Ever been mailed a fruit?
The thing was so plastered with postage stamps, I could hardly tell what it was (would your first guess have been “someone must’ve mailed me a fruit”?) They overlapped and were curling up in places, like the scales of a molting dragon, or the sun-blistered shingles of an old weathered house, or any number of those old sayings about when there is way too much postage stuck on a fruit. I was intrigued; “something fancy about a fruit y’gotta unwrap twice,” I thought to myself, and got to work peeling stamps.
My effort revealed something that was definitely a citrus, but not one I’ve seen before or since. Kind of like an orange lime about the size of a grapefruit. Underneath the very last stamp was a pull tab? Like on a soda can? So then I opened? The fruit? The fruit opened, anyway, with a light effervescent puff, and fell into ten perfect segments; the very Artifact I had been searching for stood in the middle like the stamens of this mystery citrus snailmail sodacan fruit wedge flower. I plucked them to safety, and pondered what to do with the wedges. I only have one friend who might know what fruit this is, but I would have to… well, I’d have to mail it to her.
It’s in the freezer for now, but not before I harvested a few of its seeds. I think I’ll plant them.
I made a pair of earrings to commemorate the occasion:
you can buy these earrings here!