The Hearth · nothing is kept

Write the letter you will never send, and cast it into the fire. It comes apart on screen and there is nothing left anywhere to delete — no draft on a server, no row in a table, no copy in an inbox.

That is not a policy, it is the architecture: the page makes no network request at all. Even the line of world literature you are matched to at the end is chosen inside your own browser, so the matching never leaves your machine either.

Overtures · a letter to a stranger

The other half does the reverse, and says so plainly. Choose an overture, write in full, and the letter goes to one signed-in stranger. It is stored, because it has to be delivered and because you should both be able to read it again in a year.

Neither of you sees the other’s address, ever. A letter arrives unsigned. If the stranger answers, the answer appears on your account page — and the route that carried it closes behind itself, so an overture is answered once. One letter, one reply, then it rests.

Gifts · written by a person

Sometimes the words are owed to someone specific and will not come. Tell us what you feel and who it is for, and somebody here writes the letter by hand. Not a template, and not a machine — a person reads what you wrote and answers it in ink.

• Digital copy₹199The finished letter, by email, exactly as it was written.
• Printed and posted₹299Set and printed on bond paper, sent in an envelope. We ask where to post it once you ask for it.

Both are ordinary post and ordinary time. A short deadline or speed post costs more, and we tell you what it comes to before a word is written.

What this site does not do

There is no analytics, no advertising, no tracking pixel and no profiling. The only cookie is the one that signs you in. The typefaces are served from here, so reading this page contacts no other company at all — there is no font host, no CDN and no third-party script on any page.

There is also no payment gateway, and no card field anywhere on the site. A gift is settled with a person afterwards, and nothing about how you paid is stored here.

All of that is written out item by item, against the code, on the privacy notice. If that page and the running code ever disagree, the code is what is true.