July 3 and 4: On these days in Pen Pal

[asakiyume]

On July 3, Kaya's pet crow Sumi brought her Em's message in a bottle, and on July 4, she wrote to her mother about the experience--and she wrote back to Em.

Here is what she wrote her mother. She was staring into the fires of the Ruby Lake, and then. . .

I couldn’t keep looking at it for long, though. It’s too bright. It paints itself permanently on your eyes, the way the sun will if you stare at it. I closed my eyes and saw black spots where the lava had been especially bright, and when I opened them, one black spot remained, seeming to rise right out of the lava.

It was Sumi . . . But for all that Sumi seemed to be to flying up from the depths of the Ruby Lake, she must actually have been returning from a trip to the coast, because she brought me a present from the sea.

And below the cut is her letter to Em.




The Little Red Reviewer asked me some questions about Pen Pal the other day, and the interview is here on her blog. My LJ friends have heard me talk about all this stuff before, but I mention it for readers at Goodreads or folks who drop by and are curious.

Oh yeah! And speaking of Goodreads, I'm doing a giveaway there (link here), five books each month for the three months that Em and Kaya correspond, beginning now. And this time I found a way to make it open to people all over the world, so if you have friends in far-flung locales who don't often get a chance to win books, here's an opportunity. So far I know copies of it have reached England, France, Italy, Portugal, Egypt, South Africa, Pakistan, India, Singapore, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, Australia, Chile, Argentina, and Canada. I wonder where it might go next?

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

She asked some great questions! And hard ones… I really had to think about how to answer some of them….