Log, Day Four Hundred

Day four hundred was a fiction they kept so the log would have a spine. The moon did not count. Iria did, because a woman who stops counting starts agreeing with letters.

She ate the same ration, signed the same line, and allowed herself one look at the stack of tomorrows. Twelve letters now. All hers. None opened except the first. The weight on it had begun to leave a square pale mark, a window in the paper.

At 06:11 the radio coughed a voice with her accent and a younger breath. “Black lighthouse, confirm you are still the keeper of this shift.”

“Confirm,” Iria said. She did not ask from when. Asking from when was how you invited a second answer.

“Then don’t open the one dated after the beam. I already did. I am sorry. I am on the stair.” The radio clicked off. Below, very soft, a boot found step twenty and waited, polite as a guest who knows the house better than the host.