Sunflower tattoos on ankle and behind ear

The sunflowers along the causeway have finally turned their faces toward the harbour wall, the way they do when the fog has lain on the marsh for a week. Mother says it means rain, but I think they are only looking for the lighthouse, the way you used to look for it from the rope swing. I have kept the last of your seed packets in the tin under the loom, the one with the faded ship on the lid. Nobody in Vellmoor has grown the Gilded Dawn since old Master Pell died, and the Chancellor has forbidden us to sell anything we cannot account for.

Yesterday the tax clerk came through the market with his ledger and asked what I was hiding under my apron. I told him it was bread. He was not clever enough to ask for a loaf, so he moved on. I did not tell him I had been sorting seed by candlelight, because the candle was the one thing in the house I could least afford to waste.

I planted the final row at dusk, as you told me to. I pressed each seed into the soil with my thumb and said the word you wrote on the back of the packet in your careless hand, the one where the ink never quite finished. By morning the first head had broken through, small and stubborn, and when I stood up too quickly the whole row swung round to follow me.

Come home when the ships are sound again. I will show you what the word has grown into. Your sister, Ilse.