18 of 27 – Mirebright: A Fragment Unaccounted-For
The Weight of Small Things
The chipped bowl by her door held coins — not for luck or for God, but for the hollow-cheeked boy who came at dawn, socks sagging, schoolbag a sack of lint and secondhand books, shoelaces knotted like protection spells.
Each morning he took one coin and left a note: I’m not good, but I try — and she’d fold the paper into her apron pocket like a prayer, smiling at the grammar, never correcting the grace of it.
Then one day, the coins stayed, and his absence rang louder than any doorbell, his silence pooled thick as autumn fog.
But still, the bowl grew heavier — a dog’s rusted name tag, a single hazelnut, a chipped key to a door she’d never seen — until she buried it beneath the hawthorn at the edge of the garden.
As her shovel bit dark earth, Felreil landed on the fencepost, his feathers streaked with the road-grit balm of long knowing, and she whispered, “Some think hope is a loan — it never is.”
And from the deep shine of his darkest plume, something glimmered — not gold, but the quiet colour of someone still trying, and Felreil, who’d never believed in mercy without ledger, finally understood the kind of heart that gives without keeping count.
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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “sack”. 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.
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