1.3b

M - I found your note. Tucked beneath the tile you specified - six across, three down. Neatly folded and inscribed with your symbol, just as you used to do in Old Town. For a moment, I felt as if I was back home - lifting the large cobblestone by the abbey, plucking out your latest missive, pressing it against my heart.

Then I read what you had written, and my private smile fell away.

You were in distress, Marketa. You wrote with dignity, but I know you like I know my own heart. You hide your anguish behind the appearance of carelessness, but in truth, there is not a careless bone in your body.

Nor, I suspect, is there a carelessly chosen word in your letter.

Now I contemplate your writings as I once contemplated the psalter: considering every phrase and its possible meaning. The ledger you enclosed bore no resemblance to any mercantile ledger I have seen: the numbers in each entry seemed to be a code of your own devising. Likewise, the strange glyphs on the key seemed to be your own construction - a sort of guide to understanding the number code. I suspect you intended for your recipient to decipher one specific entry: Ánslo, the warehouse emphasized in your note.

Is this madness? In my eagerness to find you, have I transformed you into yet another holy missal, a new object of devotion for me to parse? Or in my pursuit of you, has my mind come to resemble yours?