Lyall

The Letter And The Gamekeeper

Valerie Arma was a young girl with a very strange fate.

She was almost like any other girl, yet different in every way. She grew up lonely with no siblings, and valued her friends more than anything else in the world. She was raised in Scandinavia , native to there, but she had been told she had very mixed blood from all different countries from all around the world. Her parents had taught her exactly what parents should teach their children. But she felt something missing. Almost like she was missing a puzzle piece even when the puzzle was completed.

Little did she know that that feeling was soon going to be chased away.

She woke up early for breakfast but realised it was a lie-in day that day. She headed back upstairs but stopped suddenly as she heard something. It was her cat, Oreo. She went back downstairs to take the cat into the house for some time; the heat outside around this time of the day was scorching. She smiled to herself as she heard the bell in Oreo's collar jingle. As she picked the heavy cat up her ears picked up another sound. A motorbike. At 7 A.M.? Not very common. She decided to go and check who or what it was, for the sake of it. She will never forget what she saw or what she felt at the sight of it.

A large motorbike doing something that looked like landing in the middle of the street, a long way off. The person (?) sitting in the motorbike was someone  extremely large and hairy (that was presumably what it looked like, so don't ask). The bike rumbled all the way up to her house, making no mistake in waking the entirety of her neighbourhood up. The bike, up close, and the man were like mountains moving about. She noticed the things lying in the sidecar; a crumpled map of what looked like Norway, a bright pink umbrella, a yellowish envelope, a brown sack about the size of a handbag, a magnifying glass, and some half-eaten food. The man on the motorbike stood up, crossed over to the sidecar and picked up (or meant to pick up) the envelope, but he accidentally took the map and a bit of the newspaper in which the half-eaten food was packed in, the result of using his large hands (each about the size of the seat of a cozy armchair). He grunted impatiently as he put the misplaced items back. he then peered down at Valerie through a mass of bushy and tangled (tangled is an understatement) hair.

"Er - Valerie? Valerie Arma?" he asked, looking at her and then at the envelope again and again, as though he was uncertain he had come to the right place.

"Yes?"

"Yeh're Valerie?"

"Yes,"

"Yeah - okay - I - er - are yer parents inside, Valerie?"

"Yes," she said again, slowly. "but why do you want to meet them?"

"I have a - er - proposal ter make ter them," he answered uncertainly. He looked thoroughly disconcerted by something. "D'yeh mind if I come in? The heat's hittin' me,"

"Yes - okay - come on in," she said, as though she really does invite giant men on motorcycles into her house on a regular basis.

She asked him if he wanted some water and gave it to him when he said yes. She dashed upstairs (still in her baby pink nightie that said 'Bonne Nuit' across the front) to wake up her Mrs. Arma and Mr. Arma, but Mr. Arma was wide awake and so was her mother. He had been up and about looking for her when he had seen the man through the front window, and woke Mrs. Arma up too. Apparently they hadn't heard a single word or even the motorbike itself from before. She told them about how he wanted to see them, and they went off to get dressed, the atmosphere not unfriendly but tentative.

A few minutes later, the man was finally telling them about how he came to be here when Valerie walked in.

"Ah," he said. "This is fer yeh,"