Porchwood Hollow

There are two small mice who live beneath the rafters of the old porch library, in a place where dust is just another form of memory. One keeps maps. The other keeps moments.

Archivemouse was the first to arrive, a silver grey s mouse with whiskers like quill strokes, and eyes the color of old ink. He came carrying scrolls rolled so tight that the words hummed from being held too long. He built a nest of paper and compass roses, charting every root, fencepost, and lantern beam of the Hollow until the world looked neatly contained.

But something in his records rang hollow. His maps showed where things were, yet not why they mattered.

Then one autumn dusk, Minette wandered in with a satchel that smelled faintly of cinnamon and rain. A dusky ribbon trailed from her tail like a question mark. Inside her patched satchel were no maps at all, only folded slips of paper, small bundles tied with strings, and a the faint sound of a music locket that played three soft notes before closing again.

Archivemouse frowned. “If it can’t be written, it can’t be kept, ” he said.

Minette only smiled and hummed. “Then I suppose I will keep what can’t be written.”

And so she did.

While Archivemouse inked lines and borders, Minette listened at doors, besides gardens, beneath gnome hats. She caught sighs, laughter, the pause before an apology. When the Hollow’s residents forgot what they had once felt, she would open her satchel and remind them:

“This was your courage.”

“This was your hope.”

“This was the sound you made the day that you began again.”

The two nice became partners, one tracing the shape of the world, and the the shape of the heart that lived within it. And though they teased each other endlessly, the ledger between them grew thick with both ink and quiet magic.

One night, near the turning of the seasons, they sat together in the archive loft. The lantern burned low, and the ledger lay open between them. Archivemouse’s quill hovered over he page. Minette’s ribbon curled across the seam.

She was tucking the day’s whispers into her satchel. There were three folded slips, and a pebble still warm from someone’s palm when she felt it,… the pull.

“You’ll blot the coast if you wait any longer, ” she murmured.

“And you will crease your ribbon is you lean like,” he replied, his eyes never leaving the spot where her ribbon almost touched his inked line.

The music locket opened on its own then, as if the moment demanded it. Three notes, soft, certain, and small enough to fit between the lines, floated into the air. When they faded, neither spoke. Archivemouse simply let the drop of ink fall, sealing the edge of her ribbon to the map’s border.

In the years since, if you ever find the old ledger in the library rafters, you will it is there still, a think ribbon crossing the map line, a pressed flower shadowed beneath, and the faint trace of music caught in the fibers of the page.

Some say that this is where the Hollow’s truest story began, and some say it is where the two record keepers stopped keeping their distance.

Either way, the entry remains unsigned. Only a tiny note runs along the bottom:

Some truths are charted. Some are kept between the lines. And some? Some are found in the same place, again and again.