short fiction · 2026-10-15

Branching Patterns

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet lab, dendrites reach like tributaries seeking the sea. Each branch splits again, a fractal echo of deltas where rivers meet the ocean. Thought flows in these channels, ions instead of water, yet the pattern persists—branching to increase surface, to capture more signal, more sediment. The brain is a landscape carved by electricity, neurons shaping their own terrain through use, much as water sculpts stone. We are both the river and the bed, constantly remapping our inner geography.