One

My dear!

I will not bore you with the details behind this delay. Just please accept my apologies for the lateness of this packet of ancillary material. The lighthouse feels bleak enough these days that I am glad of a trip into town to the post office, but the complications! Well, I did say I wouldn't bore you with that.

No sign of the ship yet. I can't imagine where I'll go next to wait for it. Maybe my strategy is completely wrong and I should be constantly on the move, instead of perching in one or another inhospitable point and watching and waiting until my eyes and ears ache from the silence.

Not that it's silent here! I just mean the lack of sounds I want to hear. There is plenty of noise, between the seagulls, the fishing boats, the men cracking jokes outside my window that I think I'm supposed to hear, but am also supposed to pretend that I don't hear. And the everlasting lashing rain rattling on the panes.

My lioness surely keeps me safe, but she has to hunt unless I buy fish for her from the men. Money is very tight, but I worry constantly while she's out hunting at night. Not so much about her as about me.

I don't want you to worry, though! Really we are very snug. I never imagined a lighthouse would be this warm and comfortable and well grouted against the wind. During the day the lioness and I sit together by the fire and study ancient maps and journals in the old lighthouse keeper's den, where the light is good enough to read. There will be much more ancillary material to come for your search. I hope that you have heard or found or divined any kind of information at all for mine.

My search seems impossible most nights, like finding a particular grain of sand lost in all the beaches of the world, but then dawn comes and the lioness returns home and I feel that ridiculous hope rising again. I can only wish that you too are feeling the resurgence of hope!