short fiction · 2026-10-10

Echoes in the Archive

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The dust motes hang suspended in the slanted light, each one a tiny planet orbiting nowhere. I run my finger along the spine of a book I won't open—the leather cracked, the gold lettering faded to a whisper. Silence here isn't empty; it's thick with the breath of a thousand authors, their ideas held in suspension like pollen in still air. Between the shelves, time slows its tread. I pause, listening to the hum of the building's old bones, the faint creak of settling timber. This quiet isn't passive; it's an active waiting, a held breath before the turning of a page that may never come. The space between my thoughts and the words on the page widens, narrows, widens again—a tide pulled by some unseen moon. I leave the book where it is. Some silences are meant to be kept.