mailing a magic letter

[marycatelli]

So working on the world and how do you send letters magically?

Without involving owls, thank you.  I send the kids to a magical school already.  So no owls.  Or doves or eagles or . . . .

I could have them sent by mailman.  Still, a magical means to send them would add to the world-building.  But eliminate winged messengers, and what other form of magic would be metaphorically suitable to transport them?

Something to brainstorm, I think.

Comments

[hibiscusrose.livejournal.com]

What about writing on special paper/parchment? Character writes their letter, chants a spell or lays a magical amulet on it or some other trigger, and the writing appears on a similarly enchanted paper elsewhere.

Or fold it intricately, similar trigger, and it pops out of existence (maybe gets smaller and smaller and smaller...poof) only to reappear in the hands of the intended recipient.

Magical letters sound very secure. Could someone intercept such a message?

[marycatelli]

Of course that would require very fixed senders and receivers.

And could you interfere with it so people could worry about late letters?

[hibiscusrose.livejournal.com]

The first would be very fixed, yes, but the second doesn't have to be; "in the hands" is more literal than I intended. People who use the second method would have a special "inbox" to receive letters.

Late letters...hmmm... Does your magic system have shields? Some sort of barrier that could prevent transmission, perhaps? Or maybe the equivalent of solar flares that glitch the system? Late implies another hand being involved though, so let me try this: spirits/elementals that carry the letters, leave them on the desk or bed or wherever, but they can be distracted or interfered with (accidentally or deliberately). Probably not affected by natural disasters like flooding or fires, but who knows? A fire elemental might find a forest fire too tempting to ignore and go off and play for a while. Or a water elemental might go a long way around one, depending on how they travel. Also possible to go to the wrong place if neither the writer nor the spirit knows the recipient has moved--that would depend on how they find the recipient ("coordinates" or search by "aura")

[marycatelli]

Much depends on how much the characters need to be able to infer from the lateness. . . .

[superversive.livejournal.com]

The enchantment for this requires matched pairs of amulets: rings for choice, since they are so compact and convenient and easy to carry about. Each pair of rings is imprinted with the essence of both parties to the correspondence. You place your ring in a hearth or brazier, prepared to receive enchantment in the usual way, and the recipient (who is expecting your letter at any moment) does the same with his. You then build the smallest fire that will sustain itself, and burn the letter in it; whereupon the vibrations of essential fire in the matched rings will call each to each, and the other party can read your letter in the flames of his own fire, or in the ashes.

N.B. If, like any civilized person, you are carrying on epistolary friendships with many other people, you will want to get a specially constructed hearth with rows of brass pegs in the firebox, so that you can receive letters from whichever of your acquaintance wishes to write to you. When sending a letter, of course, you must remove all the rings except the one intended. It is considered good manners to kindle a fire in the sunset hour and keep it alight for some two to four hours thereafter, so that all correspondence may be conducted in the evenings.

[marycatelli]

And, of course, the author has to remember to consider what absolutely safe and reliable messages will do to the world. . . .

Though I dare say you can't send a check that way, so they can still claim the check is in the mail.

[whitefangedwolf.livejournal.com]

Perhaps there's a way to pair chests so that the insides of both chests are the same place? Thus letters and small package placed in one chest can removed from the same chest or the other chest.

It would be possible to have a chest for each location they wanted to communicate with, and for certain very secure transfers it might be useful, but it might make more sense for most people to pay a fee to have the other chest held in a post office where postal workers transfer the mail on some sort of fixed schedule.

If the range where the spell works has a maximum range, one might have a chest that's paired with a chest at a near-enough post office and there's a sort of relay system of interoffice chests to transfer mail over further distances. A series of connections would have the possibility of a letter being accidentally misplaced or misrouted as well as being meddled with in transit.

[marycatelli]

A mail box!

I'm playing with an idea like this. Running on a kind of law of sympathy where the boxes are identified with each other. . .

Still got to work out the details. Powerful magic, though.

[ext-1641287.livejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

You write the letter out on a sheet of paper with the magic ink, wait for the ink to dry, then blow on it. The ink, now dried to a very fine dust, puffs off into the air.

Some time after, your correspondent takes a salt-shaker of the magic ink, in dried form, and sprinkles it on paper. It lands in the form of your writing.

Everyone concerned should use a standard letter paper, to avoid having to read bits of letter off the desktop. There are other mundane issues like running out of magic ink (and how annoying to run out half way through a letter) and wasting it on junk mail. (You can siphon it back into the salt-shaker, but it's a bother.) And if you want to keep a letter, you either copy it out mundanely or iron it with a sheet of wax paper between the letter and the iron.

Since this appears to be air magic, and since letters wait around in an aeriel state before being read, interference could come from air mages, air elementals, or even perhaps adverse weather. ("Vivian's weekly letter still hasn't come." "There have been headwinds over the Atlantic.") No one said this magic had to be robust.

Earl Wajenberg

[marycatelli]

Assisted, no doubt, by the ink being written with a quill pen -- the magic effect of feathers is naturally to make it fly.