Ink of Farewell

The street was still. No cars. No voices. Just the faint hiss of wind brushing against lamp posts and the scattered tap of dew collecting on gutters. Mia sat on a stone bench near the edge of the neighborhood park, leather journal open on her lap.

Her breath showed in the morning chill. A soft fog veiled the distant rooftops. The sky held the barest tint of rose—a whisper of dawn, not yet fully committed to the day.

The journal's pages were almost full. Dog-eared, stained. Some warped by rain. Others smudged by fingerprints. But this one—this final page—remained clean.

Her pen hovered.

Then lowered.

She began to write.

This is the last entry.

Sarah crossed the stage. She did not fall.

She looked out, and though I was not truly there, she felt something. I know she did.

I am losing shape.

Not from failure. From fulfillment.

Mia paused.

The ink was darker today. Bolder. But the paper felt thinner. Each stroke seemed to sink deeper, as if the words were borrowing too much.

She glanced at her hand.

The tips of her fingers looked pale. Not cold. Just... faded.

She flexed them once. The movement resisted, slightly.

Still, she kept writing.

She is no longer fragile.

She carries memory without needing proof.

I've become less a witness, more a whisper.

A good one, I hope.

Across the park, a bird flitted from tree to tree, its wings catching the low light. A trash bin creaked as the wind nudged its lid. The world was slow, but turning.

Mia closed her eyes.

The bench's stone was cool beneath her.

She opened her eyes again. Wrote.

This notebook holds more than her story. It holds mine. Our overlap.

The times I interfered. The times I didn't. The times I wanted to be more than a shadow.

And the times I remembered I already was.

She reached into her coat and pulled out the folded napkin—the first one. The beginning. It still held a faint crease, though the ink had long since bled.

She slid it into the back flap of the journal. Her fingers lingered there.

She added:

The smallest things carry us forward.

The sun breached the horizon.

The light touched the tip of the bench. Then her knee. Then the edge of the journal.

She could feel it.

A slow unraveling. As if the stitching of her shape were loosening thread by thread.

She pressed the pen to the page again.

If I disappear, let it be into memory, not absence.

Let her carry me the way I carried her—quiet, invisible, but never gone.

The wind picked up, rifling through the pages.

She pressed them flat.

Her body felt... thin. Not weak. But permeable.

She wrote:

If stories survive, so do we.

Even if the teller fades.

Especially then.

A dog barked in the distance.

Somewhere, someone started a car.

Life resumed. Without her.

But because of her.

The final line came slower.

I was here.

I mattered.

That is enough.

The ink on the page shimmered faintly.

Then, slowly, it began to fade.

Letter by letter.

Mia didn't move.

She watched.

She smiled.

She whispered a name—hers, and not hers.

Then closed the journal.

And disappeared into the rising light.