Not often did I pass through a region twice. But between wandering and also traveling the world, the unusual had to happen someday. In a land I had not visited in a long while, I stopped by a mail chain. A wall of lost letters posted for the receiver to perhaps one day find. I sometimes pulled the oldest, most abandoned looking letters for a little light reading. The ones with spattered rain stains and browning edges. The ones no one wanted.

But on this spring afternoon, the oldest letter I plucked happened to be addressed to me. I frowned as I opened it out in the sunlight, the breeze tugging at the letter’s crumbling edges. It read:

“Wanderer,

We’ve never met, but my grandfather talks about you a lot. He loves the stories you told him and he says he’s ready to tell you his now. Please come to…”

I skipped the last because another letter had been tucked behind the first, from the same writer. This dated a month after the first.

“Grandfather passed away, Wanderer. He said it’s alright that you didn’t show up, but he has the last laugh because you never did get those stories from him you wanted…”

Both of the letters were dated two years ago. A plague had wracked this country back then and I would never have made it, even if the letters had found me.

Blinking back a little mist in my eyes, I crushed the fragile letters between my palms. Upon the opening of my hand, the particles whisked away on the wind, disappearing into the bright sky.

Knowing just where to go, I turned my feet down a nearby dirt path. I was sorry I hadn’t made it in time, but I would go say one last goodbye.

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