The Lesson
For Inktober Day 29, "Lesson": A sick young woman writes to her favorite fantasy author, hoping to learn his invented language—and finds herself drawn into a lesson no book could ever teach.
The Letter
Lidwina had read them all.
Every book. Every edition. Special prints with gilded spines. Illustrated tomes thick with full-color pages. Each one a doorway to a world better than her own, crafted by the one author who seemed to understand the desperate need to escape.
His name was whispered in fantasy circles like a spell. No interviews. No events. Just stories, arriving with quiet regularity.
And oh, how she needed stories.
Her body ached with chronic illness. Most days were fog and fatigue. No job. No friends who truly understood. Only books… and the dream of one realm nestled deep within the author’s imagined world.
A snow-laced mountain town where golden light spilled from windows, music shimmered like mist, and angelic beings with warm eyes and bare feet danced without fear of cold. They spoke a language so beautiful it made her cry. It had never been officially translated, though fans believed the author had invented a full grammar. She longed to learn it. Not just to speak it, but to live inside it.
So one gray morning, Lidwina wrote him a letter.
She never expected a reply.
But it came.
The envelope was cream-colored, thick as parchment, her name penned in the same elegant font as his chapter titles. At the top, a single word. The greeting that opened every one of his stories:
Lumetha.
“May the light find you,” she whispered.
Beneath it, in curling black ink:
Dear Lidwina,
Thank you for your kind words.
I wish I could teach you that language,
but time is running out.
I may not be able to.
But perhaps… they can.
Then came his signature.
And one final, enigmatic line:
The key is in our dreams.
Below it, an address.
London.
Lidwina stared at the letter.
“But perhaps they can...”
Who were they?
The House
When Lidwina arrived, an ambulance blocked the narrow lane. A gurney. A white sheet. Whispered words from the neighbors:
“The great author’s gone.”
She went to the funeral, numb.
The next morning, her name appeared in the paper, followed by a line from the will. The house, the archives, the entire estate… had been left to her.
One letter.
One legacy.
She moved in two weeks later, legs trembling, questions gnawing at her ribs.
Why her?
The house smelled of old paper, rain-soaked timber, and bergamot tea. Manuscripts were stacked like bricks. Margins crawled with strange glyphs, musical notations, half-inked maps. But no dictionary. No grammar. No glossary of the language she longed to learn.
Only his stories.
And that final line from his letter, haunting her like a riddle:
Perhaps… they can.
The key is in our dreams.
What had he meant?
Days passed in quiet searching.
Until at last, beneath his pillow, she found it:
A small, brass key.
Left there, it seemed, for her alone.
The Garden Door
The garden door groaned open on rusted hinges.
And the world changed.
The ivy was gone. The fences dissolved. The rainclouds of London vanished as if someone had wiped them clean from the sky.
In their place: sunlight filtering through towering silver trees. The air smelled of wild mint and blooming jasmine. Butterflies drifted past on gossamer wings, transparent, glinting like stained glass in the light.
Lidwina stepped forward.
And paused.
The cold was gone. No pain throbbed in her joints. Her breath came easy, no longer shallow. She reached for her chest—out of habit more than fear—but there was no tightness. No cough waiting in her throat.
She took another step.
Spring bloomed around her.
Two children ran to greet her, barefoot, laughing. They spoke in the language she had only ever read. His language. And though she couldn’t understand every word, her heart responded. Their gestures filled the gaps.
They took her hand and led her forward.
Through meadows buzzing with bees and strung with fluttering ribbons—summer, bright and boundless.
Through forests lit by fireflies and lined with crimson leaves—autumn, soft and solemn.
Through snowfall that kissed her skin like silk—winter, not cold, but peaceful.
And there, nestled in the snow, stood the town she had dreamed of.
Half-timbered houses with icicle-draped eaves. Long wooden tables groaning under trays of fire-roasted harvest fare and golden pastries still warm from the oven. Strings of lights hanging from tree to tree like constellations come down to rest.
The scent of cinnamon and citrus wrapped around her. Music wove through the air—flute, harp, laughter, bells.
And in the center of it all stood a man with his back turned. A book in his hands.
When the children called her name, he turned.
It was him.
The same quiet smile. The same reading glasses perched on his nose.
He looked at her as if she were someone he’d known all his life.
His voice was soft and melodic. Half song, half memory:
“Lumetha, Lidwina.”
She opened her mouth, but no sound came.
Only tears.
He stepped closer.
“You found the key. To the world of my friends.”
He nodded toward the children beside her.
“They can teach you, as they once taught me.”
His eyes searched hers—not urging, not demanding.
Simply waiting.
“If you wish... you may stay.”
Lidwina turned.
Behind her, the forest path still shimmered faintly.
Somewhere beyond the trees, the garden door remained open.
And farther still—London.
Drizzle.
Traffic.
Pain.
Still audible in the wind.
And then she looked forward.
Spring.
Summer.
Autumn.
Winter.
Not linear, not passing. All existing at once. A life where nothing needed to be lost for something new to begin.
Lidwina took a breath. A deep one.
And nodded.
“I wish,” she said. “Very much.”
The Storykeeper
Lidwina stayed.
For how long, she didn’t know. Time didn’t pass the same way in the realms beyond. Here, seasons coexisted like colors on a wheel. Each path led to another, and she walked them all.
She learned to speak the language, first in sounds, then in song. The words didn’t sit in her throat like a foreign tongue. They bloomed there, like something she’d always known but had forgotten how to say.
She learned names for things she’d never known to name.
The comfort tucked inside a stranger’s laugh.
The warmth that rises with freshly baked bread.
The kind of silence that lingers when a story ends, and no one wants to speak yet.
And sometimes, when she felt the pull of it, she returned through the garden door.
Back into the old house.
She would sit at the author’s desk, open his worn notebooks, and add her own.
Pages filled with what she’d seen. What she’d heard.
The stories of the people she met, and the lessons they’d given her.
She wrote in both languages. One for the world she’d come from.
And one for the world that had welcomed her home.
When the pages were ready, she posted them.
New books. New stories.
Stories for those who needed them most.
The Next Reader
Somewhere far from the snow-laced town, a girl lay curled on a hospital bed, a blanket tucked to her chin.
The world outside her window was grey. Machines clicked beside her like tired metronomes. Her lungs rattled softly with every breath. She didn’t notice the flowers on the table, or the clock ticking above her bed.
But she noticed the book.
A new release. One her nurse had brought, with a curious cover and a handwritten dedication on the first page:
For those who have wandered long in winter.
May you find the path that leads you home.
The girl turned the page.
And the world changed.
She read about silver trees and ribbons in summer fields. She read about children who spoke in a language she didn’t understand but somehow knew. She read about a village lit by stars and voices that felt like music.
And somewhere deep inside her, something loosened.
The ache in her chest quieted. Her breath deepened. Her fingers curled around the pages as if they were warm.
She smiled.
And in her dream that night, she was barefoot in the snow, laughing. Running toward the square. Toward the music. Toward someone who looked like her—but stronger, brighter, whole.
The woman took her hand.
Spoke a single word in that ancient language.
“Lumetha!”
The End
That’s what’s so beautiful about the power stories. You enter a new world that someone has created, and experience something beyond this world. This story really captured that power.