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a letter to an unmet friend#▶ Watch

Reading "Letter in a bottle"

2026-10-19 Mon ⏱ 5 min protesilaos

Protesilaos reads aloud a short fiction piece he published on his website the same morning (https://protesilaos.com/books/2026-10-19-letter-in-bottle/). It is a letter in a bottle to a friend he has never met: someone whose possible existence moves him and who, by reading this far, shows the same curiosity he has. The letter offers no gifts except the author's time and honest words, and ends with the idea that at some level writer and reader are one.

The letter

  • He writes to a stranger whose name, voice and face he doesn't know, carried to them by waves he doesn't control, yet he says he knows them well and has "felt their presence in the wind".
  • He lives in the mountains but still imagines the sea as "openness everlasting", and pictures crossing the horizon to reach people unlike him who experience the world as he does.
  • Two motives: curiosity (to prove that such a person and their potential exist) and interest in the reader specifically, beyond shared interests and personality.
  • Anyone who read this far must be curious like him. The bottle holds nothing but the letter. His only gift is the thing he can least afford: his time and undivided attention.
  • Words are the best we have. Only words said in earnest, without regret or shame, stay with us. The rest is forgotten even if felt strongly in the moment.
  • The letter is a token of goodwill. The reader will wonder why it was written and already knows the answer: he dreamt of the place they occupy in a shared world.
  • It closes with "Who are you really, my friend?", the idea that both will find they are one at some level, and the signature "A feral soul".