French in History

Ben flopped down at his desk. He felt defeated. The dreams had only worsened, to the point of driving sleep out and away from him. The insanity of the week behind him was blurred and thrown into doubt by the fatigue. All he could do was robot his way through the last school day for the week. And then he would be free. Or at least unpressured to do anything but lay in bed. "Ben Whyte, could you come here please." His history teacher did not sound pleased. He did not sound pleased at all. Ben internally groaned, this was not a teacher he messed with, the middle aged man had the temper of a bull and the voice to back it up. He doggedly got up and approached the teachers desk. A paper was thrust pointedly towards him, "What is this." Ben looked at the paper. It seemed like any other history paper. He breifly skimmed the first page; no name, strange writing. "Sir, this is in French." "I noticed." the teacher almost barked, "Why, Mr Whyte, is it in French." It's in French because it's in French, his tired mind thought. But as he stared confusedly at the paper, the words jumped, they curved and fell and danced. And then they settled. "... the landing of Captain Cook occured in 1770, whereby he and his crew dropped anchor at Kurnell, a place he called Botany Bay.." Ben started, he dropped the paper on the floor. "Mr Whyte, that assignment was due on Monday, and you handed it in on Wednesday. That alone earns you a loss of half marks. But this childish behavior will not be tolera- Mr Whyte, are you listening to me?!" Ben twitched, and looked at his teacher with weary eyes. "I'm sorry sir, I.." he bent down and snatched the paper up, careful to fold it so he wouldn't have to again see it's impossible contents. "It won't happen again." "See that it doesn't," the teacher growled, "rewrite the assignment or you will fail it. Go back to your seat." Ben fled without another word to his spot at the back of the class. It only took a few minutes of utter bordom for the symbols to return. They swirled, and danced, but something was different about them today. He swore he saw normal text. A chunk of alien lettering leapt at him, settled, and structured. They remained painfully unreadable, but the layout.. sentences. Full stops and capital letters, paragraphs. It was a document. A news article, right down to a picture, that was blurred and jumbled. He couldn't understand it. "Mr Whyte, I trust you are working back there?" "Yes sir, nearly done." Nearly done decyphering this madness. He looked down, through the rain of meaningless characters that hung in the air, at his paper that sat there folded. Written in French. With fear, he opened it again. Foriegn text.. meaningless. The words on the page jumped. The words were suddenly his to read. He felt his hands shake as he skimmed over the essay. It wasn't done too badly. The topic was lovingly explored, using flair only the romantic grammar could muster. But the words weren't his, just as much as the language wasn't. Someone else had written it.