Watercolour dreamcatcher design

The lamp room smells of paraffin and wet wool this morning, and the fog has sat on Tollan Head for three days like a lid. You asked in your last letter whether I still keep the hoop your daughter made me. I do. It hangs from the brass rail beside the clockwork, its web gone the colour of weak tea, and every night I turn the lens and it turns with it, the feathers swinging a half second behind the beam.

Mrs Pengelly from the cottages came up Tuesday with the post and stood in the doorway looking at it. She said her mother used to hang one over the cradle to catch the bad dreams before they got in. I told her the only bad dream I've had since October is the one where the light goes out and nobody notices until the boats are on the rocks. She laughed, then didn't, and asked if I'd eaten.

Last night a moth came in through the broken pane and got itself tangled in the rings. It beat at the web for an hour, wings dusting the purple threads, while the beam swept round and round above it. I didn't have the heart to cut it free. At four it gave up and lay still on the pink feather, and when the light came up grey over the water it was gone, carried off by the draught, or perhaps just rested enough to keep going.

I'll post this with the Thursday boat if the sea lets it. Tell the girl the web still works. Nothing gets through that it isn't meant to.

Love, Tom