Dear Mr. Marchetti,

I hope this finds you well and that everyone at home is getting along.

Please find below the final invoice for services rendered on Case #4802-R. An itemised breakdown is included. As discussed during intake, all fees are non-refundable, and payment is due within 30 days of receipt.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. It has been a pleasure working with you, and we wish you and Luca all the best.

Warmly,

Ms Pak,

Thank you for the well wishes. Everyone is getting along fine. Luca has started a herb garden. We are not going to discuss whose idea that was.

I have some questions about this invoice.

First: £12,000 for a "specialist retainer fee" with the name redacted? I was there. I know it was Mr. Shine. You can stop blacking his name out; I've met him, my partner had a shouting match with him in a field at five in the morning, and he left in an unmarked car which I watched drive away while my boyfriend's eyes were still technically glowing. The redactions are a bit theatrical at this point.

Second: £24,700 in total specialist consultancy fees? For three days? That is £8,233 per day. I don't know what Mr. Shine's usual rate is but I assume most of his clients are not landscape architects from Surrey.

Third: £4,500 for a redacted "supply procurement" item and £2,200 for "drone transport"? What was in the tunnel that needed to be flown in by drone and cost four and a half thousand pounds?

Fourth and I cannot believe I am typing this: you are charging us £12 for the sun visor.

I am copying Luca on this because it's his money too, although I realise that opens the door to complications.

Raf

Mr. Marchetti,

Thank you for your prompt response. Glad to hear about the herb garden.

Regarding the redactions: our consultant agreements include confidentiality provisions which apply regardless of prior in-person contact between the consultant and client. I appreciate that the circumstances of your meeting were unusual, but the policy exists for the consultant's protection and ours. I am not able to unredact those line items in a billing document.

Regarding the specialist fees: the rate reflects the consultant's expertise, availability, and the highly specific nature of the work performed. The base retainer and daily rate were agreed between the consultant and our referral partner before the engagement and are not typically subject to client-side negotiation.

Regarding the £4,500 procurement item: this relates to a specialist artefact required for the consultation process. I am not able to provide further detail in writing but can arrange a phone call if you would like to discuss.

Regarding the sun visor: I will have that removed.

Best,
S. Pak

Hi Soo-Yun,

I've added someone to this thread who I think should probably be part of the conversation. His email display name is going to look like a rendering error. It isn't.

I have two questions of my own.

One: the £4,500 "specialist artefact" that was flown in by drone. I know what that was. She told me about it. He asked for it because it's his, and it has been sitting in a museum basement for approximately a hundred and thirty years being catalogued as "bronze figurine, provenance unknown, late Neolithic, Peru." Its provenance is not unknown. Its provenance is him. So what I'd like to know is whether we're being charged four and a half thousand pounds for him to get his own property back.

Two: the Funshine Bear. Was that part of the ritual? Because she's telling me it was a solar-sympathy object used to — I'm going to use her words as closely as I can — "anchor the warm-bright-small feeling to a physical form so that the question could find the right shape." So apparently I was symbolised in a summoning ritual by a Care Bear with a sun on its stomach and honestly I don't know how to feel about that. She thinks it's sweet. I think sweet is one word for it.

Also: I was already awake. I've been awake for weeks. You could have just asked me.

Luca
(& company)

Right. For everyone else on this thread: he says his fees are appropriate for the service rendered, that the consultation required preparation which cannot be valued in mortal currency, and that he considers the matter closed.

He also says something about me that she's telling me is an insult but in context is probably closer to affectionate? It's hard to tell. Your language has about fifteen words for "small" and they're not all bad.

◬𒀭☉ 𐤔◖ꓕ 𒁲◬ ☉𒈦◖ — and you know that's not fair, you weren't here either. ◖𒁲𐤔 ꓕ◬𒀭. She says the same thing she said in the field: she waited. She waited and you came late. 𒀭☉☉ ◬𐤔ꓕ ◖𒁲.

Were you really charging us to come and visit her?

Also while we're here — Raf, I know you're reading this and I know you don't understand the unicode bits and that's fine, she says to tell you the herb garden is going very well and the basil should be moved to the south side of the pot.

Luca

Ms Pak,

I am going to pretend the last two emails on this thread did not happen and return to the matter of the invoice.

Even setting aside the specialist fees, I have the following objections:

1. "Mundane-cause consultation assessment — £150." You asked me if my partner was having an affair. That took forty-five seconds. That is not a hundred and fifty pounds' worth of consultation.

2. "BGS liaison & cover narrative coordination — £380." You told the British Geological Survey that the earthquakes were natural. That is not a service I requested.

3. Why are we being charged for the tunnel decommissioning? We didn't ask you to dig a tunnel. You dug the tunnel. That's your tunnel.

4. The live moth was free. You have listed it on the invoice as £0.00. Why is a free moth on the invoice.

I would like to discuss a revised total.

Raf

Luca (and Mr. Marchetti, copied for visibility),

Before we continue the billing discussion, I need to raise a separate but related matter. The artefact procured from the V&A was obtained on an emergency loan, authorised through our referral partner, on the understanding that it would be returned following the consultation.

It has not been returned. It is, as far as we are aware, still in the tunnel.

I need to ask — and I appreciate the sensitivity — whether the consultant intends to return it.

S. Pak

Soo-Yun,

I'm going to relay what he said and then what she said and then give you my own opinion, and you can decide which one you find most useful.

His reply, loosely: no.

Her commentary, which arrived about thirty seconds after I read his email: the object was taken from a site in what is now Peru by a British expedition in 1893. It was catalogued incorrectly, stored in a basement, and has not been displayed, studied, or thought about by anyone at the V&A in at least forty years. It is his. They stole it first. They don't even know what it does. She's actually quite angry about this; I can feel it behind my eyes.

My opinion: I don't think you're getting it back. But I also think the V&A is going to notice eventually, and I don't want to be the one explaining where it went.

Is there a third option?

Luca

Luca,

There is a third option. We have a contact who produces high-quality reproductions for institutional use. The V&A has a basement catalogue photograph and a brief description. Provided the reproduction matches the photograph and approximate dimensions, the substitution would not be detected under normal circumstances — which in the case of a non-display item in deep storage means effectively never.

I want to be clear that I am not recommending this. I am telling you it is possible. The cost would be approximately £3,200 for the reproduction, plus £950 for handling and placement. This would need to be added to the invoice.

S. Pak

We'll take the third option. And before Raf says anything — yes, I know this adds to the bill. 𒀭☉ ◬𐤔ꓕ. She says it serves them right. She's been saying that for about ten minutes now. She has very strong feelings about the 1893 expedition.

She also wants you to know that the reproduction won't work. Not functionally. It will look right but it will be "cold and asleep," which I think means it won't have any of the properties the original has. She says this is fine. She says they never knew it was awake in the first place.

Please add it to the invoice.

◬☉𒀭 𐤔ꓕ◖ 𒁲◬ — she remembers that too. 𒈦☉ꓕ ◬𐤔. She says the light was different then. Everything was closer. She says the sky used to sit lower and the colours were — I don't have an English word for this — thicker? More saturated? Like the world hadn't faded yet.

She's showing me something now. It's not quite a memory, it's more like being inside a feeling? There were people at the stones and they could see her. Not the way people see now, through glass and at a distance. They looked up and she was there and there was no separation between the looking and the being-there. She misses that. She misses being seen by people who believed that seeing was enough.

◖𒁲𐤔 ☉𒈦ꓕ ◬𒀭 — yes, I know. I know you were both there. ☉◬𐤔 ◖ꓕ𒁲 𒈦◬. She says to tell you she remembers the river and the other one — 𒀭◖𒁲 ☉𒈦ꓕ — and the long argument about the boundaries. Where one's domain ends and another's begins. She says you were wrong then and you're wrong now and she is not going to rehash it across five thousand years and a Gmail thread.

I'm going to step in here as myself for a moment: this is very beautiful and very strange and I am aware that Raf and Soo-Yun are copied on an email chain that has pivoted from an £88,000 invoice dispute to two pre-literate deities reminiscing about the Neolithic. I apologise. We can go back to arguing about the tunnel decommissioning costs whenever you're ready.

Luca

Luca,

I moved the basil.

Raf

Mr. Marchetti, Luca,

Thank you both for your patience. Following our discussions, I have prepared a revised invoice reflecting the following adjustments:

I believe this represents a fair compromise. The moth has been removed from the invoice entirely, as Mr. Marchetti correctly observed that a zero-cost line item served no billing purpose. It was included for completeness by our accounts team and I have spoken to them about it.

If this is acceptable, please confirm and I will issue the final version.

With best wishes to you both, and to your guest,

Soo-Yun,

That's fine. We accept. Raf is making a noise with his teeth but he accepts too.

Thank you for everything. Genuinely. I know this isn't how these things usually end and I know it probably generated some interesting paperwork on your side. She says thank you too. She says you were kind about the window and she noticed.

Also: if the Funshine Bear is still in the tunnel, I'd like it back please. She's attached to it. I'm not going to explain why a five-thousand-year-old solar entity has become emotionally bonded to a Care Bear because I don't fully understand it myself, but here we are.

Luca
& ☉

Luca,

The Funshine Bear will be couriered to you tomorrow. It has been cleaned.

Take care of yourselves. All of you.

Soo-Yun