"Wait, is that it?" I exclaimed, carefully turning over the next page to find it blank.

"Looks that way," you replied, peering over my shoulder. "Just as it was getting good, too," you added with a small smirk.

"Freya!" I chastised playfully, nudging you with a grin. "This isn't one of your sordid romance novels, you know!"

Shaking my head in disdain, I hastily scanned through the rest of the journal, hoping there might be more to discover inside this delicate, ancient diary. Despite my elation that we'd been blessed with this set of chronicles that gave us a first-hand perspective of days gone by in Doran, I was also frustrated that its cryptic narrative and limited insight had left me hungry for more.

"Right," you agreed in mock-solemnity as you lowered your voice to make it sound more masculine, clearly imitating me. "It's a factual historical document, giving an accurate representation of life in the early nineteenth century."

"Well, I don't know about that," I replied, laughing at your ridiculous impression as I rolled my eyes in despair. "But it's certainly interesting."

You looked confused by my statement.

"You don't think it's genuine?" you asked.

Shifting my focus onto you, I lowered the notebook, holding it loosely in my lap while I responded.

"Oh, I absolutely believe that this journal is genuinely two hundred years old," I clarified. "But all the stuff about the sidhe and witchcraft and magic? It sounds a bit too far-fetched to be historically accurate, don't you think?"

You leaned back against the trunk of the sturdy oak tree as your features became contemplative.

"Actually, I did a school project on Irish folklore when I was fifteen," you replied. "I used to think the sidhe were just mythical faeries, and that stories about them were fabricated to entertain children. But when I researched it for my assignment, I discovered that although the number of people that allege to have seen or interacted with them has decreased significantly over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there are still many reported sightings all over Ireland that seem to corroborate their existence. With so many people still claiming they've encountered the sidhe, I think it's hard to dismiss it completely as hearsay."

I blinked in bewilderment.

"I thought you were a scientist?" I pointed out. "I'd have thought you'd want more proof before believing in legends like these?"

"I just think we need to keep an open mind and consider all the options," you advocated. "That's what science is. Collecting evidence and drawing conclusions from it. And right now, we have no evidence either way."

Furrowing my eyebrows, I drew a breath and tried to establish whether you were teasing me.

"We're not just talking about faeries, here, though," I countered. "What about the witchcraft and magic that he talks about?"

"Define magic. I mean, there was a time where humans would have believed that being able to use a screen to see and talk to someone on the other side of the planet was magic," you insisted. "Switching on an electric light would look like sorcery to someone who came from a time before such things were invented. Who's to say that what someone calls magic isn't just some kind of advanced science that they don't understand yet? There might be a perfectly logical explanation for everything in that diary."

Although what you said made some sense, I remained sceptical.

"I understand," I acknowledged.

You raised an eyebrow, evidently able to tell that I hadn't been entirely swayed.

"I guess there could be other reasons for such a narrative," you ventured. "Maybe he was dabbling with the idea of writing fiction in the style of a diary."

I considered your suggestion. Carefully, I re-opened the delicate journal and read through several sections of the text again before answering.

"No," I decided after contemplating what I'd just read and integrating it with my knowledge of historical literature. "The first known fictional diary was published in the late nineteenth century. I appreciate that this could have been an earlier version before such writing styles gained popularity, but I think it's unlikely, given the tone in which it's written. Besides, the year in which this account has been written is 1823. Doesn't that align with the year in which there was a fire that destroyed the house that used to stand over there?"

I motioned towards the nearby patch of derelict land that had come as part of the farmhouse property acquired by your family.

"Yeah, that's right," you confirmed.

"So, given where the journal was found and the dates involved, I suspect that must have been the fire that he survived," I mused. "And I doubt someone from that era would base a work of fiction so closely on fact in this way. I think it's more likely that this man, Cormac Brogan, believed everything he was writing."

You looked perplexed.

"So, you don't believe this text is necessarily factual, but you think Cormac had reason to think it was the truth?"

"I think it's possible," I speculated. "Being trapped in a fire like that will have been an exceedingly traumatic experience, and I'm pretty sure that in extreme cases, PTSD can affect memory and cause delusions. Perhaps this may be why Cormac's writing appears to be sincere in its tone. Maybe it's broadly based on a truth which has subsequently been subconsciously threaded with elements of myth and religion."

"I'd usually say that there's no smoke without fire, but I can see how this could have arisen as a symptom of PTSD," you conceded.

"I think that's probably the explanation that makes the most sense to me," I confirmed as I flicked to the first page of the diary and took out my phone. "Do you mind if I take pictures of each of the pages so that I can read this again later?"

"Of course not! Take as many pictures as you like," you urged.

Exhilarated, I opened my camera application and started snapping photographs of each of the individual pages of the fragile notebook. After recording the final sheet of writing to my phone, I started to turn each of the remaining pages over carefully, just in case I'd overlooked anything during my previous riffle through the journal.

I was pleased I did, because I came across some interesting symbols towards the back of the diary that I had apparently missed before.

Each of the last few pages contained a small circle, or an occasional oval, which were consistently drawn next to a thick, shaded line. Their positions relative to each other were slightly different on each sheet, and yet they were always situated in the bottom right corner of each page.

Sadly, I was unable to decipher their purpose, but I captured the images with my phone anyway, just in case I was able to make sense of them later.

"What have you found?"

I could hear the curiosity in your tone as you leaned into me for a closer look.

"I'm not entirely sure," I admitted as I continued with my task. "They may just be abstract doodles."

"You think?" Your tone suggested you weren't convinced, and I could see that you were scrutinising the squiggles carefully over my shoulder. "There are quite a few of them and they seem to be in some kind of pattern. And I'm pretty sure you think so too, or you wouldn't be taking so many pictures of them."

I sighed. You knew me too well.

"I have a feeling that I've seen something similar before," I confessed. "I just can't quite put my finger on why they look familiar right now. I'm hoping it might come to me at some point, and if that happens, I'm going to want to be able to review these markings."

"I'm so curious." You looked at me and grinned. "When you figure it out, you'll have to tell me what they mean."

"If I work it out," I rectified, as I turned to the final page. "Then, yes, of course I'll tell you. Oh, hang on, what's this?"

The final leaf in the journal looked like it contained an additional note.

"You've found something else?" you probed, but without waiting for an answer, you moved back into a position where you could see inside the book.

"Yeah, I think so," I confirmed, turning the manuscript so that we could both get a view of it.

Cautiously, I exposed the page fully so that I could read what it said aloud.

"I have faith that one day this book will find its way into the hands of the one whose name means 'Fire King.' When that day comes, he will know where to look and what to do. Until then, I wait for him to find me once more."