Ingrid —
We are back. The debrief finished this week, and I am writing from Tromsø while the writing of other things is still going on down the corridor, because I wanted the first letter I sent on land to be this one.
The run went long. Five months, or about that — you will do the arithmetic from my last letter’s date and get it right, you always do. The survey is finished, the crew are well, and the ship goes into the yard at Svalbard in the spring. That is everything five months comes to in a letter, and you have lived beside sentences built that way for longer than I have been writing them to you. I will not dress it up as more. I have never had to explain that to you, which is one of the reasons I write.
February, then, as always, if February still suits. Idris will drive — he has already spoken for the pool car in the way he speaks for things, which is to say the depot believes it was their idea. He will wait at the kerb with a book and a thermos, two hours, give or take. Tell him he is welcome and he will say he knows. The arrangement does not need improving. Most good instruments don’t.
Tell Saga I am coming, and that she may save her questions for the kitchen. I mean that. She has been building them since she was seven, and I would rather meet them at the precision she brings than have them blunted anywhere on my account. Twelve is a year for exact questions. She will get exact answers, at the resolution that is mine to give — you and I can speak about the resolution, afterwards, if you want to. Or not. Both have worked before.
I have been thinking about the tea since somewhere in the third month — the same tin, three minutes, not four, milk in after. On the ship I drink what the dispensary calls tea and log no complaint, because the complaint would be accurate and useless, and my mother taught me to spend accuracy where it can work. She also taught me to ask one question and then wait. Here is the question, and February is me waiting: how is the spring term?
— Amara