Warden's Fantasy Shorts

Finding the Lost

Getting closer to present stories now!

Prompt 1: In your village lies the Lake of Memories. If anyone wishes to be rid of a memory, they can write it on a rock, throw it in and forget. Those who wish to be wise often search for rocks to read, but the memory is then theirs to keep. You find a rock in your childhood handwriting.

Prompt 2: Her mother had given up her humanity for her. She'd become something Other to give her a chance at life. She wasn't going to waste that sacrifice.

Anything spoken in another language is underlined

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"A spell to find what was lost," the stone said in elegant cursive. My parents had always warned me against any magic beyond the gifts they said were passed down through the family (that I'd never even noticed), but I was already at the lake and so was already breaking that rule. Besides, I didn't live with them anymore, and also, I couldn't find my favorite necklace. A little spell couldn't hurt. I stuck the rock in my pocket and kept walking. I read a few more stones, all the words on them short and cryptic to fit. There were a lot of traumatic memories, as could be expected from a place like this, but the occasional memory caught my eye. "The lake," "That one dream," and the most worrying: "hopes & dreams."

"I'll write 'the lake' and 'that one dream'," I muttered to myself, then left. As soon as I left the wall around the lake, the rock in my hand evaporated, and I remembered the spell someone else had forgotten. I muttered the spell under my breath as I made my way home and wondered what it would bring back, if it worked at all. When I got home, I half heartedly searched the house for anything I'd lost, not really surprised when I didn't. "No wonder they threw that spell away, it doesn't work. Like, at all. Not that I expected differently."

I started on my stories, and a few days later had finished 'The Lake.' I edited it, then sent it off to be published in the magazine I sent all of my stories to. All the while, I couldn't help but think about the similarities between the lake I'd written and the one I knew. I couldn't help but put them in the author's notes I posted on my blog.

...The real lake was said to have a lost temple at the bottom that guarded the memories of primordial beings, the intensity (or horrors, depending on who told you) of which could drive anyone mad the way the dreams the dreams in the story had to the girl. The dreams had been triggered by the girl touching the water of the lake, like how the water of the real lake has been said to give anyone touching it vague impressions and half memories from the center of the lake...

Comments on that part of the post were mostly asking about the tales locals told about the lake, or expressing disbelief in those same tales. I figured that talking about one of my major sources of inspiration was what made me want to go back.

Because I wanted to go back. Now. I usually went about once a month, but I sometimes went more if I needed the extra inspiration, but I hadn't even finished the second story. I told myself, and kept telling myself that I didn't need to go for the next couple of days, and even as I drove there and walked along the shore, scanning the rocks for something I couldn't name. One rock caught my eye, a smooth, flat, dark-grey rock. When I picked it up, I almost dropped it when I saw the words written in my childhood handwriting, then again when I registered what the words said.

There were two: "My brother."

I bolted to the exit, wanting to drop the rock, but the want to know was just too strong. I stopped outside the gate as years'– nearly a decade's worth– of memories flooded my head. Many I recognized, but were changed because of the presence of my brother, but there were many more that I didn't, just of my brother or simply lost to time. All of them leading up to one, the worst of all.