Specifically, there was a code in the letter, or a string of codes, shakily scrawled amongst the self-indulgent ramblings of the man who wrote to her every year, on her birthday. The codes burned into her waking vision, glowing, beckoning, a long sequence of numbers and symbols. She saw them everywhere as she walked: in the trees, in the sky, on the ground, sprouting amongst the ferns like weeds, buzzing around her head like mosquitos.
