Feather with script lettering on the ribs

The ferry didn't run again on Tuesday, so the post has been sitting in Angus's van since Friday, and I'm writing this on the back of a tide table because I've run out of paper that isn't for the shop. You'll want to know the gulls are still at the bins. They've grown bolder since you left, or maybe it's me who's stopped shooing them.

Yesterday, on the shingle below the old kelp shed, I found a feather. Not a gull's. Dark, nearly black, as long as my forearm, with the barbs so fine they split when the wind caught them, as if someone had combed it with a needle. I brought it home and put it in the jar where you used to keep your pencils. It's still there, looking at me.

You'll remember the argument at the harbour wall, the one about whether it was wiser to go or to stay. I said stay, and then I went over to the mainland for a week on my own account, which I expect you thought was a hypocrite's trick. Maybe it was. I've been turning the feather over and thinking that a bird doesn't get to choose its weather. It only chooses where it lands.

I walked out to the point this morning and wrote a line in the wet sand with a stick, the way we did when we were small. The tide came in and took it, which was exactly right. I'm not sad about it. Come at Easter if the boat behaves, and bring the good tea.

Love, Mairi