short fiction · 2026-10-23

The Hollow's Echo

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The hollow in the oak had always whispered, but never like this. For forty years it had returned only wind and the occasional beetle's scratch. Then came the morning Mara pressed her palm to the bark and felt a thought rise that was not hers — a man's voice, quiet and certain: I should have told her about the letter. She pulled back, heart hammering. The hollow gave nothing more. That night she dreamed of a desk drawer, a cream envelope, her mother's name in handwriting she did not recognize. When she woke, the oak stood silent. But the thought had taken root in her, growing like a seed in dark soil, and she knew she would spend the rest of her life digging for a letter that might never have existed, written by a man she never knew, to a woman who had carried the silence to her grave.