It was half-passed two in the morning when Jacoby pushed opened the door of his house and quickly scrambled inside, shutting the portal behind him with a forceful shiver. Even bundled up in a heavy overcoat and wearing wool-lined leather gloves and boots over his feet and a scarf around his neck, it was still very cold up at high altitude in the dead of night under open sky. Something the goggles pushed up onto his forehead had done absolutely nothing to help with. It took several moments of enjoying air that wasn't as cold as it had been outside before he noticed the flicker of firelight along the wall. Glancing over to its apparent source, sure enough he saw Alexios relaxing in one of the armchairs near the mantle, a low and pleasant fire stoked, wearing a blue night shirt and matching cap and reading a book.
Or rather, he was reading a book until Jacoby came inside. "Oh, good," the minotaur began, closing the tome in his hands, "You're back. You have any idea what time it is?"
"I wasn't aware your duties included waiting up for me," Jacoby replied, pulling his boots and gloves off and leaving them by the door, before moving on to his scarf and overcoat, which he hung from the wall.
“They don't, really, but you know me. Can't sleep unless everything is in it's place." Standing up from his chair, Alexios busied himself with putting another log on the fire while Jacoby removed and hung his jacket and goggles. Giving the log a firm poke with the fire iron, the minotaur spoke up again. "You find it?"
"Oh, sure," the griffon replied, giving both chairs and the fire a pass and heading straight for the cocktail cabinet. "After all, I was only flying thousands of feet in the air, in the dead of night, with only a pair of runecrafted goggles that only barely improve my nightvision and a hastily-made homing rune to guide me. It was just about the easiest thing in the of course I didn't find it!" Angrily, he brought out from the cabinet a tumbler and a bottle of schnaps, the former of which he promptly filled half-way with the latter. "There's no telling how far off-course it went. I may never find it. I probably will never find it."
With a huff, Jacoby seized the glass in his talons and stalked to the chair Alexios had not be using, practically jumping into it and burying his face into the claws not presently occupied with a drink. "All I wanted was to forget this nonsense with the newspapers. It’s been almost a week, and I’ve only moved back to the fifth page, and now this," he said, hovering on the border between complaining and whining. "There's nothing to be done for it now. I'll just have to start over." With a final huff, he raised the glass to his beak and drank, letting the sting of alcohol wash over his tongue and warm his stomach.
"Well, whatever," Alexios replied after a moment, heaving a mighty yawn. "I'm going to bed. Don't stay up too late. Or, uh..." A glance at the clock revealed that it was already impossible to avoid that. "Later, I guess. See ya in the morning, Jake."
"Gute nacht, Alex." Before long, Jacoby was left alone in the lounge with only the schnapps in his glass to keep him company. He raised it to his beak to take another sip, and lowered it to the end table at his side with a heavy sigh. Rising to his feet, he left his chair and trod to the front window, looking out into the night sky, and nearly endless sea of stars stretching as far as he dared imagine.
"I shot an arrow into the air," he whispered to himself, "It fell to earth I know not where. All that hard work, and now it all rests on someone else finding you." With another sigh, he returned to the cushions and coffee table. "Not the way I envisioned celebrating my Letter." Gathering his resolve, Jacoby drained the rest of his glass, unaware that hours earlier and thousands of miles away, a streak of light and sound dropped out of the sky, knocking scores of apples down from the trees they hung in.