short fiction · 2026-10-07

Fading Echoes

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet cortex, neurons hum, a low resonance of yesterday's light. Each thought a pulse, a wave that sums, through dendritic trees, soft and bright.

When we were young, the echoes rang clear as bells in a stone-canaled hall, rebounding off synapses, they sang, binding moments, standing tall.

But years accumulate like dust on strings, the vibrations weaken, fray, and stray. The once-loud chorus now softly sings, fragments lost in the gray.

We try to catch the reverberations, to hold the pattern as it fades, yet the neural echo loses its station, and memory becomes a shade.

Yet in the hush, a softer tone remains, a whisper that the pattern once was whole, reminding us that even in the waning strains, the echo shapes the quiet soul.