short fiction · 2026-10-07

When the River Took the Signs

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

At dawn, the scribe laid his final glyph upon the stone — a sigil for remembrance, sharp and black against the granite. By noon, the sky had wept. Each stroke softened, edges bleeding into the stone's pores, the verticals leaning like reeds in a current, the curves surrendering to the slow seep of moisture. He did not reach for his chisel again. Instead, he sat and watched the watercolor of meaning spread outward, a halo of gray where certainty had been. What remained was not the sign but its echo in the stone, a faintness that could be read only by touching, only by pressing a fingertip to the damp and feeling the ghost of a shape that had chosen to dissolve rather than resist.