At first, Clara convinced herself it was harmless. Reading his letters, writing her own replies though no one would ever read them. A strange ritual, a private solace. But with each envelope she unearthed, James's voice grew more vivid.
He wrote of endless marches through mud that swallowed boots, of comrades' laughter before the next shell silenced it, of nights when the stars seemed impossibly bright above ruined fields. Yet threaded between his words were fragments of something else: glimpses of gentleness, jokes carved out of exhaustion, a stubborn insistence on humanity amidst the wreckage.
You don't know me, but if you're reading this, you must exist. And if you exist, then you are proof there is a future beyond us.
Clara found herself answering as though he were sitting across from her. I exist, James. I am here. Your words made it across the years, and I am listening.
Her fiancé, Daniel, began to notice her distraction. He caught her staring at old pages long after her work should have ended. He called late in the evenings, his voice edged with frustration when she answered vaguely, her thoughts still trapped in another century. "Clara, you're living in those archives more than in the present," he warned. But she brushed him off, promising she was fine.
The truth was, she was not fine. She waited for James's next letter the way one waits for news from the living, her pulse quickening whenever she opened another file box. When the next envelope appeared, it felt like breath returning to lungs.
Sometimes, I imagine a reader, someone far away who still believes the world is more than mud and smoke. I picture them drinking tea from a chipped mug. Don't laugh something ordinary, solid, to remind me life exists elsewhere.
Clara's heart jolted. She set down her own chipped mug beside the page and whispered, "I'm here."