Welcome to Fiction Fridays!
Every couple of weeks I use conversational AI to generate a new fiction prompt inspired by the changes and updates to my digital garden. By using conversational AI to generate the prompt, I’m tapping into the power of machine learning to come up with interesting and unexpected ideas that I might not have thought of otherwise. I work on these stories for a few weeks, publishing a new part every Friday.
The prompts are designed to be open-ended and flexible, allowing me to explore a wide range of themes and genres that are aligned with my interests and experiences. However, it is important to remember that these pieces are fictional.
But that’s not all, there is a piece of AI generated art to go with every weekly publication! And if you want to dive deeper, check out the updates to my digital garden.
The Prompt
In a misty village, a young woman haunted by her past meets an artist who seeks inspiration. Drawn to each other, they navigate their emotional landscapes, revealing secrets and confronting inner demons. When the artist disappears, the woman must find her own way forward, using her art to inspire others and confront their own fears and secrets.
The Story
He left nothing behind. Adaile wondered how he had done it. Henry must have gotten up before the first sun rays made their way across the pasture. The paint, the easel, he had removed himself. Only a faint sense of his scent remained, hidden within the wrinkles of the bedsheets. And while her thoughts remained fixated on his disappearance, her gaze soon demanded her attention to be elsewhere.
There was a thick layer of dust covering the nightstand. With a single, swift motion of her hand, the particles flew up into the air, dancing around a light shaft that came in through the window. Her cabin felt old. Every crack in the wood was visible. Cobwebs had infested the lesser traveled corners of the space. And the realization washed over her with a sudden agency. Henry was gone, but he had taken the veils of her past with him. The fog was no more. Everything was on display. Her world was in the spotlight once again and what she saw, beyond the dust and the cobwebs, scared her.
The village was empty. The sun was deadlier than the fog. Like bats, the townspeople hid inside, far away from the truth. Their shame over past transgressions was too much. Everyone knew exactly who had done what during the drought. Unspeakable things. Adaile was not exempt from this crowd, but her desire to find Henry blurred the lines between her past and future. The world he painted had shown her that beauty can still exist.
She had taken a basket of grape juice with her and, under the cover of a routine stroll, she went knocking on the old doors of her neighbors. One by one, she was rejected by the silence. Shadows betrayed the people’s innocence, fleeing from the light, barely visible through the curtains. Everyone was home. Nobody wanted the sun to show their scars.
On her way back to her cabin, the sweet scent of early summer made its way up her nostrils. Adaile wondered how such richness could be associated with such agony. Be it in the form of the village’s dark summer, or as it was this time, with the disappearance of Henry.
She sat on her porch and allowed her gaze to wander as far as the horizon would let her. Everything seemed so clear. The pasture, the sunflower fields stretching into the far beyond. But it was with the rustling of the fields, with the glowing greens, she knew, Henry was never coming back. She wasn’t ever sure he had ever come at all. With his grandeur he painted the mist, he showed her a world where pain was visible, where there are no secrets under the sun. A place where beauty can flourish alongside every budding seed. And as the moon rose into the sky on that fateful night they had shared, the colors spilled from Henry’s dreams into her world.
But it would not last. As the sun began to set once more, the winds brought with them a familiar darkness. Thick clouds descended from the sky, engulfing the cabin in diffused nothingness. Like an island in the middle of the ocean, she felt herself removed from the world. The fog was back. And it took everything with it. The pain and the pasture.
