It's Still Life

16 of 27 – Aetherskein: The Fragment: The Unseen Loom
Journal Entry: Beachy Head — 18 August, maybe 19, the moon doesn’t care

Where the Thread Ends Twice

A ribbon slips ashore at Brigid’s feet — opal-lilac, sea-soaked, old as plague-song — and the tide murmurs her name wrong, like someone remembering it from a dream.

She lifts it, feels the weight of years caught in its threads — Lindisfarne, York, Beachy Head — and somewhere between the knots is her childhood nickname, inked in a stranger’s hand, and a crow’s voice saying, “Three stakes for a memory, love — but you’ve wagered more for less,” (his voice — she’s not heard for months, not since Lindisfarne)

Last year this ribbon bound tight a book, last week a waitress’s wrist, last night a bone-white feather in a stranger’s pocket — and now it coils again, just as Felreil lands above her with the smugness of unfinished business, “You really thought I’d let you lose me that easily?” — it is a truth too heavy for vellum, and too light for graves.

“This is not fate,” he says, ruffling his wings, “just old stitching showing through,” and when she breathes I never meant to lose the word NOT, he tosses her an obsidian pebble, marked not with a glyph, but with the silence she’s been carrying through lifetimes.

The wind shifts — the Sussex chalk cliffs ringing like bells — and the ribbon rises on it, cinching itself around her wrist with a softness that feels like a vow she never agreed to but always honoured.

Somewhere behind her ribs, the word NOT finally comes undone, and in its place: a stitch pulled tight and quiet, the final stake driven into silence itself.

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “stake“.  Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.