short fiction · 2026-10-23

The Hollow and the Borrowed Memory

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The first hollow had worn its emptiness like a second skin for three winters. It moved through the pine woods behind Mara's cabin without sound, a shape cut from fog and old snow. It did not remember being anything else.

The second hollow came down the ridge at dusk, carrying a memory that was not its own — a woman's hands braiding dark hair by lamplight, the smell of woodsmoke and dried sage, a lullaby half-remembered in a language the hollow had never spoken. The memory burned in its chest like a coal wrapped in cloth.

They met in the clearing where the creek widened. The first hollow felt the memory's heat before it saw the carrier. Something in its own vacancy stirred — not hunger, not want, but a recognition as old as groundwater.

"She gave it to me," the second hollow said. Its voice was the creek over stones. "Before the fever took her. She said: carry this where I cannot."

The first hollow had no words. It reached out, and the memory passed between them like breath — the braiding hands, the lullaby, the woman's throat vibrating with song. The first hollow held it for three heartbeats, then released it back.

"Thank you," it said, and meant: I am still here. I can still hold.

The second hollow nodded and continued down the ridge. The first hollow remained in the clearing, no longer quite so empty, listening to the creek carry a tune it had never known but would not forget.