Reading the Dice

Story 3: Whimsy Writes a Letter

Dice Roll: phone, airplane, wand, fish, magnet, arrow, key, turtle, letter

One day, as Whimsy the turtle sat in her plush rocking chair, knitting a new scarf, she realized it had been a long time since she'd spoke with her friend, Frieda the fish. Putting aside her needles and yarn, she grabbed her phone and dialed Frieda's number. The phone made no sound—it was dead.

Whimsy sighed and grabbed her magic wand, thinking through the spells she'd learned from Madam Whisper Feathers so far: lighting candles, opening locks, levitating blocks, rolling yarn, stirring soup... nothing for fixing broken phones.

Well, if she couldn't call Frieda, she'd do the next best thing—she'd write her friend a letter.

Whimsy got up from her chair and went over to her desk. Digging through the drawers, she found bright, colorful pens and fun stationary with pictures of mermaids. Then, she sat at her desk and wrote her letter.

Just as she was sealing the envelope shut, she heard the mail truck go by. Alarmed that she'd missed the mailman, she quickly stuck the stamp on the corner of the envelope and ran out the door.

"Wait! Wait! Wait!" Whimsy called, but the mailman couldn't hear her over the sound of his truck. She hurried to her shed, throwing open the door, and grabbed her bow and arrows. Tying the letter to an arrow, she took careful aim at the truck and let the arrow fly.

The arrow embedded itself into the back bumper of the truck. Whimsy nodded in satisfaction, carefully putting her bow back away in the shed and heading inside. She knew the mailman would find her letter once he got back to the post office.

At the post office, the mailman found the arrow with the letter and, after untying the envelope from the arrow, carefully stowed the letter in his bag. Whistling, he went inside, where he dumped out his bag and sorted all the letters, putting them in different piles for different destinations. After all the letters were sorted, he put the piles into different bags and placed them in the bins awaiting delivery.

Whistling, he took one bag and walked back out of the post office, heading for the hangar. Tossing the sack into the space behind his seat, he jumped into the plane and took off on his way to deliver the mail.

His last stop was a little island in the middle of the ocean. On the island, there was a big pond, where a big family of brightly-colored koi lived. The mailman carried his almost-empty sack of mail over to the pond and knelt down at the water's edge.

Using a magnet on a rope, he retrieved the koi family's row of mailboxes from beside their houses under the water. With his special mailman's key, he unlocked each mailbox and carefully deposited each fish's mail. Once the mail was safely stowed in the boxes, he locked them once more and carefully lowered them into the water, then opened his hands and let the row of mailboxes slowly sink back down to the bottom of the pond.

Frieda was so excited to get a letter from her friend, Whimsy, she did flips and jumps high into the air above the pond, spitting water out her mouth as she arched and dove back under the water, laughing happily. Finally, she read the letter twice more, then hurried to her desk to write back.