2025.11.10
Jane walked over the threshold between waking and forgetting. Each night, she wandered the corridors of half-remembered dreams, collecting sounds that had drifted far from their owners. They came to her as faint murmurs—fragments of confessions, lullabies, last words whispered into pillows. He preserved them in small glass jars that glowed faintly when held up to the light, as if the breath inside them still remembered being alive.
His work was not to restore what was lost, but to lead to his quiet perseverance. He believed that the voices did not seek return – only recognition. Some spoke of happiness buried under decades of routine. Others made grief so old that it had forgotten its cause. Jane never decided. He just listened, his own pulse slowing to match the unseen rhythm.
There were nights when the vessels would spin in unison, and Jane would feel her buzzing in her chest. Then, for a brief moment, the boundaries between himself and the gathering would blur, and he would remember that he too was a voice that once whispered into existence.
Early in the morning, he released a vessel into the mist, letting it find its way into the silence. The rest he held on to, knowing that remembering was not a burden but a form of care—a reflex-blocking process that refused to end.