The taxi surges away from the kerb, then brakes hard for the roundabout. We turn towards the airport.

Mid-week flights, my preference, usually mean empty aircraft and unharried flight attendants with plenty of time to chat. I appear to impress the flight attendant who serves my lunch by observing that her surname, Nishida, translates directly to the English name, Westfield. She tells me that her personal name, Miho, means beautiful rice-plant, and coyly challenges me to find an English girl’s name that matches that. We chat about my travel plans, and as we talk, I find her increasingly attractive. Her humour is of the gentlest, most playful sort, and her soft brown eyes express much more than she says. Her voice, echoing the voice of the embassy receptionist so many years ago, is quite exquisite; it has a soft and loving feel that flows over her carefully enunciated English consonants. She walks tall, with a grace and balance that must be useful aboard an aeroplane.

The plane is almost empty and Miho, with so few passengers to attend to, appears to be at a loose end. She repeatedly comes to my seat to ask if there is anything I need. She jokingly pleads for something to do – so I keep ordering drinks. I am soon unable to take my eyes off her, completely enchanted by her prettiness, wit, and an appealing sangfroid edged with a frisson of nervousness at potential faux pas. Indeed, the word ‘Parisienne’ keeps coming to mind. I drink more than I normally would, and before I know it I am asking to meet Miho socially in Tokyo. I am excited and a little surprised when she agrees.

With plenty of time to myself I check all my things again, even going through all my pockets. I pull out the unopened letter. It reads:

dear leo,
my ability to get in touch with people is in inverse proportion to the length of time for which i haven’t. this is a personal flaw which every now and then i think about trying to do something about. fortunately there is a kind of quantum tunnelling effect which occasionally puts a random spin on the logical consequences of
P(write)~e-αt
as it happens, you’ve been in my thoughts rather more than usual recently. some of this was caused by a climbing holiday, and some by a moderately perplexing dream. by my calculations it’s been a year and a bit since we last spoke. um, sorry. it’s not the most appallingly wantonly neglectful i’ve ever been - far from it, as it goes – but please consider me appropriately contrite and abject.
there was a time lapse in the last block of text. it is now many days since i started this letter and today’s burst of verbal outpourings was catalysed by dreaming about you again last night. i dreamt i was talking to you on the ‘phone. i was using the cordless ‘phone, it was late evening and i was standing in my front door looking out onto the darkening garden. i kept lapsing into german, but otherwise we were communicating very well for two people who’ve never spoken to each other.
what am i to make of your significant increase in participation in my neural activity?
i’m sure i could come up with a wonderful materialist explanation if i put my mind to it. additionally, i am anxious to avoid getting caught up in ‘the meaning of dreams’. all this notwithstanding, my life has not been without its share of dream related weirdnesses, and there are more things in heaven and earth etcetera. it’s true, i become more unnerved by coincidence than someone with a basic grasp of statistics should, but whatever the reason, i am feeling a distinct pressure to get this letter to you as soon as possible… i hope it doesn’t take a year and a bit to write back!
i could fire off a load of questions at this point about how you are and what you’re doing. i rely on you to tell me what’s interesting – you require no prompt from me.
what i will do is send you an extra-light (airmail weight restrictions) imaginary hug, remind you how much i’ve always lionised you, even when i appeared to have vanished off the face of the earth, and sign off.
i hope to hear from you soon, and i’ll be thinking about you (whether i want to or not, apparently)
lots of love, as ever,
tyger

tyger lives in England and, as she says in the letter, we have never spoken to each other. We met, that being the best available word, in an Internet talker known as Underworld, hence the noms de plume. From our first typed conversation I was amused by her word play, her surprising trains of thought, her arch literary style, and a remarkable intellect that sometimes left me gasping with admiration. Her reading had been serious and broad, and she was able to discuss a wide range of subjects with clarity, intelligence and a maturity not usually found in people of twenty years. Whenever I talked to her I felt that I was being kept on my toes intellectually, but she seemed to revel in our conversations as much as I, and it was not long before an intimate and emotional attachment developed between us, despite the fact that we existed for each other only as ephemeral illuminated text on the phosphor screen.

Our relationship had lapsed into occasional short exchanges, and then faded away. I’d often hoped for the renewal of our correspondence, which at its height could last for ten or twelve hours at a stretch, but as each month slipped by I became increasingly resigned to not hearing from tyger again.

Now there is this slightly odd letter, the first hard evidence of tyger incarnate.