbet lemons to the crooked house, surrounded by rambling sugar roses. I slide the letter from the council under the shortbread door. Witch or no witch, at some point she’s going to have to face the music about planning permission.

The email has found me in a hidden glade, my lips pressed to the soft green foot of a forgotten patron saint of moss.

I adored that book

The email has found me dressing for the job I want: magician of the wilderness, intoxicated with gold and black Runes, made insane by the roaring language of trees, able to lift from my skin and go forth in the form of a hare. Mike from IT looks totally freaked out.

The email has found me halting the presentation as rotten stumps that were once hands thud rhythmically against the glass. So, they’ve breached the barricades. Are you sure you can’t move to another room, Tim? Alright, well would you mind popping yourself on mute for a minute.

And he’s still full of bugs!

The email has found me wandering the bronze forest on a once-desert planet. They say that before this, the Age of the Void, two starships fleeing Earth collided above this place & fell, fusing the landscape into glass. One thousand years later, the first metal trees were seen blooming from orbit.

The email has found me reaching for the rocky ledge above my head. How long we have been wandering these caves, beset by grinning monsters, I don’t know. Torchlight greedily licks the damp stone. Dom from HR has already been lost to the blades of the Iron River.

The email has found me being shown the new mining works at Shillingsalt, vaulted halls dancing with the gleam of bronze machines like the limbs of giants. The foreman seems…different somehow, distracted. A new, unsettling glow in his eyes the dull red of raw garnet.

The email has found me buying a coffee at Waterloo and discovering forgotten Plutonian change in my pocket. The pennies are rather large, as they are minted showing all three of the king’s heads.

Me, welcoming my newest follower

The email has found me tracking the thin, eerie singing to the back of the allotment, where gleaming red berries like the wink of demonic eyes are flourishing. As I suspected, a rogue crop of Dreadcurrants.

Oh @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social

The email has found me aghast at the horrors of the secretive meat pie factory on the edge of town. I recoil at the smell of burned flesh, a charred shoe dangling uselessly from my hand. That reminds me, I forgot to tell Brian that two of the conference attendees are gluten free.

The email has found me picking tiny wild strawberries in a patch of land everyone else disdains. ‘They look too small and bitter,’ they say, they don’t know that under this faerie hill, the plants put forth rubies the size of my thumbnail.

The email has found me admiring a woman’s skyscraper heels, there are thirty families living in each.

We interrupt these emails for a missive from the creator’s blog.

We say the same at home!

The email has found me at the village fair, judging the vegetable competition. Mrs. Bartleby wins again this year, her Pickled Onions are so drunk and disorderly the police van had to call for back-up. Mr Wilson says he’ll sue the lot of them, he still has vinegar in his eye.

The email has found me reminding you that Dawn’s welcome back party will be in conference room 3 at 14:00. PLEASE refrain from phrases like ‘blue-sky thinking’ or ‘straight to the top’ during her phased return as we don’t wish to trigger memories of the Event. Welcome back, Dawn!