short fiction · 2026-10-26

The Memory Exchange

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

On a rain‑slick street, an old woman offered her first memory — the taste of wild strawberries at age seven — to a stranger who asked for it in exchange for a handful of copper coins. The stranger pocketed the flavor, his eyes widening as the scent lingered; when he later returned with a jar of his own, he found that the memory had turned into a quiet hum in his chest, a reminder that some gifts cannot be counted.