Somewhere in the distance a wild animal
howled and Baby’s fur stood on end. Evvy shivered, glad for the
shelter of the cave and the company of her pet. While the meat
continued to cook, she decided to take advantage of the remaining
light to examine more of the treasured documents in her bag.
Slowly, carefully, Evvy slid the brown
paper envelope from the pile of paper scraps and opened it. Inside
was a sheaf of thin paper, covered with writing of some sort. Her
heart pounding, she pulled the top paper out of the pile and held it
to the light. She recognized the spidery lines as handwriting, which
she had learned how to read and create at the Garden. With
difficulty, she began to read the faint words, so smudged they were
nearly invisible. After a moment, she set the paper down in shock.
This was a personal diary… a personal account from someone who had
lived through the Change!
Quickly looking through the papers, Evvy saw that they appeared to be dated by day of the month. Although no
year was given, she knew that the Change had taken place between
eighty and ninety years ago, so this was ancient history—but
history that very much affected every aspect of her present.
She set the papers aside to eat some
of the roasted rabbit, which filled her belly for the first time in
several days. Though it was now beginning to grow dark, and she was
tired and ready for sleep, she returned to the papers, thinking to
read just a bit of this miraculously preserved artifact from the
past.
January 20. I don’t have much
time to write, but I feel I need to leave a record in case something
happens and we don’t make it. It feels odd to write by hand, in
pencil, on old-fashioned paper, but I have an eerie feeling that my
words on the webz will disappear if what I think is happening
actually comes to pass.
The webz? Evvy had no idea
what the writer was talking about, but it seemed obvious to her that
unfathomable numbers of written words from the time of the Change had
indeed disappeared forever. How lucky that this writer had decided to
leave a record that could be interpreted!
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