Dearest Snu,

I know, I know, I’ve been gone for a week yet it feels like a millennium to you. However, without an ounce of exaggeration, my yearning for you equates to double, quadruple your own sorrow. If not in quantity (if such a thing can be measured), then in rich volumes of viscosity.

It certainly didn’t help that our reunion was short and bittersweet. We’d only been reunited for a few days before I left your side. I am still puzzled as to why Ma requested demanded my immediate return from my education; all I know is that Master Seo gave her my six-month report of my studies and she found the need to terminate my mentorship. She explained I had nothing else to learn from him and I am left wondering if perhaps Master Seo misused ‘whom’ and ‘who’ in the correspondence and earned her ire.

I briefly toyed with the idea of reporting her to the Order for unreasonable removal of a student under a Master’s care, but the truth was, I had spent five years under Master Seo and I knew our tutorship was coming to an end. I just didn’t expect it to be in the form of an airplane ticket with a simple message of ‘you’re coming home now’.

Master Seo agreed and he was happy to give me my certificate of completion despite Ma’s arbitrary outburst, so that was that.

I’ve no doubt Ma prepared my next teacher before the ink on Master Seo’s letter has even dried. I was only home with you for a flitter of a moment before she waved the letter of acceptance in my face and kindly expelled me out of the house. If that letter hadn’t been a formal invitation to become the one and only Mikaere Tahuriorangi’s student, I would have stood my ground and refused to leave. The phrase ‘I’d kill to be his student’ was a motto for every young apprentice, and as soon as that letter arrived I knew I had five minutes to decide before I was found floating in a stream with a knife in my back.

Ma had doubts. Not about Mikaere of course, but because she was paranoid about the recent news of a missing child who had been sent away for an apprenticeship. I gently reminded her of my superior capability and my long history of self-sufficiency. Before I could list all of my exploits and victories, she waved her hands and said, “Yes, we get it, you’re not a child anymore!”

As I write my first letter to you in the air, atop the flimsy plastic tray with excessive cold air blowing through the vents, I’ve decided to make it a habit to write of my day-to-day events in the hopes of easing this pain upon my breast. I know not if you will read these heavy pages brimming with every shade of emotion. I know not if you will hurl them into a fiery pit or simply devour them. But your grace and patience will be rewarded, my friend. I will record the magical, fantastical and bizarre into these letters. On top of that, I will also send you interesting things I find in my Master’s country of New Zealand! All within reason of course—I hear that pigeons, no matter how many chin-ups they are capable of, they can carry 32 grams at most.

I wonder if their protein shakes will be bread crumb flavoured.

Oh, I just heard the announcement welcoming me to New Zealand, otherwise known as the land of the long white cloud: Aotearoa.

Your Beloved Best Friend