An unsent Christmas card and a new invitation

A fictional winter visit lets Edda and Kit read an old unsent draft without turning its once-imagined project into a current promise.

By Republeq Editorial · 10 min read · November 7, 2026

This original seasonal story is fiction. Edda, Kit, their conversations and the events are invented. The unsent Christmas card belongs to that imagined scene; neither retail listing discussed afterward supplies the characters' stationery.

The card behind the drawer

Edda found the card while looking for the spare key she had promised to bring on Thursday. Kit had asked her over for lunch, an ordinary arrangement made the previous week. There would be soup, and Edda would return the key she had borrowed to water the plants. She had already put on one boot when the drawer caught against something at the back.

The card had fallen behind a shallow wooden divider. A little theatre covered its front: red curtains, a blue roof, an audience of five round heads. Edda recognized her own drawing before she recognized the handwriting inside. With one boot sticking into the hallway, she sat on the floor and opened it carefully. The folded edge had a pale worn line.

"Next Christmas," she had written, "I want to make a paper theatre big enough for your kitchen table. You can do the voices. I'll make a moon that rises behind the roof." Below that, in smaller writing, she had added a cast list. Every character had an unnecessarily elaborate name. The moon had a name too, although it had no speaking part.

There was no finished greeting, no signature, no envelope. Edda remembered drawing the curtains at her old desk, but she could not remember why she had stopped. The card had stayed among loose papers through a move. Now it lay across her knee while the spare key turned up in the drawer's front corner, exactly where it should have been.

She put the key in her coat pocket. Then she slid the card into a book she was returning to Kit. She wanted to show her the moon's name. Nothing in the old draft changed the lunch they had already arranged, and Edda had no intention of arriving with a theatre under her arm. She checked that she had both gloves and left.

Soup before the performance

Kit opened the door holding a tea towel. A saucepan lid rattled behind her. "You have excellent timing," she said. "You can decide whether this needs more pepper." Edda tasted a spoonful in the kitchen and said it needed bread. Kit pointed toward the loaf already on the table, then took the spare key and hung it beside the door.

For a while they ate and talked about the upstairs neighbor's new dog. Edda described the sound of its paws traveling from one end of the ceiling to the other. Kit had brought home the wrong library book and was halfway through enjoying it. The book Edda had borrowed waited beside her chair, with the old card safely between its pages.

When Kit cleared the bowls, Edda brought it out. "I found something ridiculous this morning." She opened the card toward herself first, as though checking whether the names had become more reasonable during the journey. "This is an old holiday draft. Apparently I had theatrical ambitions." She turned it so Kit could see the drawn curtains.

Kit dried her hands and pulled her chair closer. Edda read the whole draft aloud, including the cast list. At the moon's name, Kit asked for a second reading. She pronounced it slowly and tried it in a severe announcer's voice. Edda laughed hard enough to lose her place, then found the line with her finger and finished.

"You gave me all the voices," Kit said. "Even the furniture?" Edda looked down. The chair in the cast list did have a speaking part. "I seem to have been managing the company very generously." Kit asked what the chair would have said. Edda could think of nothing beyond a complaint about being sat on, which Kit considered a reasonable opening.

The project stays on the page

They left the card open between the cups. Kit traced the air above the little roof without touching the paper. "Were you going to make all of that?" Edda said she had wanted to at the time. She could picture the desk lamp and the scraps around her elbows. The large stage, however, had never got beyond the sentence inside the card.

"Do you still want to?" Kit asked. Edda took a moment. She liked the drawing and hearing Kit try the moon's grand name. But the prospect of spending evenings making a stage did not attract her now. "I'd rather read something someone else has finished," she said. "Preferably while sitting very still." Kit passed her the last piece of bread.

There was no list of materials, no search for a suitable box. Kit did not fetch scissors. Edda turned the card once to inspect a blot near the curtain and then laid it down again. The drawing could stay as it was. They had already enjoyed the only performance available that afternoon: a few lines read over the remains of lunch.

Kit said she liked the audience best. One of the five heads leaned sideways as though trying to see around a taller person. Edda remembered making that small figure after the others, squeezing it into the space beside the curtain. She had forgotten it entirely until Kit pointed it out. They looked at it together while the kettle began to click.

Edda reached toward the pen beside Kit's shopping list, then stopped. She had thought of a better name for the chair. "I'll tell you instead," she said. Kit listened, shook her head and supplied a worse one. They left both suggestions off the page. The old cast remained intact, including the moon with its silent, extravagant name.

An invitation made over tea

Outside, snow slipped from a branch onto the low wall. Kit stood at the window with her cup. "I'm going to walk down to the little bridge on Saturday," she said. "Would you like to come?" Edda asked what time. Kit suggested late morning, after she had collected a parcel. They talked through where they would meet and how long they wanted to be out.

Edda had something to do early that morning and said noon would suit her better. Kit agreed. They settled on the corner beside the bakery, with a message beforehand if either needed to change the arrangement. Edda put the plan in her phone. Kit watched another clump of snow fall, then returned to the table and sat down.

Here was a new invitation today, spoken while both of them could answer. Edda did not cross out the old theatre proposal or write the walk beneath it. Kit had offered Saturday's walk during this visit. The card held what Edda had once imagined. Both things could remain visible without the friends having to turn one into the other.

They spent the rest of the tea discussing the library book Kit had borrowed by mistake. She described a minor character who kept returning with an increasingly unlikely explanation for the same missing hat. Edda wanted to borrow it next. Kit checked the return date and said there should be time if she finished that evening. The card lay beside the empty bread plate.

Going home with the same paper

Before she left, Edda asked whether Kit wanted another look. Kit opened the card and read the stage directions under her breath. "The moon enters from the left," she said. "Very disciplined." Then she closed it along the existing fold and handed it back. Edda put it inside the returned book's empty cloth bag, where it would lie flat.

At the door, Kit checked that she had her gloves. Edda checked that Kit had the key. They repeated their Saturday meeting place because Edda had already managed to say the wrong corner once. Walking home, she thought of the audience leaning around the curtain. She also thought of the soup and wondered whether Kit would remember to send the recipe.

At home she placed the card on her desk while she took off her coat. The old words were still there when she opened it again. She read the moon's name once more, closed the card and tucked it into the book of drawings beside the lamp. Her phone held the walk they had just arranged. She plugged it in to charge.

Two card references within their limits

The Christmas-card assortment listing links to a Christmas card assortment with envelopes and stickers. Its sole gallery graphic depicts a penguin card layout, a red envelope and sticker designs. Printed package counts do not verify fulfilled quantities or every claimed card design. The mixed centimetre/inch label is not adopted as a measurement.

The blank-card listing links to blank folded cards and envelopes. Its sole image represents a blank folded card and envelope. The catalog's counts, dimensions, paper weight, environmental wording and printing or ink compatibility remain unverified. The image does not establish matching fit or delivered contents.

These references show catalog stationery representations, not Edda's fictional card. Neither observation authenticates factory maker/model identity, paper performance or a fulfilled inventory. The story makes no purchasing recommendation based on those missing facts; its drawing, draft and conversation are original inventions.

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