A Random 30 Minutes - 02
Romance - for some reason...
I will preface whatever is about to happen with this - I do not write romance. I do not read romance. I have no idea what’s going to happen in the next 30 minutes. You have been warned.
The prompt: After a chance encounter on a rainy beach, a young artist discovers a mysterious love letter in a bottle, sparking a search for the letter’s author and a romance that will change her life forever.
3…
2…
1…
“Tippy?”
Twelve string classical guitar swam in shallow currents through the tiny headphones and the resonance made its way through her arm to her fingers where gentle brush strokes captured the orange and reds of the sun setting against the ocean. As the brush came off the canvas, the rising notes of the guitar strings were punctuated by a noise at odds with the sweet melody.
“Tippy!”
She turned, startled, she came off the small stool and held her brush in front of her like a knife, the wooden seat between herself and the intruder.
“Tippy. Take your headphones out.” The voice was silent, but the woman’s hands reaching to her own ears and pulling away made it clear what she wanted. Tippy tapped one of her earphones and then slid them both out, relieved to see Susan but angry at having been startled.
“What are you doing?” The words came out without the annoyance she felt, and for that she was both grateful and further annoyed; she had the gift of forgiveness in abundance.
“I came to find you, actually. I wanted to make sure you’d be able to make it to the party tomorrow evening. There will be quite a few singles there - might be worth checking out.” She added a raised eyebrow and what could only be described as a lecherous grin to the last. “Here are the details. See you around 7? You can help me finish setting up.”
Tippy nodded and smiled but it was lost on Susan who had said her piece and was already walking back the way she had come, a final wave flung over her shoulder like a beach towel. Looking at the invitation, Tippy was relieved to see it wasn’t a costume party and didn’t seem to have a theme - both of which were out of the norm for Susan. She read the short missive a second time, folded it and pushed it in her pocket, gathered her things and made her own way down the beach toward her apartment.
As the weather was warm and the sea breeze soft and gentle, she wandered to the water’s edge, letting her bare feet luxuriate in the salty coolness of the ocean. Next to painting, it was one of her favorite things to do, and she walked for nearly ten minutes this way without a thought entering her head. She enjoyed those moments of mental quiet, when the constant colliding of thoughts and ideas and worries and stress melted away and were replaced with the absolute - nothing. Then her toe collided with something hard and it was all she could do to keep from falling and dropping everything into the surf.
The culprit was a dark green bottle nearly submerged in the soft sand of the beach and she turned to continue on her way when she considered the artistic possibilities of a piece of colored glass. Pivoting into a half circle she followed her own tracks before they were washed away and saw the bottle, bent and retrieved it - all without dropping a single item.
Making it home was difficult, both hands and arms full, but she persisted until arriving at her door, dropping everything that could be dropped to fish out her key and enter her apartment. Inside, she took the bottle to the sink where for the first time, she realized it was sealed and there was something inside.
“An honest to goodness message in a bottle,” she breathed aloud to herself. Carefully, she pulled the cork loose, and upended the glass and rapped the bottom like a particularly stubborn bottle of ketchup.
The note was written in cursive and was faded but not unreadable. It took some time and more than a few photos fed into her computer to decipher the writing, but it was worth the effort.
Dearest Angeline
It is with heavy heart I write though it’s been only a week since my last letter. Today I learned of my future, and it seems that where I am going, we cannot hope to follow. I pray I am wrong, and for this reason, am not sending this letter by post, but by a more - traditional - expedient. I place great trust in fate, so I know that if this letter finds you, then you can trust to the heavens that I will not follow. If, however, it does not, then perhaps we are destined to find love and joy with each other. I pray this bottle stays far from your beach and that I can tell you of its writing and ‘postage’ during happier times.
With Love
Stephen
There was an address barely visible on the top of the page - the part that received the full effect of the bleaching impact of the sun, and Tippy could make out only the town - the town she lived in. Against whatever odds, the letter had ended up exactly where it was meant to go.
That night Tippy poured over her computer and tried to enhance the scan of the page and by morning, she thought she knew where she needed to go and who she needed to find. A woman with the initials, V.L. That was the only clue, Stephen hadn’t used a name or provided a date. There was no way to know when the message was sent or when he hoped it might arrive.
(The 30 minutes is up - however, if you’re like me, you might be wondering where this was going to go. The letter is from a soldier heading to the Pacific in WWII and written to his betrothed. The woman Tippy finds will be a relative of hers - perhaps her very elderly grandmother - nearly 100. The letter was written by her grandfather who made it back from the war and lived well into his 80s. The romance then, was not hers, but it did change her life - it allowed it, so to speak. So, it is a romance … in its own weird way.)