As a small reminder, I am not Mercedes Lackey. Thank you for understanding. I hope you enjoy my short little mystery... thanks for reading!
Once there was a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. The town had a rather ordinary name of White Hill. It was a quiet place, and nothing ever happened there. They were such a small place and were so far off the beaten path they only saw a Herald on circuit once a year.
The townspeople were all the epitome of normalcy; not a single thing would make you think that that quiet town could have anything but law-abiding citizens. Then the people noticed that they were misplacing things. Of course at first, when they noticed the missing things, they thought nothing of it. Of course they were just being forgetful. However, they went about their normal routines and discovered that their neighbors had been suffering from forgetfulness as well, and they started to wonder. The neighbors now were people to be watched, and not to be trusted, when once the community had been so close. They looked forward to the time when the Herald would come and find the person causing all of the distress, but one had just been there, so they had awhile to wait.
There was no pattern to the losses. One man lost his glasses; another one his favorite tie. One lady lost her nicest pair of stockings, the only one without a run in them, while another one lost an entire basket of yarn! The thief had left behind the basket, but what good was a yarn basket without the yarn?
And the children noticed that they lost small toys, trinkets, really. Girls complained of lost ribbons; boys of lost carved wooden soldiers. The men in charge of the sleepy little town got together and decided to take control of the situation. They must figure out some kind of pattern to the robberies, so they would have some information to give the Herald when he arrived. There has to be a pattern or a clue, they reasoned, since the thief was only human, which meant he has to make a mistake sometime. Right? This horrible, mean, and desperate man had to be taken care of for the safety of the whole town.
After careful observation, and many arguments that further divided the townspeople, they discovered that when it appeared all the things had been stolen was times when nobody was home, or the middle of the night. No strange people were seen anywhere around, and no one had seen anything, so it had to be thus.