“What does this mean?” she asked, paging through page after page.
“It’s a book, a journal of some sort,” mansplained her companion.
“That’s obvious,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But what does it mean?”
“It means he was arrogant enough to write down his thoughts and ideas for a posterity that doesn’t care one whit,” he said.
“Or he wanted to record his thoughts and ideas in hopes his future self would understand and remember and know what to do with them,” she said more optimistically.
“Maybe that’s why anybody writes anything: In hopes the people of the future will remember and understand and know what to do,” he said.
“That makes a kind of sense,” she said.
“Of course it does,” he said smugly. “I said it.”
She laughed at that, and he liked the sound of her laugh, and they set the old book aside and kept walking, a step ahead of where they had been before they found the book.