Hello and welcome to the Fiction Section of The Untangling. Just like in my main publication, these stories centre on themes of identity and what it means to be human. Main genres are literary and slipstream fiction and fantasy written with a lyrical and poetic writing style.
You are reading a standalone story from Revenir, an anthology I co-wrote with my son, who died in 2021. The stories explore the human experience and delve deep into themes of love, loss, and the search for meaning. Written in a haunting, lyrical style and set in a single fantasy world, this collection is for readers looking for character-driven stories with strong emotional resonance.
Summer had only just relinquished its hold on the days when a voice came drifting across the ocean to whisper words yet unfathomable—a message in a glass bottle, tied to a spirit I did not yet know. Without thinking, without considering, I took hold.
His was just another voice spoken among many, a single, gentle wave melding into the sea. Imperfect, fallible, broken, yet reaching towards an impossibility.
But it became more than a voice, more than a wave—an ocean of double meanings and metaphors slipped between each line, an all-consuming fire burning too bright and too fierce, locked away behind glass cages. It was life grasped by the throat, demanding it open its vaults to sprinkle stardust onto a barren earth.
I wrote my letters in return, little knowing the impact they would make upon the soul who received them. The glass bottle traversed the waves across seas. And he, who had tossed his string from across the world, to me, saw the meaning between what I wrote on the page.
The days gave way to Autumn, and I saw storms collecting upon a virtual brow. I learned to read what lingered unsung in the silences as that sea gave up draughts of rich memory upon the shore, a blend of sorrow and mirth and longing. I thought, How strange and how beautiful that so small a being could hold so much, so much.
As Autumn leaves cascaded to the earth, we spoke gentleness to soothe secret bruises and hidden scars, until we found a refuge in each other, and the nights, though full of strange unknowns and unwanted memories still, saw a dim light in the distance.
He, who once thought of sailing east, turned his prow west. And though I, too, had wanted to fade and become one with the cotton sky, his call anchored me to the earth.
Winter came, sorrow with it. I thought one or both of us might find more than one scar, trying to keep the jagged edges from scattering into the void. But still we held, held on.
“Don't let me go,” he wrote, and I could do nothing else but cling to his string as tightly as I was able. I stood on the shore of my island from that day on, waiting, waiting for his ship to appear upon the ever-distant horizon.
I could have said a lot of things were beautiful, but for me there was a universe that burst from his essence, streaming through a mosaic of all he had been, all he was, and all he would be. It spilled upon the floor as a sacrifice and spread streaks of color across the canvas of an eternity. A nothingness that somehow became an everything-ness.
It didn't take very long for us to realize that we could no longer imagine a world without the other in it, to realize we no longer wanted such a world.
He entered into mine, imperceptibly, unwelcome even, at first. Yet we were bound by something greater than us, and the string that first drifted with the glass bottle over the sea to draw us together wound its way into my heart. It slid past every guard, every barrier, and as my string tightened around his soul, so his intertwined with mine. Through each storm that threatened to submerge us, still the strand binding us together stayed firm. Time laid ever thicker cords upon it, until it became one unbreakable.
Winter storms crashed over us, but we held each other constant above the water. Ours became a shared dream as snowdrops ushered in the advent of spring, as we spoke of being together, until it became a daily refrain.
And though we were less than we dreamed, too small to hold the hurts of all the world, we were more than emptiness and stolen dreams, more than a series of broken fragments and almosts and what-ifs.
Because courage and strength didn't always appear with the visage we imagined them to.
But for each other, we were more than enough, though we might never have had the words to express what our friendship meant; it was good enough, good enough.
As it was hardly possible to capture starlight in a glass bottle, so it was impossible to trap all that he meant and was to me within the limited black bars of these letters. Yet here was a clumsy attempt to do so.
Because he sent his string and wrapped it about my heart, I took hold, and though he said I rescued him, his was the hand I grasped in the dark, and I would never let it go.
The spring came with peach blossoms floating and storm clouds receding into a faraway memory. The ship—brown hull with a sculpture of a dragon at its prow—emerged with the rising sun. And we, battle-weary and worn by chaos our young-old eyes had seen, clasped hands as though we’d known one another many lifetimes over.
The island welcomed him—a village he’d never had. I saw tears glisten before he turned to hide his face.
We would complete the things we told each other we would do, checking off each one and adding to our ever-growing list of things we wanted to do with each other. The canyon I’d told him we could take walks at. The cabin in the mountains he said he would build for us now his ship-building and faring days had come to an end. The books we’d write and send across the sea. Those hopes we buried in our field of dreams bloomed into reality.
We were together. That was all.
Because I knew.
And I loved him too.
The Story Behind the Story
As mentioned previously in “Glass Bottle,” Ren wanted us to each write a story about our friendship. His, “Glass Bottle,” and mine, “Koi no Yokan,” bookend this anthology. It is meant as a sort of continuation of his story, where the captain finds his way to the island.
As Ren said, “If we can’t live a happy story, we’ll write it.”
So, here it is.
There's something very ancient about the way you write. These stories combine the mundane and the fantastic, the literal and the figurative without the need to clarify which is which. Probably because everything in life is both.
Thank you for sharing this.
“As it was hardly possible to capture starlight in a glass bottle, so it was impossible to trap all that he meant and was to me within the limited black bars of these letters”… I love getting lost in your words Tiffany.