short fiction · 2026-11-02

The Ledger's First Word

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

Brother Simeon had not spoken in forty-three years. Not since the night the scriptorium burned and he pulled three novices from the flames, his throat seared by smoke and something the healers called "divine retribution" but the abbot called "mercy."

The ledger sat in the cell's single shaft of noon light, its vellum pages yellowed at the edges, ink faded to the color of dried blood. Forty-three years of entries. Forty-three years of numbers: grain yields, tithes collected, deaths recorded, births noted. The arithmetic of a monastery that had forgotten how to pray.

He turned to the first page. His own hand, steady then, had written a single word before the columns began.

Listen.

Not record. Not count. Not obey.

The word had waited four decades, buried beneath bushels and burial fees, beneath the careful accounting of a world that measured worth in weight and coin. Now it rose from the page like incense, like smoke, like the breath he had thought lost forever.

Outside, the bell tolled for vespers. Inside, Brother Simeon picked up his quill, dipped it in ink the color of midnight, and wrote beneath that first word:

I am still here.

The ledger did not balance. It never had. But for the first time in forty-three years, it told the truth.