59

You're not sure how, but now the idea has been planted, you're going to try and think of a way to get people talking the way these news articles do. You'd even write one of your own if you got the chance.

Feeling decidedly woken up by now, you start going about your usual routine—or at least what has become your routine since you arrived here.

It's only when you go downstairs, however, that something hits you that you've never thought about before: since you moved in, you haven't checked your mail once.

Rushing out the front door and through the yard, you quickly discover why the thought has never crossed your mind—your mailbox has been almost completely absorbed by a tall flower bush that's overgrown the yard wall, and you never even noticed it was there.

You open it gingerly, half expecting a swarm of moths to come shooting out—but instead you find a little stack of envelopes. Evidently, somebody knows you have a mailbox.

And as it turns out, that somebody is the Town Council. As you sort through the letters, most of which are addressed to your grandma, you eventually come across one addressed to you in slightly intimidating lettering. When you open it up, you discover it was mailed a few days ago—and also that the Town Council has, as of a few days ago, politely requested that, since your house has been unoccupied for so long, you please return a form in order to confirm it is in fact you that has arrived in Silvertree.

Oh.