The Letter Carriers Guild headquarters took up half of a Kylson city block with a pointed roof of thick lumber and black shingles. Even in this Renaissance fair world I’d been reincarnated into, the building carried the feel of a corporate headquarters just. . . within the shell of Jorrvaskr.

Messengers with wagons were directed to the east side of the building where the ground sloped toward the headquarters, and three manual cranes with pulleys could be used to offload crates of parchments and small packages.

The west side of the headquarters saw most of the foot traffic as guild supporters and other customers entered and exited through a single pair of humongous brass doors. The image of a large rolled scroll secured with string had been carved into each door with the words “Letter Carriers Guild” — Kylson Branch” written into a long narrow sign posted above.

We stood there for a moment as I watched a shellback and his partner work the tired but sturdy ropes of their crane to lift a crate of mail from a newcomer’s wagon.

After I’d had my fill of observing the manual labor, Juno shouldered me and said, “So. . . you don’t know anything else about this Luck Lion?”

My mind reeled back in like a fishing pole as I turned my attention to the messenger.

“Um, no, not really. Opha didn’t mention her. And as it’s still my first official day as a Bunny Goddess, I don’t have experience with. . . any of this. I kind of just have to take Z at her word.”

Juno started to lead me around the loading docks toward the rear side of the building where a drop gate had been raised. A thick iron door stood behind where the gate would naturally fall if left to gravity’s whims. I assumed they lowered it at night.

She banged on the door three quick times, and a slat opened with a man’s brown eyes immediately burning into Juno’s. But my companion didn’t even flinch.

“Juno Heelix, seventh-year messenger for the Letter Carriers Guild out of Dayville,” she said, holding up her badge.

The man grunted and opened the door, but not before unlocking three separate grinding metal latches on his side. The screech of grating iron was enough to drive my giant ears back behind my head as I grabbed the tips and held on tight, grinding my teeth and thumping my left foot hard into the street.

Noticing this, Juno started to rub my shoulders.

“Hey, you’re fine. I know it’s loud. I’m sorry,” she said as I thumped my left foot twice more in frustration.

Oil your fucking locks! I thought. I know WD-50 probably doesn’t exist in this world, but you damn sure have something that could fix that!

When the door opened, I did my best to shake off the auditory ice pick to my brain and stepped inside behind Juno.

“And who is this?” the man asked, raising an eyebrow.

“My aspiring apprentice letter carrier,” Juno said, losing none of her bubbly charm. “I’m taking her straight to see the branch manager.”

The guy chuckled.

“Good luck, Ms. Heelix. Vinold’s been in a downright bitchy mood today.”

That didn’t exactly inspire hope in me.

Juno put her hands on her hips.

“He wake up on the wrong side of the cot this morning? When I was here a few weeks ago, the Kylson branch was doing great. Guild memberships and deliveries were both up by eight percent.”

The man crossed his arms after locking the door again and grunting.

“The branch workers took a vote last week to send formal notice to Vinold of our grievances. We’re working harder than ever, but he hasn’t expanded the facility staff by nearly enough people. He gave us some bullshit claim about not wanting to grow the branch worker totals by too much without knowing if our current increase in deliveries was sustainable. There’s been a lot of grumbling these last few days. And he seems ready to explode.”

My ears drooped hearing this.

Fantastic, I thought. We just walked into a labor dispute.

“Well, I’ll just have to win him over with my signature charm, then,” Juno said. “Thanks for filling me in.”

The doorman smiled and seemed to lose a degree of grumpiness talking to my partner.

“Yeah. . . of course. Good luck, lady. I hope your rabbit gets to apprentice like she wants. Going through it is a rite of passage for any letter carrier,” he said.

Juno waved, and I followed her into a large warehouse-looking space divided into three sections. One section contained a large bay door where the cranes brought up crates of mail that were then loaded onto rolling carts and pushed further into the workspace.

Another section consisted of long tables and stools where piles and piles of papers and folders sat organized into neat stackings, waiting to be looked over, stamped, and handed off to managers.

The final section consisted of sorters who took opened crates of mail, levitated the contents, quickly scanned their markings for destinations, and then piled them into large sections of smooth stone floor sectioned off by tape of many different colors.

“What do the different colors of tape mean?” I asked Juno.

Her eyes lit up as she grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the sorting section.

“We really do think alike. I think the sorting is the coolest part of each branch,” Juno said. “The large squares of taped-off sections in the floor are divided by cities. Each tape color represents a different city. See the red tape over there?” she asked, pointing.

I nodded. It seemed to hold the most mail, small boxes, envelopes, and wrapped scrolls piled well over my head, even past the tips of my ears.

“The red tape is Kylson’s mail. All inbound parcels from other cities go into that pile. The blue tape next to it represents a city called Uvira. The purple tape in the corner marks a space for a town called Delport. And the sorters take care of all of it,” Juno explained.

Five sorters worked through entire crates of mail, keeping the levitated parcels from colliding. The person closest to us sat in a wheelchair, one leg missing from the knee down. Her black hair was cut short, and she wore a set of glasses with crystal lenses. Her arms were covered by the long sleeves of an olive shirt that stopped just short of her wrists, where a pair of gold bangles glowed with magical light.

The bangles clung tightly to her brown skin.

I watched her carefully lift the mail by moving her arms and rotating different pieces to see the address labels more clearly. Then, after a few seconds, she sent the mail over to an adjacent pile with the flick of her fingers. The sorter had her nails painted white, and I could only stand in awe at her unbroken focus while she worked.

All the sorters bore similar looks of deep concentration, beads of sweat running down their foreheads and cheeks.

Without warning, we heard the clanging of a large bell in the rafters of the warehouse.

The woman we’d been watching sighed, placed unsorted items back into a crate, and wheeled her chair off the sorting floor.

She caught my eyes, and I waved my arms, stammering, feeling awkwardness balloon in my chest.

“Uh, sorry! I wasn’t staring at you. I mean — I was. But it was only to watch you work. Because I was amazed. I’ve never seen anything like this before,” I said before more words leaked out from my mouth in a panic. “And by THIS, I mean using magic to sort packages and papers. That’s entirely new to me. But I’ve worked with plenty of workers who have a disability. That’s not new and not what I was talking about at all, I swear.”

The sorter burst out laughing as Juno patted me on the back. She raised one of the bangles over to a cup of water perched on a shelf, and it floated over to her without spilling a single drop.

After she drained the cup, the sorter levitated it back and wheeled over to Juno and me.

“Uh, hi. My name’s Tilda. Sorry about being weird,” I said. “Magic in the workplace is new for me.”

Juno kept patting me on the back.

“I’m Juno, one of the messengers passing through. My friend here was hoping to get a badge and start her apprenticeship with the guild. So, I’m giving her the tour. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone sort as quickly as you.”

Five new sorters were walking onto the floor now with their own crystal glasses and bangles, picking up where the previous shift left off.

“Nice to meet you both. You can call me Ximena. Ninth-year sorter here at the Kylson branch. You’ve not worked with magic before?” she asked, eyeing me.

I shook my head.

“I’m used to delivering my mail by hand in a truck— I mean cart,” I said, quickly correcting myself.

Xinema nodded, taking off the glasses, her brown eyes looking me over as if for the first time. The sorter seemed like she wanted to ask about my being a bunny. It was a stare I was learning to spot more and more in people. The man who served us at the bakery earlier had the same curious glance, like, having never seen a Lucky Bunny before, he had curiosities but didn’t want to express them.

I wondered if that was a Kylson thing or if everyone in Fevara was like that.

Back in Bartlesville, nosiness was a way of life. Before you had your lunch, you’d heard at least three pieces of gossip about three people you’d known since you were a child playing in their backyard.

I briefly worked with a mail carrier from Vermont who told me folks where he came from didn’t give a shit about your personal business. That always sounded refreshing to me.

“So you’re hoping to apprentice as a traveling messenger, then?” Ximena asked.

I nodded.

Juno pointed over toward the tables where a few hootwings sat sorting through papers.

“I’m gonna run over and submit my delivery logs to the coinkeepers. Be right back,” Juno said, leaving Ximena and I.

Looking back to the floating parcels again, I couldn’t help but come up with a thousand different questions. But the most pressing one came down to address forms.

“How do you know where each parcel goes when the letters float in the air 10-12 feet over your head?” I asked.

Ximena grinned and scratched her bangs before answering.

“The crystal lenses scan and pull down the markings on each address label so they’re right in front of my eyes. They also give my vision a. . . I guess you’d call it a speed boost so I can read two or even three times faster than normal to sort. It’s a cool feeling, but some nights I go home feeling like my mind is a bowl of squished bananas.”

That first part sounded amazing. Everything Foogle Glass was supposed to be without looking dorky and awful.

“Do you want to try them out?” Ximena asked.

“Can I?” I gasped.

She smiled and handed me her pair. I slid them on easily enough, but without ears on the side of my head for the arms to rest on, I had to hold the glasses in place with each hand.

As the magic acclimated to my height and mind, I felt an uncomfortable static wash over my eyes, my eyelashes and brows immediately itchy and standing straight.

I clenched the glasses tightly until things calmed down. And then I felt that magic seep further into my mind, letters swirling around my lobe in a tempest of buzzing energy. Street. Field. Barn. Third Level. Station Five. Boulevard. Palace. 354, 76, 2, 245, 78, and more numbers quickly followed.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Addresses, I thought. These are pieces of addresses like chunks of a puzzle flying around in my mind.

When the dust of the magic settled, I dared to look over at one of the floating boxes the size of a VHS tape back in my world. It was wrapped tightly in brown paper and string with a label on one of the longer sides.

Before I could squint, the glasses brought each written letter and number to life as an easy-to-read yellow light. They darted down from the box 10 feet above me, landing softly right in front of my face in a neat line.

“Bivold Simeon II, 89 First Blunt Street, Kylson,” I whispered.

My eyes darted over to an envelope even further away, the crystal frames peeling off each letter and number on the label as yellow light and bringing them down enlarged in front of my face.

“Julienne Grace, 354 Apple Lane, Dayville, Tuzania,” I said.

Hungry for more, I read even faster, scanning the names and addresses on each floating parcel no matter how far away they were from me. Ten feet, 50 feet, it didn’t matter. The crystal frames pulled them over to me and enlarged the text all the same.

Excitedly, I glanced over at Juno, hoping she was back and ready to see how awesome this was. She stood halfway between the coinkeepers’ table and Ximena, staring down at a faded blue envelope.

I cocked my head to the side. Her smile had deflated, and my partner seemed rather bummed, chin tucked into the collar of her shirt. Juno wasn’t crying by any means, but the messenger looked more morose than I’d seen her since arriving in Fevara.

The way her eyes stared down at the envelope she clutched tightly in her hand, I wanted to wander over and ask if she was okay.

With a deep sigh, my companion flipped over the envelope to dust off the front side, and my glasses pulled the address over to my face.

“Pierre Heelix, 15 Hillside Road, Dayville, Tuzania,” I mumbled.

Oh shit! I thought. That sounds like a man related to her and something I definitely don’t need to be snooping on.

Turning back to the hovering parcels, I continued to glance at more labels.

“Sophia Turner,” I read. But the box rotated and was placed over in the section of flooring marked with red tape before I could finish the address. Inside, I felt a little bummed that I’d missed one before realizing this wasn’t my job.

Ximena was snickering behind me.

“It feels a bit like a game, doesn’t it?” she asked as I handed her the crystal glasses and felt a little exhaustion in the front half of my mind. Suddenly, I could understand how she might go home feeling like her brain was a bowl of smushed bananas at the end of the night. Did they have Sadvil in Fevara?

Rubbing my temples, I groaned.

“I just. . . kept wanting to read more and more labels,” I said.

Ximena slid the glasses into a bag attached to the back of her wheelchair.

“That’s what gets me through each shift,” she said.

Scratching my head, I asked, “How come some addresses have nations after the city name, like Tuzania for Dayville, but Kylson addresses don’t?”

As she stared at me, Ximena asked, “Is this your first time visiting Kylson?”

I nodded.

“Oh, that makes more sense. You must not travel much, huh?” Ximena asked.

What could I say? I was more of a homebody who never felt like he. . . I mean. . . she? I was a she back then, too, right? Anyway, I never felt like I could leave Bartlesville. My father gave me a weird look when I brought up driving down across the border into Mexico for a weekend music festival.

“Why?” he asked loudly in the living room, giving me the most confused stare. That was all it took to make sure I stayed close to home for the rest of my life.

Clearing my throat, I said, “Yeah, I’ve always been a homebody. I’m trying to change that up with this new career.”

Ximena looked around the building before her eyes returned to me.

“Well, you’ve made a good choice. Oh, and to answer your question, Kylson is a city-state. It belongs to no nation,” she said.

Right about this time, Juno returned with a leather bag of jingling coins.

“Payday! We’ll be getting a good room at the Singing Swan tonight,” she said, excitedly.

I had to wonder if she’d plastered this smile on after that utterly depressing glance she’d given the old envelope, or if this excitement was genuine. It didn’t quite feel like she was back to her old self yet.

“That sounds great, Juno,” I nodded.

We said goodbye to Ximena and walked past a couple of women pushing a new crate of parcels over to the sorting area. They nodded at us and kept moving their boxes forward.

Juno led me past the coinkeeper tables. Most of the remaining coinkeepers were putting away their paperwork and currency sets, standing up and stretching, probably for the first time in hours.

I tried hard not to think about Juno’s mysterious letter. . . and failed.

Who was she trying to mail that to? I thought. A father? An uncle? A sick granddad?

“It sounds like the branch manager is a little testy today, so let me do the talking, okay?”

Not talking? That was easy. I’d had so much practice back in the other world.

We arrived at an office in the corner of the warehouse. Juno knocked on the door, and a grunt on the other side seemed our cue to enter.

She took a deep breath and nodded at me before opening the door.

A heavyset man with thinning brown hair and tiny glasses perched on his nose hunched over a wooden desk. A stiff metal chair stood behind the man, but he appeared to be in the middle of some kind of report or stats, bent forward, his gut meeting the desk’s edge.

Behind the man on the wall, a cuckoo clock ticked away, showing it was probably time for this branch manager to call it quits for the day.

His black coat waited on a hook behind the door.

Paintings of the man’s family hung just under the window letting in sunset light of oranges and pinks.

“What do you need?” the man asked, loosening his tie and rolling up the sleeves of his gray button-down shirt to reveal splotchy egg-colored skin.

He didn’t look away from his reports, which upon closer inspection were shipping manifests by total volume. There were notations for (wo)manhours worked, number of mail by tonnes, popular destinations, and more across a three-month spread.

“Hello, Vinold. I’m not sure if you remember me. I’m Juno Heelix, one of the carriers who passed through a few weeks ago. I brought in that rare wine set from Nimbletread that everyone had to ogle.”

The man stayed glued to his report.

“That’s fascinating, Ms. Heelix. But I think you’ll recall I asked what you needed, not who you were.”

Ouch, I thought. Strike one for Vinold.

Juno bulldozed right through the awkward grumpiness of the branch manager and pulled out a few rolled-up pages from one of her pockets. They were neatly bound with a nice carmine string in the center. My partner placed them on his desk and stepped back like he might bite off a finger.

It took about 30 seconds, but Vinold sighed, sat back in his chair, and slowly untied the papers Juno presented him.

His eyes darted back and forth as he skimmed the text, and then, without flipping to the next page, the branch manager tossed the papers onto his desk and shook his head.

“No can do, Ms. Heelix. Your application for Tilda’s apprenticeship under your tutelage is denied,” he said.

She paused, unsure of how to proceed.

“May I ask why?”

I felt my stomach sink. Part of me wanted to leave. If someone said no, where I came from, that was the end of the conversation. I didn’t like to push back or pursue a different answer.

Vinold took his glasses off and started to polish them with a thin cloth from a drawer by his knee.

“You may. There are two problems with your request. First, you’re a seventh-year messenger. Guild rules state you can’t take on an apprentice until you hit your tenth year in service. Second, I’ve got a hiring freeze in place here. I can’t sign off on any new apprenticeships until I’ve spent more time reviewing our most recent quarter tallies.”

Juno took a breath and proceeded undeterred.

“Sir, I know there are rules in place regarding tutelage, and we heard about your hiring freeze, but the supplemental testimony I’ve included in the back pages should shine a little more light on why I’ve made such an odd request. If you’d just give them a look, I’d be happy to come back tomorrow so you have more time to reconsider your decision.”

Vinold pushed Juno’s papers aside and hunched over his report again.

“You’re welcome to return any time you wish, Ms. Heelix. That’s your right as a guild member. Our branch is always open to you. But I don’t need more time or supplemental notes. I’ve made up my mind, and that’s final. Rules are rules.”

The branch manager then dared to make a “shoo, go on” gesture with his wrist, as though we were Femme Scouts being turned away after trying to sell cookies.

Strike two for Vinold, I thought, scowling.

Still, I was going to let Juno handle it. She was a pro. I’d wager she could talk anyone into doing anything. Why, if she asked me to do something, I’d do it without hesitation. My companion wouldn’t even need a speech. Just the request and that 100-megawatt smile of hers would get the job done.

“Please just hear me out,” Juno said, a fraction of her usual chipper tone phasing out, and a smidge of annoyance fading in. “Tilda here is a genuine Luck Bunny sent by Opha, the Goddess of Fate. I’ve seen her in action. She brings good fortune to those around her. And I know she’d be a great asset to the guild.”

Vinold let out a deep sigh and looked up at me, but not before removing his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

When he did look at me, his lips bunched to the side as though he’d failed to find anything that impressed him.

Fair, I thought. I used to come to the same conclusion looking in the mirror each morning.

“Look, I think I’ve been plenty considerate of this ridiculous request,” Vinold said. “I mean — you’ve been in the guild for seven years, and you’re still unprofessional enough to throw a prank like this my way?”

Juno and I exchanged a glance.

“A prank, sir?” she asked.

Vinold sighed.

“You got another carrier to disguise themselves as a giant rabbit? How much money did you waste on this? I can only assume it’s some kind of potion or an enchanted fur or skin, right? Did you think I had enough free time to waste on such a silly thing?”

I flinched, and Juno scowled, her cheery demeanor rapidly evaporating.

“I don’t waste guild time or resources on pranks. The applicant I’ve brought you is an honest-to-gods Luck Bunny that I received straight from Opha’s shrine last night. I’ve personally witnessed her weave good fortune together at a moment’s notice. And you should take such present divinity with a bit more heart, Vinold. In 150 years, Kylson has not been graced in person by a god or goddess. And here I am bringing you a literal godsend to your guild branch. So why don’t you—” she was interrupted by the branch manager who stood higher and slammed his palm on the desk so loud that my ears flattened, and workers outside the office paused to stare.

When I recovered from the loud noise, I felt nothing but anger stirring in my gut. That’s twice now in 10 minutes I’d been subjected to loud sudden noises, and I wasn’t handling it well.

Strike three, Vinold, I thought. You just struck out.

But before I could retort, he snapped at us.

“Would you listen to yourself?! Luck Bunnies? Gods of fate? Did you honestly expect me to buy any of this?” Vinold asked. “You know what I believe in, Ms. Heelix? I believe in numbers. I believe in coin. I believe that some people have so much time on their hands to waste that they’d weave together a cockamamie tale like this to get a rise out of me. Well, are you happy? Did you get what you wanted?”

He took a step around the desk and somehow grew larger advancing on us. I took in a burning breath. Juno’s eyes widened.

Vinold’s face was tomato red as he yelled.

“I honestly figured you’d put more effort into your story. With a prank this large, you went through all the trouble to rustle up a disguise like this,” he said, grabbing my arm and wiggling it furiously, as though I weren’t real. “But the god you chose to go with for this ridiculous story was. . . Opha? Really? She doesn’t even have a shrine or temple in the city. I don’t even think she’s—”

I interrupted Vinold with a furious scream, thumping my left foot so hard into his office floor that it cracked underneath the pressure. Magic roared through my body, and every hair stood on end as I turned the tables on the branch manager and advanced on him.

His eyes filled with terror as I flashed my teeth, and my aura filled the room. Actually — no, Opha’s aura filled the room. It was divine knowledge, paths of fate, and farsight pooled into powerful magic that shone with a bright silver light.

A rage like I’d never known filled me, and I started to suspect it wasn’t entirely my own. Energy greater than any I possessed channeled through me, and all the papers in the office started to swirl.

Vinold suddenly looked much smaller, pressing himself against the wall, his jaw falling to the floor (or doing the best it could to get there). The whites of his eyes were dinner plates, and his fingers clutched at the beige paint on his wall, seemingly trying to claw their way out.

The floor and walls cracked behind me as bushy green four-leaf clovers spread over every surface in a wave of manifested luck magic. Brightly-colored ladybugs exploded out of the clovers by the hundreds, crawling over Vinold’s desk and papers. And suddenly, my hand clenched a glowing silver horseshoe by one end.

Everything came to a head when I slammed that horseshoe into the desk, a mighty boom racing out of the office as the paintings shook, and the desk split right down the center with all the noise of ripping lumber.

I opened my mouth to speak, and the voice that yelled from my lips was mine and not mine. The undertone was mine, but the overtone was that of an ageless woman, a goddess.

“Vinold, Son of James, hear me now! I am Tilda Fate, servant of the Goddess Opha, Knower of Paths, Keeper of Ways. You questioned her today in my presence, and I could not let that slide. My mistress does not need a shrine in this city. She can send her servant to you at any moment to make herself known. Is that clear?”

Too busy shaking, the branch manager couldn’t answer.

“I asked you a question, mortal.”

He clenched his chest and managed a subtle nod. But no words could the man speak, for the presence of divinity shut him up.

As the silver light faded from me, and I let forth a dizzying sigh, I felt Juno grab my shoulders.

I looked around at all the four-leaf clovers and ladybugs, unsure of what to say. The horseshoe I’d manifested was still sunk into the desk.

Well, shit. I thought. That was an expensive mistake for Vinold to make.

Juno stepped forward cheerily, grabbing her paperwork, shaking off ladybugs, and digging through the desk wreckage to find a stamp.

“So, I take it Tilda Fate’s apprenticeship can begin immediately?” she asked with a big smile.

Vinold just slowly nodded, stamping the paperwork. And if his neck could make a noise, it would be that of a rusty gate hinge.

“Great! Oh, and I believe the starting guild allotment for the Kylson branch is still five jinnie silver coins, correct?”

With another slow nod, Vinold pointed to his desk wreckage. Juno reached into an exposed drawer and pulled out a coin pouch and something else I couldn’t make out. Opening the pouch, Juno made sure there were five silver coins inside and then handed it to me, along with the stamped form and a Letter Carriers Guild badge.

I just smiled staring at it.

“Tilda Fate, as your new messenger mentor, please allow me to officially welcome you to the Letter Carriers Guild!”

My cheeks exploded into an even wider smile.

Juno led me out of the office, and the other branch workers parted for us in wonder, muttering to themselves about the explosion of luck magic they’d just witnessed.

“C’mon, Juno. We should have enough time to grab dinner at the Singing Swan before tea with Governess Lynn tonight.”

My shoulders drooped, and I yawned. This day felt like a week. Still, I was excited. I’d never met a governess before or had tea in a pretty dress. I was looking forward to it.