Today's Prompt: A Christmas card arrived decades after it was written (from cjnwriter).
"Holmes, I believe you should see this." Watson was sitting at the table in their small cottage in Sussex, eating breakfast and flipping through the mail.
Holmes peered in from the other room. "What is it?"
"A letter from Terai."
Holmes froze.
"It was postmarked over thirty years ago, sent along by your brother last week."
Holmes swept into the room and grabbed the envelope out of Watson's hands. He stared at it, holding it up to the morning light, unable to believe his eyes. Without a word, he hurried to the sitting room and fell into his usual chair by the fireplace, where he tore the envelope open. He read the letter twice, maybe three times before putting it aside and leaning back in his chair.
In that time, Watson had moved into the sitting room, a book in hand, though most of his attention was fixed upon Holmes. He knew better than to interrupt.
At last, Holmes forced himself to his feet. "A walk?" he suggested, his voice perhaps a little rough.
"Certainly."
They donned their jackets and stepped out into a beautiful spring day. Watson offered Holmes his arm as they meandered off, automatically tracing their usual path that wound through the rolling hills and took them up onto the sheer cliffs overlooking the ocean. There, in the humid breeze with a faint ocean spray in their hair, Holmes stopped, looking out over the crashing waves, as though he could see well past the horizon.
"It was a Christmas card," he remarked at last with a wry smile.
"It's only a few months late," Watson said gently.
Holmes let out a silent huff of laughter, though his expression quickly turned serious. "Victor sent it not long after he arrived in Terai - just a couple years. It seems it got lost in the Himalayan winter and only just made it to London." Holmes let out a long sigh of a breath. "I wonder how Victor is doing now."
Watson patted Holmes on the arm, at a loss for what to say. A trace of a smile flitted across Holmes's lips as he covered Watson's hand with his own.
"I wonder what you would make of him. We were very different, Victor and I, but each friendless aside from the other - in truth on account of our own vices. He was a very passionate, full-blooded fellow" - Holmes shot a wry glance at Watson. "I can better imagine him facing off against Mount Everest than quietly retiring to a life of tea planting. But he left England a defeated man, badly shaken. And yet, in his letter he apologized for having left me so suddenly." Holmes shook his head. "I may have solved the mystery, Watson, but it was too little too late. I cannot truly count it among my successes."
They stood in silence upon the bluffs a little longer, their hair and clothes whipped by the salty sea breeze.
"Will you write back to him?" Watson asked.
"Perhaps I will," Holmes said with a sad smile. "Letters travel faster these days; there is hope that he may receive it within the decade."