Small dreamcatcher with blue feathers on hip

The Discovery apples are coming down faster than we can pick them, and your uncle has stopped pretending he minds. This morning I found a blue feather caught on the ladder rung, long and bright as a jay's wing but too fine for a jay. It had snagged in the hoop of the little dreamcatcher you tied to the gate post in June, the one you swore was only for keeping wasps off the Bramleys. The wasps have gone quiet. The wind still comes through the rows at night, but the shutters stay still.

Mrs Ashdown came over from the next holding with a basket of windfalls and asked who had hung it. Her grandmother used to tie feathers to the pear trees, she said, so the dark would take the fruit's bruises and leave the fruit alone. I told her it was only a bit of string and a hoop from the market in Ledbury. She looked at the feather for a long time, then said her boy had been dreaming of the orchard since August, waking up with cider on his tongue, and perhaps the thing was doing its job after all.

I have put the feather in the tin with your postcards. It is the same blue you used for the ink on that little sketch, the one you did with the cold tea and a sable brush on the back of the seed catalogue. Come up for the harvest weekend and bring your own brush. The strands still hang straight, and I want to see what else the nights bring us.