"What if you could remember?" she asked, the rain pattering rhythmically on the old tin roof. The scent of earth after a storm always brought me back here, to the herculean effort of lifting boxes between shelves of bric-a-brac and dust. In this musty library, the question echoed louder than she intended.
Lock and key, but the key turned before the lock was finished, a paradox etched in bronze. Somewhere, between the workshops where stars were forged and the storied halls of forgotten wisdom, Orion waits, armed and unfamiliar.
Mom used to say that every star had a name called home by those who knew where the heavens touch the earth. 'Don't forget,' she whispered, looking not at me but at something beyond.
The children’s voices broke the afternoon haze, their laughter scattering like shards of a memory trying to position itself in time. I grasped at words, but they crumbled too, like dry leaves.
A notebook lay open, pages fluttering in the draft; it's been years, or minutes, since someone last dared these words. Scribbled charts and unfamiliar Morse too caustic to decipher were all there was of the last message sent from the depths of the Orion belt.