You rush toward the long-awaited treasure, pull the carefully-wrapped package off its pedestal, and immediately check the box for traps. It's secure.
You pull off the ribbon and set it on the table before tearing off the wrapping paper. Beneath, you find a simple, wooden box, and this letter:
My Darling Victoria,
I hope that you've enjoyed your first foray into the world of Dungeons & Dragons! I know that this experience has been a terribly long time coming, and that this text-based adventure can't perfectly simulate the fun of sitting around a table and telling the story properly, but this is simply an introduction, and there are many more stories to be told in the weeks and months and years and lifetime to come.
All I'll ever want is to spend the little lifetime I have with you, and I hope that we'll be able to take some of it to play D&D, if you'd still have me. You are a simply brilliant storyteller Victoria and so I can't help but want to write a fantasy adventure with you in this game that we could totally also turn into children's stories for our babies which we then publish later in life to cover their college tuitions but I'm just brainstorming here. In all seriousness, all I want is to spend more relaxing time with you, and I'm so excited for D&D to be a way to acheive that in the new year. We also NEED to get back to cribbage, but I digress.
I'll try to keep this message brief because I know I've given you so many words to pore over this Christmas, and I promise that next year I'll be lighter on letters, but spending so much time without you this year simply left me teeming with thoughts I wanted nothing more than to share. This may not be the last Christmas we spend apart (I can hope we'll be together for the holidays next year), but I know in my heart that we'll never face time apart so prolonged as Galway again, and that feeling makes me confident that we can persevere in the face of any distance or hardship or stupidity on my part.
I love you Victoria, with my whole heart, and I am so deeply sorry if my Christmas gift hasn't lived up to your expectations. I know that I've disappointed you at times this year, but truly, all I want is to make you happy and I hope this adventure has given you at least a little bit of joy today. For me, D&D was, and still is, something which has given me so many hours of fun and entertainment and social comfort, and I can't wait to share more of it with you. In that spirit, please continue to open the gift your character has discovered in this beginner's dungeon (which would have been bigger but Oh Boise mapping an entire plot tree on Google Sites is MUCH harder than I anticipated), and see what else I have in store for you.
Love Forever,
Your Henry
P.S.: I tried to keep this note brief in part also because the Folio Diary is an additional Christmas Letter from me this year.
Beneath the letter, you find a simple wooden box. Within it is an intricately-carved hand mirror rimmed in silver, because the final part of this gift is that
You pick a time over break, and we'll make your Dungeons & Dragons character together!
(And I promise we'll look at baby books too if you still want to spend time with me)