short fiction · 2026-10-16

The Lantern's Whisper

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the attic room, Elara tended the brass lantern whose flame answered to her words. Each morning she lit it with a promise: to speak only what she knew. When she hesitated over the broken vase, the light dipped, a soft sigh in the glass. She confessed the cat's mischief, and the flame steadied, golden. But when she withheld the letter's true sender, the glow faltered, shadows crawling up the walls. The lantern did not judge; it merely reflected, a quiet witness to the weight of what went unsaid.