The Other Side Of The Creek - Scene 6

The Ash Field

This is Scene Six of The Other Side of the Creek, a quiet and aching road story about a veteran, a long drive, and the weight we carry when life starts to break.

New scenes post every Friday.

The Ash Field

I didn’t wake so much as re-enter the world.

I was still seated where I’d been, knees drawn up, journal beside me. The lantern flickered faintly at my side like it had stayed on watch all night. But the sky had changed.

Gone was the star-washed stillness of before. Now it was clouded—soft, gray, thick like breath on glass. The canyon below had vanished in the fog. The wind was gone too. Not still. Absent. As if air had never moved here at all.

I stood slowly, every joint stiff, like I’d aged decades in sleep. My limbs carried the weight of what I’d seen—but more than that, the weight of having *looked* at all.

I tucked the journal into my pack and picked up the lantern. It buzzed a little louder now, like it was waking too. I took one last look toward the horizon—where that distant light had been.

It was gone.

In its place was a long, flat plain.

Colorless.

Textured.

A field of ash.

I don’t remember climbing down. One moment I stood at the edge, and the next I was walking through it. The ash came up to my ankles. Each step sent a puff into the air that didn’t rise—it *settled*, folding inward like something tired of reaching.

I didn’t know what I was looking for.

But something in me understood: this was where the forgetting lived.

The deeper I moved into the ash, the quieter it became. Not just in sound, but in memory. Thoughts slowed. Edges softened. Faces blurred at the edges.

And then came the sound.

Faint at first. Then closer.

A squeak. A grind. A metallic rattle that echoed just wrong—too wide, too close.

I turned slowly.

Nothing there.

I kept walking.

Then, up ahead: a shape.

A tower. Not tall. Not imposing. Just there, rooted in the ash like it had been dropped from the sky and forgotten. Its walls were warped metal, streaked with rust, a narrow slit of a window cut into one side. A single door—ajar.

I approached slowly.

Every instinct told me not to. The way animals won’t cross certain lines in the woods.

The door opened with a groan that didn’t match the silence around it.

Inside, the air was colder than it should’ve been. The room was round. Walls bare. One mirror stood at the center, tall and thin, its frame made of welded scrap. I saw myself in it, but distorted—too tall, too thin, like I was being stretched into something I couldn't name.

I held the mirror too tightly.

Its frame cut into my palm, but I didn’t let go.

Then, a whisper.

Not from the room. From the glass.

**"Remember."**

The word echoed. Not into the air. Into me.

The mirror dimmed. The glass rippled.

And then—gone.

I blinked and found myself outside the tower again.

The ash was undisturbed.

The sky darker now. Not quite night. Not quite dusk.

The glow on the horizon had returned.

It didn’t comfort. It revealed.

I followed it.

My boots left no tracks now.

The ground accepted me.

And maybe that was the point all along.

Not to finish.

But to finally feel the weight of walking through.