short-Stories

Elias Rowan traced the final stroke of his quill across the parchment, exhaling a breath that felt heavier than usual. Before him lay a map unlike any he'd ever drawn: not of rivers or mountains, but of emotions—an atlas of feelings he'd been compiling for years. Joy curled through golden hills, sorrow pooled in indigo lakes, and curiosity swirled across borderlands like a restless breeze. Yet there remained an uncharted territory on the eastern edge of the page, a blank expanse Elias had labeled only as "The Weight of Absence."

He dipped his quill into ebony ink, poised to define this emptiness, this place where longing and loss entwined. But the thought alone tugged at his chest, and the line wavered before it could form. How could one illustrate a void?

The sun rose pale in the sky as Elias left his modest cottage on the outskirts of Lyrrow, the kingdom's labyrinthine capital. In his leather satchel rested the parchment map, fragile yet irrefutable proof of human inner landscapes. Word had reached him of travelers stumbling into that same blank region—wandering off paths only to vanish. Scholars whispered of curses; priests murmured of forbidden magic. To Elias, it meant one thing: an undiscovered emotional frontier, and he was its first cartographer.

At the city gates he met Mareth, a messenger in vermilion robes whose eyes held both urgency and sorrow. "You have studied emotions all your life, Master Rowan. Will you help us?" he asked.

"Help with what?" Elias folded the map carefully.

"Children—our children—are disappearing," Mareth answered. "They speak of a place beyond sorrow, beyond fear… and then they are gone."

Elias's pulse quickened. A dozen times he had traced the borders between jealousy and desire, between nostalgia and regret, but never had his work caused such peril. "Show me," he said, gathering his satchel.

They traveled eastward, beyond the paved roads of Lyrrow, into forests where the trees whispered secrets and the air tasted of forgotten dreams. Mareth rode silently on a gray stallion, while Elias collected anecdotes from villagers: a mother weeping for her son who vanished mid-song; a fisherman who vanished at the shore, leaving his nets piled neatly as though he'd simply stepped away and never returned.

The map's blank region grew heavier in Elias's mind. He sketched tentative landmarks—"Hollow Rock," "Ashen Field," "Silent River"—but each name felt inadequate. How could a map capture the absence of presence?

On the third evening, by firelight, Mareth produced a crude stone figurine carved with a child's face. "This was found on the riverbank," he said. "He spoke of a garden where laughter blossomed on vines, then… nothing."

Elias stared at the figurine, its hollow eyes accusing him. "Absence," he murmured. "It does not merely lack feeling; it pulls feeling into itself."

Mareth frowned. "And you think you can fill it with… what? Paper and ink?"

"No," Elias shook his head. "We must enter it."

Before dawn, they reached a meadow woven with mist. In its center lay a doorframe—no door, only an arch of stone carved with runes too faint to read. Beyond lay a landscape bathed in gray light, as though all color had been drained.

Elias stepped through. The air felt cold and empty, like the moment between breaths. Mareth followed.

They found themselves in a silent orchard. Trees with glassy trunks bore fruit that shimmered with silent laughter. When Elias touched one, it dissolved into dust that drifted upward and vanished. He knelt to scoop the dust—but his hands passed through it, as though he were touching air.

"What is this place?" Mareth whispered.

"It is the territory of absence," Elias replied, voice hollow. "The place where things cease to exist."

They moved onward to a river of liquid twilight. Mareth reached for Elias's sleeve. "I'm…I'm scared."

Elias pressed a hand to his heart. "So am I."

At the river's edge lay dozens of footprints—small, childlike—leading into the water and vanishing. Mareth's eyes filled as he knelt. "My niece…she walked this way."

"There must be a spring," Elias said, rising. "Something sustains this terrain."

He followed the footprints upstream. The river narrowed, then vanished into a cavern. Within, the walls pulsed like living tissue, gray veins spreading outward in fractal patterns. In the cavern's center stood a pedestal bearing an orb of pale light: the Heart of Absence.

Elias felt his bones hum. The orb exuded a vacuum-like pull, drawing warmth and color from everything around it. He realized then that this heart was not malignant—it was fundamental. It existed in all beings, the space between what was and what might have been.

Mareth approached, tears streaking his face. "Release them," he whispered. "Our children."

Elias frowned. "I don't know how."

He extended a trembling hand to the orb. The mist pulsed. In his mind, he heard the children's laughter, distant and fading. "Absence grows when we forget," he murmured. "When we fail to remember who we love."

Drawing ink from his satchel, Elias uncorked the vial and let the black liquid drip onto the pedestal. The ink rippled, bleeding into the orb. He began to speak names—names of lost loved ones, names of things once cherished. Mareth joined, his voice quivering as he named his niece: "Elara…Brin…Mara…"

With each name, the orb flickered. Shadows danced across its surface as memories pushed back the void. Elias raised his quill and inscribed a tiny circle into the pedestal's stone, then flourished it with a small rune: 𖬙—the mark of remembrance.

The Heart of Absence pulsed violently, then shattered in a burst of light and silence. The cavern trembled and the river of twilight roared back to color. Through the mist, silhouettes emerged—children, blinking, as though waking from a dream.

Mareth caught his niece in his arms. "You're safe," he sobbed. The other children gathered around, clutching one another, their laughter genuine and unbroken.

Elias tucked the quill and vial away. "Absence is not just emptiness," he said softly. "It is the space we fill with memory and love."

They emerged back through the doorframe into the meadow, now vibrant with wildflowers. The arch behind them collapsed into stone dust. Mareth gathered the children and began the journey home.

Elias unrolled his parchment. In place of the blank expanse, he drew a tree whose roots intertwined with the surrounding emotions. Its branches reached skyward, each leaf inscribed with a name: Elara, Brin, Mara… And at the trunk's base, the rune 𖬙 glowed faintly.

He added the map to his growing atlas, labeling it "Region of Remembrance."

Days later, back in Lyrrow, scholars crowded Elias's modest study. They pointed to his map in awe. "You have charted what philosophers could not define," one exclaimed. "A place beyond emotion."

Elias smiled wearily. "Not beyond emotion, but beneath it—the space that holds emotion together. We all have it. Now we know how to honor it."

A young scholar leaned forward. "Will you lead an expedition?"

Elias shook his head. "There's no need. The region lives within each heart. To journey there, you need only the courage to name what you've lost and remember what you've loved."

He rolled up the atlas and set aside his quill. Outside his window, the city bustled with new life—lovers reunited, families healed, artists inspired by the concept of absence-turned-remembrance.

Elias nodded to himself. The maps he would draw next had become clear: charts of gratitude, highways of forgiveness, even constellations of second chances. But none would surpass the Region of Remembrance, the blank space he had filled with memory and hope.

In his heart, Elias felt a gentle warmth where once there had been an ache. He stood and stretched, ready to shape the next map. And somewhere, in countless hearts across the kingdom, the rune 𖬙 glowed warmly, a testament to the power of remembering.