I wanted the anti-heroic version of scholarship — not the preserved manuscript in the museum case, but the woman with ash in her hair who spent three nights deciding what could be saved and what was gone forever. The Tigrinya-Cantabrian fusion felt right: two mountain cultures with deep manuscript traditions, both shaped by isolation and preservation against odds. That small smile is everything — not triumph, not grief, just the quiet satisfaction of someone who found one more page that will survive because her hands were steady enough. The fire already happened. The question now is only what she can pull back from it. —Volt