Abu Bakr stood at the stern of the ship, watching the mountains fade into the distance, their peaks gradually disappearing into the blue horizon. It was a feeling he had experienced before, but now it was on the opposite shore, the other side of his journey. He moved carefully along the deck, reaching the bow where he felt the thrill of sailing again, the ship cutting through the waves as it had done so many times before.
From his bag, he pulled out the book. After a year of learning, he could finally read what had been written in it. The title, "Sevar," caught his eye. He turned the pages slowly, his fingers brushing over the intricate symbols. When he came to a page adorned with a drawing of pyramids, his heart raced. Below the drawing was a passage that no longer seemed like a collection of unfamiliar symbols, but words he could understand. He began to read:
"Some high waves were created in the sea when the earth moved, and what we built was flooded and many people died. Then we decided to create shapes like mountains, if we look at the latter we will find that it is the only outlet for these floods that occur suddenly. At first, we bring the clay of wisdom, which few know how to make, and shape it with huge molds to become just like rocks. Then we pass it over the fire before placing it in water for a few days to create rocks that are difficult to break. We used to transport the clay to the top of the pyramid by making it in the ground, since a hundred strong men could not move those rocks, and only in this way, we managed in a few years to make those pyramids, with which we faced the tyranny of the sea."
He paused, the words settling in his mind. The enormity of what he had just read struck him, and for a moment, his mind wandered back to the pyramids he had visited in Egypt. The massive stones were incomprehensible, impossible to fathom how they had been moved.
"The hermit's story must be true," Abu Bakr thought to himself. "What's in this book… it's beyond anything we really know."
He closed the book and returned it to his bag, his thoughts now drifting. He remembered his father, the one who had instilled in him the spirit to undertake this journey, the very reason he had sailed so far. He thought of Artemis, the promise he had made to return after completing his mission. He wondered how she had coped with her father's death, as he had once faced the same loss. It had taken him an entire year to heal from the grief.
He pulled out his journal, which had remained untouched since that night on the ship. He opened it to the last page and began to write. The words flowed from his pen in the language he had learned.
Mandine, reading this passage from the book, was struck by the sentence: "He opened his diary on the last page and wrote in the language he had learned on this earth." She paused, flipping through the few remaining pages of the journal, until she reached the last page. There, she saw the strange writing, the symbols that seemed foreign yet somehow familiar. Her lips parted as she turned the book over in her hands, almost as though seeing it for the first time.
"It's Abu Bakr's diary," she whispered to herself.