Mandala tattoo on shoulder and upper arm

The rain has stopped for the first time since the spring thaw, so I have taken the boat out past the old breakwater to the lantern-tower, and I am writing this on my knee with the ink cake gone stiff in the cold. You will laugh that I still carry the pen case you gave me, but the nib is the only thing on this bay that does not rust.

Yesterday the surveyors came back from the drowned orchard with the last of the seed drums. They had counted the rings on the cracked sundial we pulled from the mud, eleven hundred and four of them, each one ground down to a dot by some patient hand, and Mirela swore the spacing matched the petals on Old Venn's drawing. You remember the sheet, the great flower with its layered rounded leaves and the dense knot at its heart, all dotted and shaded like a bruise going pale. She says it is a chart. I say it is a flower. We argued until the lamp guttered, and then she showed me how the medallion turns when you tilt it to the window, and I stopped arguing.

So here is my proposal, and you may scold me for it on the next tide. Bring the drums north. Let us lay the sundial's rings over Venn's sheet and see where the petals fall. If they fall where the water is shallow, we have found the road.

Tell Father I am eating properly.

Yours in ink, Tobiah