A Bit o'Play

Dear Brother,

Havin' returned from weekly shoppin'...

Naah, let's go a bit more imaginative than weekly — Cummon! I needs t'cut loose, after all that bleepin' work.

Dear Brother,

Havin' returned from the monthly drive...

Betterrr.

...monthly cart ride along the river road, the engineers' road, to the landing and Harry's General Store for provisions, I take these moments while tea's a'simmerin' to Hail You, to scribble this greeting you likely shall not read 'til spring breakup, when the river again is ice-free, and Ol' Prosperity, the mail steamer, can steam. Hello.

Harry wore his Saturday shirt, though it is Monday. In every other way, Harry remains Harry. Will likely go broke extending credit to settler and forty-niner alike, the kind ol' soul. He took it in fair trade, my thirty pelts, all manner of furry critter, from fearsome marten to vicious gnu, for flour and sugar, blackpowder and shot, for miso, and mojito mix.

Harry's a saint, a'right, and well deserving of Ingrid, as you pointed out to them envyin' naysayers, you surely recall. Harry won her fair, and Ingrid woulda brooked no other, so I'd have called it as you did, a match. She remains as fine, and a dead ringer for the corset gal in the Eaton's catalogue. There weren't a dry eye when Captain Mack, from Prosperity, married the pair of 'em on Steamer Beach just before the ice came.

And this, too. As I mounted the cart for going, Harry sent out his Ingrid, in her swirling apron, to catch me. Smiling on me and fixing me in her bright eye, she put in my hand a butcher's packet of chilled kangaroo, just arrived from the other end of the world. "A sampler", she said: for my adventurous palette. Aye, Brother, Harry and Ingrid are good people.

Is city life agreeable with you? How ARE you? I ask this with utmost concern and sincerity, not as newfangled smalltalk. In your letter of June 21st last (received, at last, November 12th), you mentioned political corruption, rampant, if unsurprising, and impending influenza. I hope you have remembered your unsophisticated brother's cautionings at your goin'away, and secured yourself both a reliable stock of garlic tablets and a hazmat suit. Regarding the political corruption, rampant, if unsurprising, I agree: mocking laughter sometimes our only recourse, perhaps.

Brother, my tea has stewed nicely. Perhaps I shall add to this, as this missive ain't goin' anywhere soon. Or, perhaps I shall afix missive to missile, to firework stuck in the sand of Steamer Beach, once I've worked out the guidance software. Aye, am perhaps becoming a mite silly. And yet, am glad at last I could play a little.

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That was fun! It's been non-stop busy at work, y'see.