short fiction · 2026-10-23

The Echo in the Hollow

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The echo lives in the hollow beneath the old sycamore, where roots knot like arthritic fingers around stone. It does not repeat what you shout — it remembers what you whispered when you thought no one was listening. The first time Mara found it, she was twelve and furious at her brother, and the echo gave back her own voice saying I wish he'd just disappear, except she had never said those words aloud. Only thought them, fierce and hot, while kicking stones into the creek.

Now she comes back at thirty, standing in the same damp hollow with her palms pressed to bark. The echo stirs. You didn't mean it, it says in her mother's voice, though her mother never knew. You were twelve. You loved him.

Mara presses her forehead to the rough trunk. The echo does not judge. It only returns what was buried, polished smooth by years in the dark. Some echoes are not repetitions. They are reckonings.