Echo of Eternity

The woman piloted a rhinoceros-plane that delivered letters to the future. Everyone sent victories, inventions and grand promises. She carried one blank envelope, ashamed that her life contained nothing important enough to preserve.

During a storm, the red balloon tore loose and the aircraft landed in a marsh beside a patient heron. ‘Write what happened today,’ the bird suggested.

‘Nothing happened.’ ‘Then write that honestly.’ She wrote about wet shoes, a frightened rhinoceros and the warmth of his ear beneath her hand. Years later a reply drifted down from the sky in her own old handwriting: ‘This was the day you stopped waiting to become worth remembering.’ She kept delivering letters, but the blank envelope was gone.