Ornamental feather tattoo on a foot

The gulls have been screaming since your boat left on Tuesday, and I have finally found the thing you forgot in the net loft: a grey feather no longer than my hand, its vane stiff with salt. Mam says it is a kittiwake's. I think it is too grand for a gull. Someone has been at its edges with a fine pen, curling the barbs into scrolls like the ironwork on the old chapel gate, so that it looks less like a bird's and more like something a clerk would sign a promise with.

The islanders have a saying that a feather is a letter the sky sends back. Mrs Gorrie in the shop swears by it and charges a penny for the reading. I told her you would write from Aberdeen once you had a proper address, and she laughed so hard she had to sit down on the flour sacks. I did not laugh. I walked the cliff path with the feather in my coat pocket and tried to decide which curl was the one you would have chosen.

Here is what I decided. The longest scroll, the one that climbs towards the quill, is you going out: wide, restless, always turning back to look. The small curls nested inside are all the things you keep meaning to say and never do. The blank place at the base, where the ink thins to a point, is me, standing on the slipway with my hands in my apron, watching the water close over the wake.

The wind has dropped. I am folding this round the feather so you can see its shape for yourself. Come home for the lambing, or send me the penny for Mrs Gorrie's reading, and I will tell you what the sky has to say.