Wigleaf,

Please forgive me. I just stepped in out of the rain; we are stopping for supplies, and I don't have time for anything more.

I hate very much to disappoint you, but I am yet to find the answer to your question.

I am looking though.

I have explored mines in the Incan hills and searched from the backs of elephants. I have read a library of sacred scrolls and consulted the great astronomers Averroes, Hevelius, and Shen.

I trust in your discretion when I say that I have practiced some Dark Arts and think that I am the worse for it.

Because they did give me an answer. I have found a great many answers, but none of them are quite the same. They all add or subtract from one another, multiply or divide, perform complex logarithms that confound me.

 Never being one for math, as you know.

And when I think that you are waiting - if you are waiting. Perhaps I have made a romance of the answer, when in fact it is a tragedy.

Anyways, anyways, the guides are calling me back.

I will try and write again soon.

I won't ask anything from you except to tell me how you are, if you liked the little book of Qasidah I sent you.

Yours,

B.