The first to reject are the parents. Through no loss of love, an accident nonetheless will repel offspring, and the mother, clinging to the sinking body of the father, will think no more of her child.

Iyan Lutton's parents had died when he was a young man, old enough to understand what happened, but not so much as to be responsible for his own well-being. To be raised under the intelligence to know what had happened (an unfortunate accident, involving such horrid details of fire, drowning, and the eventual death of the late Luttons) suffused him with a stern melancholy for many years after the separation. The melancholy was not overbearing, however, and he wore it well for some time. His aunt and uncle had remarked often amongst themselves about its affect on him; he was a sweet, mild-mannered individual for it, and they would have gladly kept him in his self-built isolation, if only he would remain so pleasant to be around.

When Iyan was ten and six years old, he stopped attending the public school (a rather dull and uninteresting affair, catered more towards the children of semi-affluent parents), and joined his uncle in the post office, at first sorting and the like behind the counter and the eye of the visitors. Only when it would have been markedly less strange to see him at work did he emerge, and take over for the ever-rotating employees, who left before six months time after one another. Iyan envied them greatly, these fickle and flitting people who took shifts behind the counter. They had a liberty to leave, a second option where they could escape to, which Iyan would never have. Where was someone, poor and with no education, no family to influence those around him, going to go but where he had started? The thought stressed his heart and mind a great deal, but there was hardly anything to be done about it.

The day his aunt died, Iyan had been working under his uncle for six years, almost to the day. Such a coincidence was well hidden from him, but had he paid attention at church (a noble, if painfully dull affair), he would have seen that there was hardly such a thing as coincidence.

"What did it?" He was no longer in the house, at the doctor's tender suggestion, but sitting on the front steps of the post office. Uncle Hans was talking animatedly with the coroner, who was waving a clipboard and a pen rather vigourously, some ways off, trying weakly not to attract any attention.

"It was the child," came the quiet response. The doctor was hardly dressed as such, but being the town's only source of medical practise, aside from the coroner, he could be called upon at any given time. The wind had begun to pick up, a strange symptom of the transition from autumnal seasons, and his coat whipped about his ankles. "We're not quite sure why, yet, but that much is certain."

"He didn't know," said Iyan suddenly, looking up from his perch, arms wrapped around his knees. "My uncle, he didn't know she was pregnant."

"No," agreed the doctor. "and I'm not of a mind to alert him."

"How will you explain her death?" The doctor laughed with a frown, a curious expression.

"An accident, unless you feel it necessary to enlighten him." They were silent for some time, absently observing the arguing pair. Uncle Hans could be heard shouting about what to do with his late wife, and the coroner complaining about the logistics of such a thing. Only after they had bickered for nearly an hour, at which point the sky had completely darkened, did they cease their quarrel and make their way back to the front steps.

Uncle Hans looked terrible. His eyes were rimmed with an angry dark, a symptom Iyan had grown to associate with late nights at work with particularly loud orders. Sticking out at every odd angle imaginable was his hair, a dark mess that appeared missing several patches, no doubt contained within the grip of the widower. He staggered to a standstill by the porch, before collapsing against the nearest wall.

"There will be no funeral," he said after a moment. There was no response to this statement, simply a quiet acknowledgment shared between looks. He opened his mouth as if to say more, but gave up halfway into a breath, turning around and walking away once more.

"Would it be out of question," Iyan asked in a low voice, once his uncle was gone, "to burn her?" The question raised the eyebrows of the doctor, but he declined to protest.

"These are new times; I'm sure the Golden One wouldn't mind so much if she didn't take up any more space on this miserable earth." Pulling a stick of some scented tobacco from within his coat, the doctor lit a match and began to warm his face with the cherry-bright end. A siren wheeled past them, drawing their empty gazes, as it no doubt rushed to the Lutton residence. How long would it take, Iyan wondered, before his aunt was committed to fire, or perhaps a cold, lonely grave? The latter was far more likely, even though Myra had come from a decidedly burn-them-and drink-to-their-memories lifestyle.

At the prospect of having her friends and family attend such a dismal affair, Iyan decided that he hated celebrations. Better to bury her, perhaps, and let the worms suffer her corpse one last meal.

The second to deny is the self. Abandoned yet by his own parents to the grip of death, and even his last remaining blood-relative, the son of none finds his own presence unworthy of his attention.

With his uncle attending to the absence of Aunt Myra, Iyan found himself holding the only shift at the post office the next day, where he discovered that not even in the wake of tragedy could the residents of Tottenham Cross quell their frenetic desire to share across the country. It was hardly a plausible idea, that so many of these people knew anybody at all outside of the town, but then, the doctor had been right - these were new times. Iyan would have preferred if they were older, in that week, as he wore his fingers to the bone stamping and sorting and slicing open his skin on pettily thin envelopes. Even people who weren't looking to send anything still wanted wrapping and tape, and even those needed an employee to measure twice.

The fourth time he'd cut a finger open he had cursed, somewhat scaring the few people who could hear him over the din of the office. Sucking on his skin, lest his blood spill over the aggressively large box, he found himself once more in the presence of the red-haired stranger from the day before. What a most unfortunate image, him with his hand in his mouth, greedily drinking in like a child!

"Does it taste like ink?" The question was peculiar indeed, but if it was intended to distract Iyan from his embarrassment, it surely worked.

"Somewhat," he answered with an annoyed blush. "Not nearly as bad, I'd reckon." This earned him a smile, and his annoyance at once turned into a smug pleasure, a feeling he detested at once. Why must pride get in the way of something so pure as her innocent gaze? He kicked himself beneath the counter and nodded at her. "Have you something else to ship today?"

"Indeed," she answered, politely holding up a very small tea pot. It was curiously decorated, with deer and feathers of some sort dancing around its base. "Would it be possible to mail this home?"

"Where is home, if you don't mind me asking?" He pulled the pot over the counter and tried rather unsuccessfully not to stare at her over the counter.

"I think you know," she said with a laugh. She leaned up against the counter and ignored the jostling of a family behind her. "No need to pretend, is there?" Her accent gave the question a light undertone, and sounded like the tinkling of bells.

"No, I suppose not." Iyan smiled tentatively and pulled up a selection of boxes, pushing them towards the stranger. "Which do you like?"

"Oh, it's not me that should approve!"

"Then...?"

"My cousin," she said with twinkling eyes. "They're quite keen on tea, having read of your peculiar attachment to it. I was very much begged, one could say, to bring some artifacts of it back." Iyan said nothing to this, but the idea that tea was not as well-known all over the world, as to appear novel to anyone, quite tickled him, and he chuckled to himself as he pulled up more options.

"How are you liking it, ma'am, the tea?"

"Oh," she sighed, leaning on one elbow, "it's... strange, to say the least!" She looked up and lurched forward slightly - a child had pushed past her and screamed after its mother. After yelling unsuccessfully at the offender, Iyan turned back and offered his guest a pained smile. Somebody had begun to shout over the building for his attention, and the sound was like a needle between his eyes.

"I'm so sorry," he gasped, as he handed her a selection of protective wrap and tape. "I will have to attend to you in a moment; we're rather... busy, and woefully understaffed."

"Apologies are unnecessary," came the beautiful reply, and leaving naught but a slip of paper behind, the stranger vanished for the second time in two days. Iyan stared after her with a painful longing, a sensation he couldn't explain, but knew would hurt him for long after the day. Only when he looked down and saw that the red-headed young woman had left her name in spindly, spidery handwriting did Iyan feel his despair at being forced to work in the wake of a death lift, even if it was slightly.