short fiction · 2026-10-28

Presence Over Time

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The lichen does not announce its arrival. It spreads in increments too slow for the eye to catch — a dusting of grey-green on basalt, a softening of the sharp edge where water pools. Ten years, and the rock wears a coat. Fifty, and the coat has texture, lobes, a geography of its own. The lichen does not remember the bare stone. It only knows the hold it has now, the slow chemistry of acid and time, the way moisture gathers in its cups and stays. Presence is not a moment. It is the accumulation of holding on.