Keystone

I was sipping coffee, watching the snow falling gently, when the tap-tap-tap on the sliding door made me look up. There was a drone. "Well, that's a new one," I thought, watching it bob up and down. I put down my coffee and walked over, and it dipped towards my covered WELCOME mat. The blades swept snow away, and it neatly deposited a little box on the partially uncovered C.

It whirred away when I opened the door. I picked up a little box covered with brown paper. No address. No markings of any kind. A few snowflakes blew in on a tiny breath of wind.

Of course I immediately thought of my boyfriend. He's as geeky and tech-oriented as they come. If a drone's delivering something, it's most likely one of his gaming buddies doing something. I texted him, even though he was just upstairs. I knew the headphones would be on. "A drone just delivered your package, it's on the table."

He didn't answer. Later, he came downstairs with a puzzled look on his face. "Um, I'm not expecting anything. No one's messaged me."

I waved a hand at the table. I was munching my lunch, and a good sandwich is important. "Mmph, rher eh zzz. Iv it."

"What?"

I swallowed. Tried again. "Well, there it is. Have at."

He picked up the little cube, turned it over. No markings, just plain brown paper and packing tape. I jerked my thumb at the scissors in the mug; the other hand was still busily shoveling sliced turkey and fresh lettuce and sliced tomato and Cooper cheese and mayo into my gaping maw. A second identical sandwich was sitting there for him as well, but I would likely have to point it out as blatantly as I did the scissors. My snuggle bunny is rather lacking in the obvious department.

Two layers of paper, splotched with wet snow, gave way to a plain brown cardboard box. No other markings; he checked by turning it over and over.

He looked at me. I shrugged. "What is it?"

The flap lifted easily. He squinted, and pulled out a skeleton key. Nothing else.

I raised my eyebrows. "Starting a new campaign? Looks like you finally got a dungeon master with a sense of imagination."

He shook his head at me. He looked genuinely confused, but, as I mentioned, lunch is important. So I reached out my hand for the key, and took the opportunity to point him to the sandwich under his nose. While he ate, I grabbed my magnifying visor and checked the wrapping, the box, the key. Nothing. No faint messages.

I grabbed my black light. Look, when you're a rock hound, you have some strange tools. But the dark purple light gave me no further information either. So much for invisible ink.

"Welp, I'm giving up." I gently tossed the key on the table. "Unless you poke your gamer friends, this is a dead end. Our house is old, but not old enough for a skeleton lock to fit this into."

"Didn't you get a bunch of skeleton keys from your grandfather?"

"Yep. But he didn't give me the locks, they were still attached to a bunch of doors he collected. My cousins claimed the doors when we divvied up the estate, and wouldn't let me have even one. So I didn't tell them that I had the keys. Too bad for them."

He snorted through a mouthful of sandwich.

***************

The next morning, after much time wrestling with an older snowblower, I thought of it again while we were enjoying a hot cocoa to warm up.

"Any luck about the key?"

"Nope. I asked last night. All of them said they didn't send a thing."

"Do they even know where we live, all the way out here?"

"They could figure it out. It's not that hard. Some of the other guilds have been swatted, it's unlikely, but not impossible." I must have looked alarmed, because he hastened to reassure me. "We're not jerks when we game. And Trey is the loudest of us, deliberately, to take the heat if it does happen. His contacts will make them wish they never tried."

"Well, I hope-"

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Snuggle bunnies look cute when they stand with their mouths open.

I just shrugged and walked to the door. Another package landed neatly in my hands, and it bobbed and flew off. In a different direction, I noted.

He came up behind me, staring at the second package in my hand as I closed the door with the other. "Uh, Hon, I don't like this. At all. Someone is stalking us."

I blinked at him. I blinked at the box. Plain parcel, wrapped in brown paper.

He pointed to the closed door. "There was a camera. Someone is watching us."

"But, it went away..." I trailed off uncertainly. The box looked so innocent, sitting in my palm.

I took it to the table, stared at it while he closed all the curtains. Big, thick, heavy ones, that we usually only drew shut when it got cold. We were out in the back of nowhere. I'd felt safe. Why would we ever need to close curtains?

Drones. With cameras. Shudder.

When he came back, I got the scissors. This one opened to a scroll, tied with a ribbon. Real parchment, by the way, not paper made to look like it. I've done enough odd crafts over the years; calligraphy was an early pursuit. I unrolled it - a map, of course. "Are you entirely sure this isn't one of your D&D buds? This has Adventure written all over it."

We looked at the map. Dots, lines, squiggles. "Well, okay, not literally, sorry."

He glared at me. "This isn't funny!"

"Look, I'm with you. It's a little creepy. It's also been harmless so far. This more has the hallmarks of one of our friends trying to have some fun, rather than a creeper. Let's both check in with our friends and see if anyone else is getting these. In the meantime, where does this map lead? There are no dimensions, just vees and two exes and some bumps and dashed lines. Can you figure out a semblance of distance? Scale?"

"I'm on it." He whisked the map away to his lair, which contained the Computer of All Knowing. I group texted my friends from my smart phone. His buddies were way more into these kinds of things than mine.

A chorus of "no's" trickled in. I figured as such.

I knew better to try to drag Snuggle Bun away from the Screen of Pixels, so I took a sandwich up to him. I was pleased to see it had been eaten by the time I dragged him down for dinner. Homemade soup and conversation is important, too.

He muttered between slurps. "Can't tell if vees are mountains or not, or if the upside down U's are. The dashes? Miles, furlongs, ells? I tried to shrink the town map to overlay, didn't work."

He'd brought the map down with him, clutched in his hand. I love my obsessive geek. I had pried it loose to get him to grip the spoon instead. Something looked oddly familiar, but I couldn't place it. When things like that happen, I just let them percolate in the brain case. They pop up eventually. BunBun can't deal with that method, so he hyper-focuses and tackles it head on. "Well, I know this will break your heart, but we'll have to put it aside for the night. Did you even work today?"

"Um, a little. I should do more, though."

"Then get to work, put in some concentrated thought into the stuff that brings in a paycheck. We'll probably get another package in the morning, and then it's the weekend, we can obsess all we like."

He wandered back upstairs after dinner, and I did the dishes.

He's adorable some days. Distractable, but adorable.

******************

Next day, next delivery. This one was envelope-sized, still in the same brown packaging.

And as I closed the door, my annoying nerd of a boyfriend rushed up with a homemade net, trying to take it out of the sky.

I slapped it away, seriously irritated. "Look, I get it. Yes, it's a bit unnerving, but maybe try to solve this mystery instead of turning someone else's many-thousands-of-dollars machine with all the bells and whistles into a mashed-up lawn ornament? Hunh?"

He had the grace to look ashamed, but not enough to quell his muttered "They're only worth in the high hundreds..."

"Oh, knock it off. Let's see what this envelope contains. Let's see if we can crack this, okay? Instead of assuming the worst?" I stomped over to the table, and he followed a bit sheepishly

I reached for the letter opener. A few moments' work, and a paper full of symbols slid out.

L G F U H D R C V J J K K O H D R C K I H U O K H X F T Y G O L B V G F Y T S D T U I U B V K F D T J L K J M H C S D H I U U U K V C G F F G P K J X S W T D F U B J K M L O P O U I S R T Y T I H P J O P J P G J F T Y D R U U O I I O H I O H D E R U O O P I H J P O P J P P T S D D H L A D Z W H D K S Y Q C H K D F L G U F O I J G P T U O F P I T F F O F O O P F

My Snuggle Bunny is a good code breaker - he barely glanced at it and shrugged. "It's gibberish. Whoever wrote it, just mashed out letters on a standard keyboard."

I usually fiddle with something when I'm concentrating, so I grabbed a pen and started clicking it. Luckily he's used to such things, and can ignore them. "Why give a key with no lock? A map with no references? A puzzle with no solution? That makes no sense."

He suddenly smiled, and reached over, and took the pen out of my hands. I was about to get upset, when he pointed. "Oh, sorry." I hadn't picked up a pen, I'd picked up the black light flashlight by mistake. It looks like a thick pen though. It's fun to flash over agates and calcites, including my teeth. But this time he flashed it over the cypher, and then the map -

The secret message glowed clearly: ADVENTURE BEGINS AT YOUR DOORSTEP was written sideways on the cypher. On the map, each symbol was labeled: the upside-down vees were TREEs, the upside-down U's were ROCKs, one X was labeled START and the other FINISH. Even the dashes were labeled PATH -> THIS WAY.

I shook my head. "Hunh. I checked the key, not the paper."

BunBun picked up the map and walked to the front door and opened it. Suddenly the map was clear - we were standing on the starting X, and all the trees and rocks were in our front yard. The driveway was the path.

I reached for my boots and coat. He blocked me with a worried look on his face. "What if it's a trap?"

I just stared at him. "Of what? It's not even at the end of the property, it's halfway down the driveway at the bend. Where we decided not to move that giant boulder? What kind of ambush do you expect?"

"Well, what if they're trying to lure us out of the house?"

"Seriously? If whoever wanted to do us violence, they could have attached a gun to the drone. So far, this has all the earmarks of a treasure hunt, not a death dungeon. I think you've been on too many quests and it's made you a bit paranoid. You have no enemies, I certainly don't, and we have nothing of value besides the house itself."

He still looked undecided. "Well, I do have a sweet gaming setup..."

I snorted. "And though I'm a jeweler, everyone knows I work in silver and semi-precious stones, and don't work with gold and high-end gems unless paid up front. I love you dearly, but you're my Snuggle Bunny, not a scaredy-cat. Let's see what this is about. Oh, and bring the key."

I still had to remind him to put on a coat, hat, and scarf. And gloves.

It was a beautiful day. I was glad to be out in it - sparkly but not blinding, cold but not bitter. And our snow removal yesterday made for solid walking down our driveway while colorful birds gathered at the feeder I'd set up near the porch.

Though my BunBun still looked about nervously, we strolled to the bend, and the huge boulder that the path snaked around. It had been dropped by a retreating glacier long ago, and we'd decided that we wouldn't mess with Mother Nature's landscaping service.

Not even the snow could hide the trunk-sized box nestled against the far side of the rock. It was surprisingly light for a treasure chest. I grabbed one handle, and he grabbed the other. We took it to the road, brushed it off, then ported it back up the slope to the porch.

He stared at for so long that I finally nudged his arm. "You have the key, remember?" He jumped a little, then pulled the key out of his pocket, fitted it into the lock, turned it.

The lock clicked. He pushed on the lid, and it opened.

The box was empty - oh, wait, no, I pointed to a little brown-paper-wrapped box in the far corner. I held the lid while he leaned in and grabbed it.

The wrapping on this one was just folded around the box, not taped, so it came apart in one sheet. The little box opened to a pretty ring resting on white velvet. The cabochon was oval, and looked rather plain, a gray-brown-sandy speckled thing. It was set well in a silver band with a pretty stamped pattern.

He pulled out the ring, tilted it in the light. The pattern had been darkened to show it off. "This kind of looks like your work."

"Yeah, kinda. I guess."

He stared at the stone. "Weird looking stone, though. Why set it?"

I took the black flashlight out of my pocket. I had a suspicion we might need it. I shined it on the cabochon, and it changed color. Neon red, neon green, neon yellow-orange, and a black that looked like it glowed, completely transformed the gem into an array of color. "Ah, it's franklinite. Looks like nothing under normal light, but under black light...well. You see."

"I do. It's amazing." He tilted it to see the dazzle of colors. "It's like a secret world, all to itself."

"Mmm-hmm." He was still holding the wrapping loosely in one hand, and didn't notice when I gently tugged it out from between his fingers. He was to engrossed in the ring to notice.

It came as a complete shock to him when I turned the black light to the wrapping, and the message flashed to life on the inside the paper.

Written in invisible ink, the writing glowed:

WILL YOU MARRY ME?

He blinked. He stared. And then a look of indignance was chased off his face by a look of wonder, then chagrin, then wry comprehension. He finally settled on that lopsided grin that made me fall in love with him, so many years ago.

"You???"

"Who else? You had me worried for a bit there, going all paranoid on me."

"But I thought-"

"Look, it's easy to pull one over on you. I didn't want that. I wanted to give you something to remind you that there's fresh air and real challenges in the real world. Oh, yeah, and a partner. Hi, remember me? The person who makes your meals?"

"But, how? Who?"

"Your gaming buddies just about fell over themselves to help me set this up. Trey has contacts, remember?" I waved at the air, and the drone was there, bobbing in return. "I think he was able to get good film of the walk."

"You - I - I mean -"

"Hon. Yes or no?" I put a mittened hand on his cheek.

He smiled again, that lopsided one. It makes my heart melt. He took off one mitten (and promptly dropped it), and put the ring on his finger. It fit perfectly, like I knew it would. I knew his hands very well.

"Yes," he breathed.

And then he kissed me.