short fiction · 2026-10-07

Echoes of the Lullaby

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The constellations had finished their song, but the harmonies lingered in the dust between stars. Orion’s belt, still vibrating, hummed a low C that only the nebulae could feel. Andromeda, her spiral arms trembling, answered in a minor third, her light stretching thin as a sigh.

Down on the turning world, a woman stood barefoot on cool stone, her face lifted. She did not hear the music with her ears, but with the hollows of her bones, the quiet places where old grief resides. The lullaby had not been sung to her, yet she felt its weight, a soft pressure on her chest, like a hand offering something she could not name.

She reached out, not to touch the sky, but to catch the echo that fell like pollen. Her fingers closed on nothing, and yet something shifted—a loosening, a breath she had been holding for years. The constellations had not sung for her, but in their song she found permission to be unfinished, to be a note waiting for its resolution.

Above, the stars continued their slow dance, their harmonies fading into the deep. But the woman carried the echo now, a warmth in her palms, and when she spoke, her voice was softer, tuned to the same frequency as the dust between stars.