He'd sent the letter ahead. Hard to tell if it'd get there. It was a long way, and sometimes things got lost on the journey. Mail. Packages. Cargo. Ships.
Netherlands let the smoke go, looked up at the sky, listened to the shifting of the sea and the creaking of the rigging, and took a draw on his pipe. Clear night. Nice. He tried to remember what he'd put in the letter to Japan. Poetry - one he'd read and liked, and one of his own. Details of what had been going on with himself. News from Europe. Sketches - the canals, the garden outside his home, birds that he'd seen sitting along the bridge he passed over every day.
He'd slipped some seeds into it, wrapped carefully in a paper packet. Sturdy plants with delicate blue flowers. Japan would like them. Maybe. If he could get them going, and he was sure he could, if he followed the notes he'd put with them. Which he would.
If the letter didn't get lost on the way. That was the thing. Never could tell.
Re: last prompt: a million miles
Netherlands let the smoke go, looked up at the sky, listened to the shifting of the sea and the creaking of the rigging, and took a draw on his pipe. Clear night. Nice. He tried to remember what he'd put in the letter to Japan. Poetry - one he'd read and liked, and one of his own. Details of what had been going on with himself. News from Europe. Sketches - the canals, the garden outside his home, birds that he'd seen sitting along the bridge he passed over every day.
He'd slipped some seeds into it, wrapped carefully in a paper packet. Sturdy plants with delicate blue flowers. Japan would like them. Maybe. If he could get them going, and he was sure he could, if he followed the notes he'd put with them. Which he would.
If the letter didn't get lost on the way. That was the thing. Never could tell.
It was a damn long journey.