Memory Lake

The dialogue in this story came to me only a couple weeks ago. I could hear it in my mind out of seemingly nowhere. Finding it pretty sounding, I wrote it down, hoping to use it in a story one day. That day came sooner than anticipated.

Upon finding this old photograph I’d taken years ago, I decided to pair the two. As I’ve been moving through themes of grief, love, self reflection, and loss in my personal life, I created this woeful tale of the ways lost love haunts the mind.

Pour yourself something warm, light a candle, and step into the forest with me…

Memory Lake

Each step into the woods felt like a forgetting: names faded, wounds dulled, and time unwound into eternity. He didn’t know how long he’d been walking. Minutes. Hours. Maybe lifetimes. His world had already unraveled in her blood, along with every beat of his heavy heart and labored breath carrying him forward.

All around, trees stretched up gnarled and towering, like crooked bones jutting from the earth. Their bark, darker than the night sky, held stories far too old and sacred for human tongues to transcribe. He watched them warily, half-expecting them to reach out for a taste of his skin. The sound of their wood rubbing together made the hair at his neck stand on end.

Underbrush thick with thorn and root parted before him, as though his arrival had been anticipated by the spirits dwelling here.

He stepped to the edge of a clearing laced in fog, grief trailing behind him like a weighted cloak. The scent of smoke and iron clung to him, folding into the wild perfume of moss, bark, and decay. His boots left no mark on the earth, yet even so, his presence awakened the sleeping.

A strange woman in a white linen gown had been visiting his dreams. She moved like shimmering light, always out of reach. Each time he thought he’d caught up to her, she slipped further away, dissolving like mist. Tired of her trickery, he followed the pull to a place she always circled.

At the heart of the forest, Memory Lake waited.

It shimmered with moonlight, a glassy surface not meant to reflect faces, but to reveal what lay buried beneath; a portal where truths unveiled themselves.

It was said those who stared too long into its waters would remember everything they’d ever tried to forget - every unsaid word, every suppressed emotion, every moment pushed to the farthest corners of the psyche. Their ghosts lived here, coming alive the moment one’s gaze touched the water.

She was already there when he arrived. Or perhaps, she had arrived with him.

The figure across the lake stood still, pale and solemn, crowned with blossoms that bloomed like bruises around her snow-white hair. Her eyes were empty hollows, like crude engravings on a headstone.

He froze.

They faced one another in silence, until even the trees seemed to lean in, listening.

“You killed her,” the woman said at last.

The words floated to him like jagged frost; cold, delicate, cutting deep.

His jaw clenched. A tremor of pain passed through him, betraying the fury he had fought to bury.

“No,” he growled, voice low and raw, “I loved her.”

The forest stilled. The wind withdrew. Even the creatures hushed in the wake of his voice. The silence that followed felt quieter… sharper.

“What is the difference?” she asked, her tone still flat, “She’s gone now.”

He faltered. The words struck like a blade.

His gaze dropped to the lake and so did he, knees folding beneath him.

The water stirred.

Images surfaced: fingers laced in twilight. Hair brushed from her brow. Promises whispered beneath the stars. Then her screams…aching, swallowed by darkness. Her eyes. The moment she surrendered. The moment he vanished.

“Will she remember?” he whispered, voice cracked and tender.

A long silence stretched between them. Then, as the wind stirred once more, lifting leaves in slow spirals:

“How could she ever forget?” the woman replied softly, “Even death cannot erase such things.”

Somewhere behind them, a branch snapped. Or maybe it was the echo of her heart breaking.

He watched the memories ripple through the lake: their weeping and laughing, the tenderness, the mistakes. All the beauty. All the ruin.

And then he saw what he never had before: every moment she waited for him, every moment he was absent but still lived loudly in her heart. Then… her end. The tangle of long white hair, soaked in red.

As her image faded from the watery mirror, he felt her spirit watching. From the branches. From the drizzle of rain. From the space between breath and silence.

She had become part of the forest now.

Alive in every soft, wild thing he would never hold again.

And he understood then…

Memory Lake had never been a place to find her.

It was a place to be found.