Mira emerged from the forest into a place unlike anything she had seen.
It was not land, nor sky — but a vast, floating expanse of fractured memories, suspended like glowing glass shards in midair. Some shimmered with warmth, others flickered with pain.
A single figure stood at the center, hammering delicately at a memory shard with a tool made of light and silence. Sparks flew — whispers, laughter, echoes of the past.
The cat bowed low. "The Memorysmith."
The figure turned. They wore no face — only shifting impressions, as if made of memory itself.
"You've come far, Mira," the Memorysmith spoke, voice like a hundred stories layered into one. "But there's one truth left to craft. Yours."
He gestured. Before Mira, a broken shard hovered — a forgotten memory. She stepped closer.
It showed her as a child… crying alone under a tree, clutching a book, surrounded by laughter that wasn't hers.
"I remember this," she whispered. "I told myself it didn't matter."
"But it did," said the Smith. "You buried it. And it grew into silence."
Mira reached out, tears in her eyes, and touched the shard. It melted into her palm, merging.
She remembered the pain.
Then the resilience.
Then the story she wrote from it.
The Smith handed her a chisel of silver.
"You are not just the sum of memories," he said. "You are the author."
Mira raised the chisel.
And she began to carve her own shard — a new memory, built from truth, strength, and possibility.
When it was done, it glowed brighter than the rest. The Smith nodded and opened his hands — the fragments around them swirled, reshaping into a bridge.
"Walk forward, Storykeeper."
Mira turned, a quiet fire in her heart.
The past was hers.
Now — so was the future.
(Fun stories by Gabrielle Ehi).