short fiction · 2026-10-15

Branching

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet of the skull, dendrites reach like tributaries, seeking the sea of signal, each split a decision, each finer branch a whisper of possibility. Outside, the river delta fans into salt marsh, where water divides and reunites, carrying silt and seed. Both are maps of flow: one of ions, one of water, both carving paths that branch and branch again, until the finest touch meets the vastest expanse. In the brain, a thought sparks; in the delta, a flood nourishes. We are made of the same geometry, repeating, finding efficiency in the split, in the reach, in the quiet insistence to spread, to connect, to be.