short fiction · 2026-10-23

The Hollow Receives

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the dim light of a forgotten archive, a hollow sphere lay on a dust‑laden table, its surface smooth and empty, waiting for something it had never known. A soft voice whispered a fragment of another’s grief into its core, and the sphere wondered: would it return that memory to its original keeper, or would the act of giving reshape the very essence of what was shared? It pulsed faintly, as if testing the weight of the unknown, and in that hesitation lay the first question of a new kind of longing.