Message in a Bottle

There was once a woman who stumbled across a bottle beside the sea, and inside she found a message. It was from a man who lived on the island on the horizon. The two countries being cut off from one another for reasons too myriad and complex to enumerate here (suffice it to say, there were lawyers involved), he wondered what things were like across the sea. How did they live? What did they eat? Were they happy or sad? She sent a boy to fetch some paper and a pen and sent a reply. “Slow and easy. Fish and fruit. Mostly happy. You?”

For years they corresponded via bottles (for there were no laws against bottles), and in time, their unusual discussions blossomed into romance. Many a message, when not professing their undying love to one another, worked on the serious business of finding a way to meet. Boats were out of the question (lawyers), it was too far for a bridge, and flight was a thing not yet invented. They despaired at the prospect of never meeting.

One day, our beloved heroine had a most brilliant idea. If the lawyers had no issue with bottles, a giant bottle she would make. She gathered the glass makers of the island together to make a bottle big enough for her to ride in. When her bottle was complete, the islanders gathered to see her off. They loved her so, but could not imagine keeping her from her love, and so with a heave and a ho, they shoved her and her bottle into the sea. After several days of bobbing about at sea, she washed ashore on her true love's lands and climbed out. She looked and waited, eager to surprise him, but he did not come. Finally, she asked a little boy what had become of the man she loved.

“He built a giant bottle and cast himself into the sea.”

- Originally mailed to M. Taylor in South Korea