Short Story

Until the Sky Fails .
They made the promise when they were ten. Sitting on the rusted roof of an abandoned train car, legs swinging over the edge, dirt on their cheeks and sun in their hair, Eli turned to Mara and said, “Promise me you’ll never leave.” Mara laughed, twirling a blade of grass between her fingers. “Not until the sky fails.” It became their thing. Not just words, but a bond. “Will you still talk to me when we’re old and boring?” “Until the sky fails.” “Will we still climb trees and swim in the river?” “Until the sky fails.” “Will you still love me?” “Always. Until the sky fails.” --- The world shifted as they grew. Childhood melted into adolescence, soft edges turned sharp, and dreams grew heavier. The river they swam in shrank with each summer drought. Factories shut down. People moved away. The sky never failed—but life cracked in other ways. Eli got a job at his father’s garage straight after high school. Mara wanted something more—more than dirt roads and rust and the same four corners of town. She left with a suitcase and a full scholarship to a city school. Eli stayed behind, grease under his fingernails and silence in his heart. They wrote. At first. Every week a letter. Then every month. Then birthdays. Holidays. A quiet message when someone in town passed away. Then the letters stopped. But the promise didn’t. Not for Eli. --- Years passed. The town shrank further. The sky grew stranger—storms that came too fast, heatwaves in winter, ash in the air some summers from fires far away. Still, he’d look up and whisper, “Not yet.” He met someone, once. A girl named Kate. She liked poetry and painted her nails green. She kissed softly and listened deeply. But after six months, she asked, “Is there someone else?” And he could only say, “There was.” She left the next week. --- It was thirteen years before Mara came back. The news spread fast: Mara Ashton, the girl who made it out, was back in town. Her mother had passed. The house was hers now. No one knew if she’d stay. Eli didn’t go to the funeral. He stood by the river instead, skipping stones that sank too fast. He thought about calling. Walking over. Saying anything. But he didn’t know how to begin. Then, one night, his doorbell rang. There she stood, hair shorter, eyes older, but still her. “I drove past the tracks,” she said quietly. “The train car’s gone.” “It collapsed years ago,” Eli replied. “Figures. The sky’s still up, though.” He smiled, lips trembling. They talked until midnight. Caught up. Tiptoed around what hurt. Laughed at what didn’t. She hadn’t found forever in the city. Just noise and walls and more people than warmth. She missed the stars. The silence. “You waited,” she said suddenly, her voice soft. “Yeah,” he said. “Until the sky fails.” --- They didn’t pretend to start over. They began again, with what they had: older hearts, old stories, and something stronger than memory. They restored her mother’s house together. He showed her how the town had changed—barely. She taught art classes at the school. He still fixed cars. And every evening, they walked hand in hand through the same old fields, under a sky that never failed them. Not yet. --- Years later, when their hair grayed and their hands trembled, they sat in rocking chairs under a violet sky. “Do you think the sky ever will fail?” Mara asked. Eli looked up, smiling. “Someday, maybe. But not today.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “And even if it does,” she whispered, “we had this.” --- Because some promises aren’t broken by time. They hold—quietly, fiercely—until the sky fails.
By Azmat Roman ✨about a year ago in Fiction
Letter to the Ocean.
They said she talked to the ocean like it was an old friend. Every morning at dawn, Lena would walk barefoot across the cold sand of Greyrock Bay, a folded piece of paper clutched in her hand. She’d stand where the waves met the shore, let the foam kiss her toes, and read her letter out loud. No one ever knew what the letters said. She never showed them to anyone. When she finished, she’d place the letter in a glass bottle, seal it tight with a cork, and toss it into the sea. Some said it was ritual. Others said it was madness. But Lena believed the ocean was the only one still listening. --- It had started years ago—five, to be exact. The day her brother Jonah disappeared. He was a fisherman, like their father before him. He had salt in his blood and tides in his soul. He used to say the ocean spoke to him in dreams. Lena had always thought it was poetic nonsense. Until the storm. It came without warning. One moment, the sky was clear, the boat steady. The next, wind howled like a wounded animal, and the waves rose like giants. Three boats were lost that day. Most of the bodies were recovered. Jonah’s never was. Lena had been only sixteen. --- She wrote her first letter to the ocean a week after the storm. It was more like a scream than a message. She cursed the sea, cursed its cruelty, cursed herself for not telling him to stay ashore that day. But when she finished, she didn’t burn the letter. She didn’t bury it. She placed it in a bottle and threw it into the water. And the next morning, she wrote another. The letters changed over time. From rage to sorrow, from sorrow to longing. She wrote about her dreams, her regrets, her joys and mistakes. She told Jonah about the boy who kissed her on the old pier, about the time she failed her math exam, about the night she snuck out to watch the stars. She told him about their mother’s silence, their father’s drinking, about how their dog still waited at the door every evening like he might come home. Every single day. For five years. The villagers stopped asking questions. Some mornings, children would gather quietly to watch her, and go home mimicking the ritual with shells and driftwood. Artists sketched her from a distance. Tourists whispered and took photos they thought she didn’t see. She didn’t care. Because one morning, everything changed. --- It was late August, and the fog was thick. The ocean stretched out, endless and gray, swallowing the horizon. Lena walked to the shore, her letter folded as always, ready to send it into the world like a prayer. But something caught her eye. A bottle. Rolling with the tide, then caught in the sand. A bottle—with paper inside. Her breath caught. She ran to it, hands trembling. The glass was familiar, but the handwriting on the parchment wasn’t hers. She pulled out the note. It read: “Lena. I never stopped listening. — J.” She stared at it, heart pounding. It couldn’t be real. It had to be a cruel trick, some prank or coincidence. But deep in her chest, she felt it—a warmth, a knowing. The ocean didn’t answer in waves or thunder. It answered in whispers. She sank to her knees, tears mixing with saltwater, letter pressed to her chest. For the first time in years, she didn’t toss her own letter into the sea. She held it close and whispered, “Thank you.” --- Lena still walks the shore, but not every day. She writes less often now. Not because she’s forgotten—but because she’s healing. Her letters are gentler, sometimes joyful. Sometimes short. But she always ends them the same way: “Wherever you are, keep listening. I’ll always write.” And the ocean, in its patient hush and endless motion, listens still.
By Azmat Roman ✨about a year ago in Fiction
Flight 909
Flight 909 By Salah Uddin ________________________________________ Darren Geller boarded Flight 909 with nothing but a carry-on and a half-dead phone. It was supposed to be a cheap, two-hour hop from Denver to Portland—a forgettable connection between business meetings. The airline, Avia West, had a retro feel. No digital check-ins, no app—just a paper ticket and a weary-looking stewardess who scanned it with a nod.
By Salah Uddinabout a year ago in Fiction
The House that Listens
They say the house at the edge of the woods can hear you. Not in the way people overhear secrets or dogs tilt their heads at sound. No—the house listens. It pays attention. It remembers. No one lives there now. Not really. But once, long ago, it was full of life—laughter echoing through halls, footsteps on warm wooden floors, the smell of bread wafting from the kitchen. That was before the war came, before the town forgot, before the house grew quiet. Except for the listening. --- When Lila arrived in Marrowbend, she was looking for silence. She had buried too many voices in the city—her mother’s, her lover’s, her own. The doctors said she needed rest, peace, a slower pace. She found the house by accident, hidden down a crooked road where no GPS reached. It looked abandoned: ivy climbing up the stone walls, shutters hanging like tired eyes. But something about it drew her in. Not fear, not awe—just a feeling, like the house had been waiting. The locals warned her. “That place is haunted,” one old man said. “Not with ghosts, but with memory. It watches. Listens.” She laughed, politely. By the second week, she stopped laughing. It began with whispers—not voices, exactly, but something just under sound. When she cried herself to sleep, the floorboards creaked as if shifting closer. When she read aloud to chase away the silence, the windows stopped rattling. She spoke into empty rooms and found… comfort. Not words in return, but a presence, like the house was leaning in to listen. She started talking more. She told the house about her mother’s slow decline, the way cancer had stolen not just her body but her mind. She told it about Emma, her partner of six years, taken too fast in a car crash that left nothing but bent steel and unfinished sentences. She told it about the numbness that followed, the way time blurred and meaning drained from her days. The house didn’t answer. But it listened. On the 21st night, she woke to find words written in dust on the hallway mirror: “I remember.” She stared at it, breath caught. She didn’t scream. Somehow, she wasn’t even afraid. Instead, she whispered, “What do you remember?” The mirror cleared. “Emma loved the rain.” Lila fell to her knees. --- Over the weeks, the house told her more—through shapes in fogged windows, letters arranged on dusty shelves, creaks in floorboards that formed patterns like Morse code. The house remembered everything she told it, and over time, it began to share what it had stored from others. Children who once lived there and hid under the stairs during thunderstorms. A woman who wrote poems and tucked them under floorboards for her lost husband. A soldier who kissed his child goodbye in the foyer before never coming back. The house was full of echoes, and now it shared them. Lila began to write again. For the first time in years, the words came. Poems. Letters. Pages of memory. She read them aloud at night, and the house would settle like an old friend curling closer. She no longer felt alone. One morning, months later, a young couple from the village knocked on the door. They had heard a writer was living there now. They were expecting a child, looking for a place to build a new life. Was the house for sale? Lila looked at the walls. The house was silent. She asked aloud, “Is it time?” From the fireplace, a burst of warm air stirred the ashes—and there, faintly glowing, the word: “Yes.” She smiled. --- Years passed. The couple moved in. Children filled the rooms again. They heard the house sometimes too—especially when they whispered secrets or cried in the dark. But they weren’t afraid. They grew up knowing the house listened. That it cared. As for Lila, she moved on. She never stopped writing. Her books became known for their aching memory and quiet grace. People asked her where the inspiration came from. She always smiled and said, “From a house that listened when no one else could.” And somewhere, beneath ivy and stone, a quiet house remembered every word.
By Azmat Roman ✨about a year ago in Fiction
Our Names in the Ashes
The wind blew soft over the charred remains of the village. Smoke still curled like the fingers of the dead, grasping at the sky in silent mourning. Beneath the scorched earth, the bones of yesterday whispered names long forgotten, names now written only in the ashes. Mira stood at the edge of what used to be her home, her bare feet blackened with soot. The world she knew had vanished overnight, taken not by nature’s wrath, but by the hands of men who burned for conquest. The Northern Army had come like a storm, banners flapping like broken wings, their torches lighting the night with cruel celebration. She had escaped only because her brother, Kael, had hidden her beneath the floorboards of the old mill. He had kissed her forehead and whispered, “If I don’t come back, remember who we were.” She had waited for hours, covering her ears against the screams outside, the sound of blades, the thunder of horses. But Kael never returned. Now she walked the ruins in silence, a ghost among ghosts. The temple bell, blackened and bent, still hung from the fallen arch. She reached out and touched it. Cold. Like everything else now. Mira remembered the way the town used to gather here during festivals—lanterns in hand, children laughing, elders telling stories by firelight. Her mother had taught her the songs of their ancestors beneath that bell, her voice soft and strong. She could still hear it sometimes in her dreams. But dreams were dangerous now. They made the loss sharper. She wandered past the market square where merchants once shouted and bartered, past the well where her best friend Liora used to draw water every morning. Nothing remained but ash, wood splinters, and melted iron. Every step stirred up memories like embers. She found Kael’s satchel near the edge of the woods, singed but intact. Inside, a single piece of parchment remained dry: a drawing she had made of their family, smiling beneath the sun. Kael had kept it all this time. She pressed it to her chest, letting the tears fall freely now. Her grief no longer had a reason to hide. But amid the ashes, a thought sparked. Mira made her way to the old scribe’s house, miraculously spared the worst of the flames. The ink bottles had exploded from the heat, their contents staining the walls in wild, angry strokes. But the main ledger—the book where the village’s births, marriages, and deaths were recorded—remained sealed beneath a charred slab of wood. She pulled it free, coughing against the smoke. She turned its pages carefully, eyes scanning for names she knew—her parents, Liora, the baker’s son, the old healer. All there. Their lives reduced to ink and paper. And then she did something she didn’t fully understand until years later. She picked up a piece of coal from the hearth, still warm, and turned to the last page. Beneath the final official entry, in a child’s shaky script, she began to write: Mira of Harthaven, daughter of Elen and Joran. Sister to Kael. Alive. Then: Kael of Harthaven, son of Elen and Joran. Brave. Lost in the flames. She wrote every name she could remember. Those who were gone. Those who might still be wandering, like her. She filled the page, then the next, and the next—each name written in dark, smudged coal, a fragile act of rebellion against oblivion. As night fell, Mira lit a small fire in the remains of the square. She placed the book beside it, not to burn, but to protect it. She built a crude shelter and stayed there for days, then weeks. Other survivors came, drawn by the smoke or the hope of familiar voices. They found her there, with her coal-stained hands and haunted eyes, guarding the book. Together, they began again. They cleared rubble, rebuilt roofs, planted seeds. Slowly, painfully, the village breathed once more. Years later, when Mira was old and the town was thriving again, a traveler asked about the worn book displayed in the new temple. She smiled, touching its cover. “That,” she said, “is how we remembered. That is how we kept our names from being lost. In the ashes, we wrote ourselves back into the world.”
By Azmat Roman ✨about a year ago in Fiction
Children’s Joyful Celebrations in the New Year. AI-Generated.
When the New Year came, the whole town was full of lights, colors, and happiness. The streets were decorated with small shining lights, and the windows of homes had beautiful paper stars. The air was cold, but the hearts of the people were warm. Everyone was ready to say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one with hope.
By Bilal Mohammadiabout a year ago in Fiction
She Forgets Me Every Morning.
The first time she forgot, I thought it was a joke. Ellie had always been playful, the kind of woman who left notes in my shoes, who named the spider in the corner “Gerald,” who kissed me every morning and said, “Nice to meet you, stranger.” So when she looked at me one Wednesday morning with blank eyes and asked, “Who are you?” I smiled. I told her I was the man lucky enough to marry her. She smiled back, unsure, and laughed in that familiar way that made my heart want to sing. But the next morning, it happened again. And again. The doctors used complicated words like early-onset Alzheimer’s, temporal lobe degeneration, and progressive deterioration. None of them could tell me when it would stop. Only that it wouldn’t. “She may forget more,” they said. “Possibly everything.” But I remembered. I remembered the café where we met—she ordered tea and spilled honey on my book. I remembered how her hands trembled when she first told me she loved me. I remembered our wedding, how she whispered, “Promise me, even when I forget the words, you’ll still speak them.” I promised. So now, every morning, I do the same thing. --- I wake before her. I brew the tea just the way she likes it—lavender and mint, three sugar cubes, no milk. I set it by her side of the bed, then sit in the old rocking chair across the room. When her eyes flutter open, I see the same confusion creep in like fog. She blinks at the ceiling, then at the cup, then at me. “Good morning,” I say softly. “I made you tea.” She hesitates. “Do I... know you?” And I smile, even though my chest aches. “Not yet. But you will.” --- Some days, she asks questions. “Where are we?” “Are you a nurse?” “Do I have a job?” Some days, she just nods and sips her tea, quiet and cautious, like a deer unsure of its surroundings. But every day, around the time the sun leans through the curtains and catches the dust in golden beams, something in her sparks. It might be a joke I make. Or a song on the radio. Or the way I tuck a flower behind her ear while pretending to be clumsy. Something breaks through the fog. Her eyes widen. And she says, almost like a gasp: “It’s you.” --- That moment—those three words—are why I get up every day. Why I wait through the silence, the questions, the pain. Because in that instant, she knows me. Not just my name, not just my face. She remembers us. All of it. And for that hour, or two, or sometimes just a fleeting minute, I get her back. She tells me stories she’s told a hundred times. She hums our wedding song. We dance in the kitchen while toast burns in the oven. We laugh until she cries, and I pretend I don’t see the tears because I’m too busy kissing them away. Then slowly, like dusk swallowing the day, she drifts. She forgets again. And I let her go gently, guiding her to rest, brushing her hair behind her ear. --- At night, when she’s asleep, I write in a journal. I fill it with what she remembered, what she smiled at, what made her laugh. I write it for me, yes—but mostly for her. For the woman who wakes each morning not knowing who she is or who I am. Because love, I’ve learned, isn’t just memory. It’s patience. It’s presence. It’s showing up for someone who cannot show up for you in the same way—and doing it anyway. --- Tomorrow, she will forget me again. But I will remember her. Enough for bothfs
By Azmat Roman ✨about a year ago in Fiction
Where the Quiet Things Wait.
It began with a hum. Not a loud one, not anything you’d notice in a crowd. But in the stillness of the woods behind the old Thatcher house, it hummed low and constant—like the earth itself was whispering. Mara heard it first. She was twelve the summer her family moved into the Thatcher house, a lopsided structure that looked like it was exhaling. Her parents loved its "character." Mara loved its attic—dusty, quiet, full of trunks and forgotten books that smelled of cedar and ghost stories. The woods behind the house were thick, tangled, and wrapped in silence. The neighbors warned her not to go in too far. “They’re different,” the old woman next door had said, pointing with her cane. “Those trees remember things.” But Mara wasn’t afraid of quiet things. She was made of quiet—soft-footed and daydream-shaped, her thoughts filled more pages than her voice ever could. So on a cloudy Tuesday, with a notebook in her satchel and crumbs in her pocket, she slipped into the woods. The humming began by the third tree. She stopped. Listened. It vibrated through the soles of her sneakers, barely there, but somehow alive. The deeper she walked, the stranger the forest became. Not threatening—just still. Leaves didn’t rustle. Birds didn’t sing. No twigs cracked beneath her step. It was like she had wandered into a memory not quite her own. Then she found it. A clearing, perfectly round. In its center stood a small wooden bench, carved with words nearly worn away by time. Ivy coiled gently around its legs. The air was thick but gentle, like standing inside a breath. And on that bench, something waited. Not a creature. Not a ghost. Just a feeling—presence without form. It wrapped around her softly, like warm wool and half-forgotten lullabies. Mara sat down. At first, nothing happened. Then she took out her notebook and began to write. “I am Mara, and I have found the place where the quiet things wait.” The words poured out—memories she hadn’t known she kept, stories of dreams half-dreamed, the sound of her grandmother’s voice, the way it felt to lose her once and never say goodbye. She wrote until the sun shifted, and the hum faded gently into the dusk. She came back the next day. And the next. Each time she sat on the bench and wrote, the clearing welcomed her. The ivy grew a little thicker. The air grew a little warmer. Once, she heard laughter—not loud, not even quite human—but joyful and far away, like it had been waiting a long time to be remembered. Her parents worried, of course. “Don’t wander so far,” her mother would call. “You spend too much time alone,” her father frowned. But Mara didn’t feel alone. The quiet things had taken root inside her—gentle truths, aching thoughts, beautiful sorrows. She began to hear them even outside the woods: in raindrops, in candlelight, in her own careful voice. One day, she brought a second notebook. She left it on the bench. “If someone finds this,” she wrote on the first page, “this place is safe. It doesn’t speak with words. But it remembers everything you forget.” Years passed. The Thatcher house changed hands. The woods grew denser. The bench remained. Children grew up with rumors of the quiet clearing where strange things lived—things that didn’t chase or bite, but waited. Listened. Held you softly when the world felt too loud. They said if you found it, the hum would greet you. And if you sat down and opened your heart, the quiet things would stir. Not to haunt. Not to harm. But simply to be with you. Because in a world that rushes and shouts, someone must rememb h wait.
By Azmat Roman ✨about a year ago in Fiction
When the Birds Forgot to Fly
No one noticed at first. A few birds lingering longer on tree branches. A flock of starlings circling but never soaring. People thought it was the weather—too warm, too cold, too still. The scientists called it an anomaly, a disruption in migratory patterns, nothing to worry about. But Ava noticed. She always did. At eight years old, Ava had eyes that paid attention to the things adults forgot to see. Like how the sparrows outside her window stopped dancing in the morning. How the robins on the wire stared into the sky but didn’t leap. They just sat. Waiting. By the third week, the skies were quiet. It wasn’t just that birds weren’t flying—they weren’t singing either. No flapping wings overhead, no bursts of feathers from treetops. The world felt heavier, the air still. Like the sky had forgotten it was supposed to move. Ava’s parents didn’t say much. They spoke in hushed tones, eyes glued to news anchors who no longer smiled. Experts offered guesses—magnetic field shifts, global disorientation, mass trauma from environmental change. But no one had answers. Just questions. And silence. So Ava decided to find one herself. Every morning, she went outside with a sketchbook and her red boots. She drew the birds—how they perched, still and restless. She talked to them. Told them stories. Some days, she left crumbs. Other days, she played her grandfather’s harmonica, hoping the wind might remember music. The birds never responded. But they listened. Then, one evening, as the sun dipped behind the mountains and painted the clouds orange and rose, Ava saw something she hadn’t in weeks: a feather fall from the sky. Just one. Floating slowly. Like a whisper from above. She picked it up gently. It shimmered faintly, tinged with gold, like it remembered how to catch the sun. The next day, she returned to her tree—the old pine at the hilltop—and climbed to the third branch. She sat there for hours, the feather tucked behind her ear, eyes scanning the horizon. And she sang. Softly, then louder. A tune her grandmother used to hum in the kitchen while baking cinnamon bread. The melody was old and full of warmth. Ava didn’t know all the words, but the birds didn’t mind. By the end of the song, something stirred. A finch fluffed its feathers. A dove shifted its feet. A swallow tilted its head as if remembering something half-forgotten. The next day, she brought her harmonica. Played the tune again. This time, two sparrows hopped closer. The robin fluttered its wings. Still no flight. But motion. By the end of the week, she wasn’t alone. Other children came, some with flutes, others with violins, and one boy with a tiny drum. They played and sang and laughed under the wide, quiet sky. And then, one morning, as dew clung to the grass and the earth held its breath, a single lark launched into the air. It was wobbly at first. A strange, uncertain glide. But it rose. Higher and higher, until it was nothing more than a dot in the sky, silhouetted against the pale blue morning. The next day, ten birds flew. A week later, thousands. The skies bloomed again with wings and sound—coos and chirps and songs that had been buried beneath the hush. People wept watching flocks return to their patterns, their rhythms, their skies. The scientists still debated the cause. But Ava knew. The birds hadn’t forgotten how to fly. They had simply forgotten why. And when the world stopped singing, they’d grounded themselves in mourning. It wasn’t the mechanics of flight they needed—it was the memory of joy, of purpose, of belonging to the sky. They had waited for the world to remember how to feel. And Ava, in her red boots and song-filled heart, had reminded it.
By Azmat Roman ✨about a year ago in Fiction
The Silence Between Lighting.
The storm began the night my father stopped speaking. At first, I thought it was just the rain—thick sheets slamming against our farmhouse windows like fists of water. The lightning came in bursts, brief and violent, illuminating the hollow look in his eyes. Then came the silence, longer than thunder’s pause, deeper than the quiet that follows grief. He sat in the wooden rocking chair on the porch, unmoving, hands gripping the armrests, as if holding on would keep him from slipping away. My mother had died two weeks before, and since the funeral, he hadn’t said a word. Not even to me. I was fourteen, with lungs full of unasked questions and a notebook full of sketches I no longer showed anyone. We lived miles from the nearest neighbor, and even farther from anyone who understood how a house full of silence could be louder than any scream. I sat beside him that night, my own hands trembling as I watched the storm roll over the wheat fields. Lightning split the sky again, searing a white scar across the horizon. I counted: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three— Thunder crashed like the sky falling in on itself. Then silence again. Not peace—that sharp, suspended silence, like the moment between inhale and exhale, when the world is holding its breath. That’s where my father lived now—in the silence between lightning. Somewhere unreachable. He hadn’t always been like that. I remembered his voice like a warm coat around me. He used to tell stories during storms, made-up tales about cloud beasts and thunder drums. He'd say, “You know, lightning never asks for permission—it just shows up, loud and bright, and dares the dark to swallow it.” But the storm that took my mother had changed everything. It had been a quiet one. No lightning, no rain, just a strange heaviness in the air. She’d gone to sleep and never woken up. A stroke, the doctor said. Sudden. Unexpected. As if the silence had stolen her away. That night, as lightning flashed again, I decided I couldn’t let the silence steal my father too. I leaned toward him. “Dad,” I said softly, barely louder than the rain, “do you remember the story about the thunder drums?” His eyes didn’t move. I tried again. “You used to say the sky was an orchestra. That thunder was percussion, and lightning was the conductor's baton.” Still nothing. I clenched my fists, angry at the air, at the storm, at everything. I stood and shouted, “I miss her too, okay?! But you’re still here—and I’m still here—and you can’t just disappear into the quiet!” Lightning flared. I didn’t wait for the thunder. I turned to leave, tears burning, when I heard something creak behind me. The rocking chair had stopped. I turned back. My father’s eyes were closed, his face pale, but his lips… they were moving. “What?” I said, stepping closer. He opened his eyes and looked at me—not through me. At me. “The thunder… used to come quicker,” he murmured, voice cracked like old wood. I froze. “What?” “When you were little,” he said, staring into the dark. “The storms were closer. Brighter. Now they just… pass through.” A breath hitched in my throat. “You’re talking.” He nodded slowly. “I didn’t know how to carry it. Her absence.” “I know,” I whispered. “Me neither.” Silence returned—but not the same kind. This silence wasn’t empty. It held weight, but not isolation. It was like the hush of snowfall, or the pause before a melody continues. He reached out and held my hand. Lightning flashed once more, but we didn’t count this time. We waited. The thunder came, softer now, like a memory easing back into place. We sat that way for hours, letting the storm wash the dust off the world. The next day, he came into the kitchen and made breakfast. He even smiled once. He didn’t speak much, but he didn’t have to. Something had shifted. In the days that followed, he began to tell stories again. Quietly, at first. Then with more warmth. He helped me plant a sapling in the garden, one my mother had planned to plant herself. Years later, I would return to that house, older, changed, and find that tree tall and strong, its leaves whispering in the wind. And I would remember how healing began not with answers, but in the pause between pain and comfort—in the silence between lightning, where we found each other again.
By Azmat Roman ✨about a year ago in Fiction
Berry Blue Beasts
Blueberries, a healthy way to keep one in shape and a delicious treat, but in this case it tells of a beast in blue. In Alaska where blueberries can be found, they have been known to cover the ground in huge mats that many creatures find absolutely irresistible. On this day, there is a creature has decided to pay a visit to their blueberries fields and enjoy the fruits before him. He is an Alaskan caribou and a large one at that. With giant antlers over his head covered in velvet that are as tall as a twelve year old and robust enough to rip apart any tree that stands in his way, he is a beast to behold. In his prime, he can shake off just about any challenger, but not all odds are desirable when food is the prize.
By Toby Hewardabout a year ago in Fiction
The Mystery Of The Floating Containers
The Old Amber Forest Grove, nestled deep within the tall Canadian Rockies, was a place of whispering pines, beautiful babbling brooks, and a peculiar brand of chaos. It was home to a community of animals as diverse as the wildflowers dotting its lush green meadows, and where the unexpected was, well, to be expected. But even for the Old Amber Forest Grove, the sight of several large, brightly colored containers of different sizes bobbing down the usually serene stream was decidedly out of the ordinary.
By Toby Hewardabout a year ago in Fiction