Day 376,

Lin brought me this journal of yours and explained her plan.
I don’t know that it will do what she hopes it will, but it could help you in other ways.  

This isn’t the journal I gave you either.  How many of these have you filled?
There’s barely any space left in this one as it is.  I give one to everyone that washes up,
but I can’t remember the last time an outsider stuck with journaling for this long.  
Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I did a good job naming you Archivist.

It wasn’t just because you said you liked books and stories when I asked you 
on that first day that I suggested the role to you though.  Lots of people like those things 
but that doesn’t make them a good fit.  It was how you reacted to your situation.  

True, mostly you were confused and in a daze.  Your mind still wasn’t fully working yet.  
Everyone always has that reaction, but underlying it there’s usually another emotion at play.
Joy, fear, excitement, relief, denial, acceptance…  For you, it was wonder.  
Every little detail seemed amazing to you, an endless source of fascination interrupted 
only by the next wondrous thing.  You were overwhelmed but kept drinking it all in anyway.  
You weren’t trying to force yourself to question everything through the haze.  You were 
happy to just simply see and be.  Questions could and would come later - you weren’t without 
curiosity - but even then the asking and the finding was more important than the answers.

I’m sorry some of the darker parts of our world - and likely parts of yours whose scars 
still linger in you - have so often made it hard for you to feel that wonder.  You’re in 
one of those darker parts now, I think, but I don’t believe you are lost there forever.  
You’ll find your way back out, whether back to us or out to the other side, but you’ll 
get out one day.  You may well hurt afterward, maybe even for a long, long time, but I 
believe you’ll find wonder again.  It may start as only the tiniest scattered sparks in 
what feels like an endless, starless night, but you’ll find a way to use them to light your 
way.  One of them you’ll catch and hold to you.  You’ll nurture it to a flame and find 
warmth and light again.  It will lead you to other flames and others lost in the night.  
Some of them you’ll stay with, others you’ll part from, but eventually all of you will find 
morning.

That’s what I like to believe.