Margaret looked up from her dusty boots when a shadow passed over them. She frowned at the incongruous, slabs of concrete still standing in this wasteland of sand and sun. The crossbeam was intact, a rarity even when one did find evidence of ruins jutting up like the broken teeth of some hagfish dragged up from the deep.

She wiped her hand across her forehead, drawing a line of chalky orange dust that looked like a deliberate mark before shielding her eyes from the sun. Squinting at the letters, she tried to remember her lessons from the time before. What did those marks mean? She wasn’t sure anymore. Perhaps the sun had bleached them out of her head. But she dutifully withdrew her book and stub of a pencil she’d recovered from a shack two days before from her pack and copied the writing. Then she slung her pack back on her shoulder and resumed walking, staring at her feet in the dust.

It would be four days before she found anyone who could decipher the letters for her. When told what they meant, she laughed along with the person who thought they were ridiculous–the work of a madman. But at night alone, when the stars came out, Margaret would trace the words in her book and recited what she still loved. And, sometimes, it helped.