Chapter 10: Tide in a Bottle

The first glass bottle drifted out of the fog.

There was no note inside, only a pinch of wet salt and the faintest sigh. Chaoyin held the mouth of the bottle to her ear and heard a woman far away say: I was not unwilling to wait. I only forgot where waiting should face.

The old man's face went pale. This was not a letter from one person to another, but words that had soaked in the sea so long they had grown a voice of their own.

If every undelivered message woke, the wind would no longer be only a courier. It would become a judge.