It started simply. He just liked the picture on the postcard. It was of Zion. Snowy mountains. A river. He pocketed the postcard and kept delivering mail.
It’s against the law to steal mail. It’d be a bigger crime to not celebrate that image, though. The big sky. Those mountains.
He read the back. Simple words. I wish you were here. I love you. He stole another later—of Yosemite. Another—Big Bend. Such wide beautiful places. Who was this woman sending them? And to what hands would they have gone into? He loved too, though—this woman of deep mountains.
Very nice! A lot packed into a small space, with extra room for the reader’s imagination. Speaking of small things, it’s a grain of sand under my fingernail that there’s no “a” in “It’d be bigger crime.” Perhaps this was to comply with the word count requirement? In any case, an evocative tale. Congrats!
Great premise and use of language, though the grammar and syntax suffer. SNOWY MOUNTAINS. I don’t think there are any actual “Snow Mountains” in Zion – the climate is a bit warm on the Arabian peninsula; even the National Park in Utah. But that’s minor. I agree with the first comment: leaving out the indefinite article for the sake of word count is amateurish. It would be much easier to omit the “though” in that sentence – it would also avoid setting up the disagreeable resonance with the “though” in the last sentence.
“And to what hands would they have gone into?” That does not sit well. Never end a sentence with a preposition unless in dialogue, where it may be forgiven. But the sentence itself is clumsy even without the inversion. A pity, considering the overall quality. Maybe: what expectant hands would have caressed these glorious missives?