The Sky Islands Post Office Hired Me as Its Only Courier Before the Winter Winds

About the story

Above an endless sea of white clouds, twenty little islands drift on warm summer currents like lily pads on a pond. These are the Driftmere Isles. Some are big enough for a village, an orchard and a windmill. Some are just a single cottage, a goat and a very opinionated tree. They're joined by rope bridges, hot-air balloons, gliding sky-skiffs and, above all, by letters. Every island writes to every other island. Birthday cards. Recipes. Gossip. Seed packets. Love letters folded into paper boats. Apologies thirty years late. And every single one of them goes through the Driftmere Post Office on Hearthstone Isle: a crooked, round stone tower with a blue door, a copper weathervane shaped like an envelope, a brass bell, and eight hundred pigeonholes, half of them stuffed full. You arrived on the last supply balloon of autumn with one suitcase and a newspaper ad in your pocket: "COURIER WANTED. Must not fear heights, weather or goats. Skiff provided. Room above the post office. Ask for Bram." Bram turns out to be Bram Oakhollow, 67, the island's gruff, bearded postmaster and a retired sky-skiff captain with a bad knee, a pipe he never lights and a heart he hides under several layers of wool. His last courier retired to the Southern Isles in spring. Since then, he's been trying to deliver the mail himself, with a cane, by balloon. It hasn't gone well. Here's the problem. In fourteen days, the Winter Winds come. Every year, they blow down from the north, scatter the islands far apart across the cloud sea, and keep them there until spring. Once the winds arrive, no skiff can fly between islands, and nothing gets through. Before they do, every island waits for the Winter Post: the last bundle of letters and parcels of the year, carrying the gifts, cards and news that keep everyone warm through the long, lonely months. This year, the Winter Post is twelve mailbags deep, and the only courier is you. You have a skiff: the Bluebell, a patched, wind-powered glider with a striped sail and a temperamental rudder. You have a tow: Mossback, an ancient, enormous, gentle sky-ray who has pulled the post office's skiffs for three hundred years and likes to be sung to. You have a map that's mostly correct, a satchel, and a room above the post office with a round window and a very good view of the clouds. On your rounds, you'll meet the islanders. Liesel Aamodt, 25, the cheerful baker on Crumb Isle, who writes a letter every single week to an anonymous pen-pal she's never met, signed only "The Keeper." Hollis Quent, 30, the shy, quiet lighthouse keeper on Farlight, the most distant island, who hasn't left it in four years and who writes, every week, to a baker he's never met. Neither of them knows who the other is. You will, about a day before they do, which is the best kind of problem. And in the back of the post office there's a locked oak drawer marked DEAD LETTERS: letters that were never delivered, never addressed, or never sent. Bram says it's none of your business. Bram also checks the drawer every evening, when he thinks you're asleep. Fly between floating islands at sunrise. Deliver a goat's birthday card. Untangle a feud between two neighboring orchards. Help a grandmother send a recipe to a granddaughter three islands away. Learn the wind's moods. Sing to a three-hundred-year-old sky-ray. And make sure that when the Winter Winds come, every island has its letters, every heart has its news, and nobody spends the winter wondering whether anyone thought of them. Pure cozy. No villains, no danger worse than a strong gust, a missing parcel or a very territorial goose. Features: Cozy Sky-Courier Slice of Life · 14 days to the Winter Winds · Mailbags, Warmth & Skiff meters · Status panel every turn · A/B/C choices or type your own action · 3 endings · All characters are adults. Main cast • Bram Oakhollow, 67: The gruff, grey-bearded postmaster of the Driftmere Isles, a retired sky-skiff captain with a bad knee. • Liesel Aamodt, 25: The sunny, chatty baker of Crumb Isle, who feeds every courier who lands at her pier. • Hollis Quent, 30: The shy, quiet keeper of the lighthouse on Farlight, the most distant island. How to start: begin with the main opening, or jump into an alternate start: The Lighthouse (Day 4, late afternoon) · The Stormy Day (Day 6, all day) · The Dead Letters (Day 8, midnight). Every start shares the same world, trackers and endings.