[ Just beneath her post script, with handwriting slightly less respectable and slightly more scrawled: ]
I’m sure the sea thinks itself vast, limitless, eternal, and entirely deserving of adoration from the tiny people skimming around on top of it. Or perhaps it thinks: rudders tickle, and someone make the fish stop squirming, and everyone please stop pissing in me.
[ The limitations of metaphor.
The rest is on the next page, and back to being neatly written. Her meaning didn’t escape him; it’s tucked into a pocket, also metaphorically, for if/when he reaches a juncture in his arguments with himself where her good grace matters. ]
You have a generous heart, Alexandrie. Of course it can multitask well. But I would not have you devote even a sliver of it to worrying about me right now. You can worry about me later; I will signal you when it is time.
You must also not worry about Byerly being cross with you. He told me before I saw you had written.
If you must worry about something, I recommend pirates, storms, and Antivan Crows. I have heard recently, too, of an Antivan opera singer who caused someone’s ears to bleed. Almost certainly nonsense, but you might carry beeswax in case.
Perhaps I shall worry about my parasol, which was snatched up by the wind to-day and is even now being conveyed to parts unknown.
[ Next to the words, a small drawing of a very small parasol among a few fluffy clouds. ]
Although there is little I can do about a playfully pilfered parasol and I try to only worry about things I might have the power to affect, and whether or not affecting them should be good to do. When I see a storm, or a pirate ship, or a Crow, or my parasol again, or hear the first notes of "Ah! Le frecce volano" [ a famed and perniciously shrill aria from the end of L'Elfo e la Fanciulla, written back when it was popular to stretch out other country's folk ballads interminably. (Since he'd 'sung' her Girl From Red Crossing.) ] I shall commence fretting.
(Of course, if the Crow is come to kill me and I see them with enough time to worry before they make attempt, I will fret a little less as they are not a very good Crow.)
This to say that since I have done, now, what I may, I shall not worry after you until such time as I receive your signal...
Which I humbly request not be the first notes of "Ah! Le frecce volano".
[ There’s no answer forthcoming. He’s busy, he’s lonely, he’s thinking. But he does come back after several days to add to her parasol drawing: a little misshapen fleck of ink, with spread wings, so a tiny little bird has caught it in the sky. ]
[ It is eminently missable, but if Bastien should happen to look the next morning—or any time thereafter—he will find that the bird has gained an equally tiny companion in the sky nearby. ]
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I’m sure the sea thinks itself vast, limitless, eternal, and entirely deserving of adoration from the tiny people skimming around on top of it. Or perhaps it thinks: rudders tickle, and someone make the fish stop squirming, and everyone please stop pissing in me.
[ The limitations of metaphor.
The rest is on the next page, and back to being neatly written. Her meaning didn’t escape him; it’s tucked into a pocket, also metaphorically, for if/when he reaches a juncture in his arguments with himself where her good grace matters. ]
You have a generous heart, Alexandrie. Of course it can multitask well. But I would not have you devote even a sliver of it to worrying about me right now. You can worry about me later; I will signal you when it is time.
You must also not worry about Byerly being cross with you. He told me before I saw you had written.
If you must worry about something, I recommend pirates, storms, and Antivan Crows. I have heard recently, too, of an Antivan opera singer who caused someone’s ears to bleed. Almost certainly nonsense, but you might carry beeswax in case.
B.
no subject
[ Next to the words, a small drawing of a very small parasol among a few fluffy clouds. ]
Although there is little I can do about a playfully pilfered parasol and I try to only worry about things I might have the power to affect, and whether or not affecting them should be good to do. When I see a storm, or a pirate ship, or a Crow, or my parasol again, or hear the first notes of "Ah! Le frecce volano" [ a famed and perniciously shrill aria from the end of L'Elfo e la Fanciulla, written back when it was popular to stretch out other country's folk ballads interminably. (Since he'd 'sung' her Girl From Red Crossing.) ] I shall commence fretting.
(Of course, if the Crow is come to kill me and I see them with enough time to worry before they make attempt, I will fret a little less as they are not a very good Crow.)
This to say that since I have done, now, what I may, I shall not worry after you until such time as I receive your signal...
Which I humbly request not be the first notes of "Ah! Le frecce volano".
—A
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