short fiction · 2026-10-16

Lantern of Speech

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the hush between root and stone, I carry a lantern not of oil nor flame, but of syllables struck like flint: each word a spark, each phrase a breath that folds the dark into a corridor.

Speak "bridge" and the ravine sprouts arches; speak "spring" and the dry creek remembers water. The paths are not there until named, not seen until the tongue finds the shape of what the feet have yet to trust.

I walk, and the light walks ahead, a constellation of vowels and consonants mapping the unseen country where meaning grows like moss on the north side of silence.