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Sahara Chirino

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2023

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13 Stories

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The Clockmaker’s Promise

The little shop sat at the end of a narrow cobblestone street, where the gas lamps seemed to burn a fraction dimmer than anywhere else. Its windows were clouded with dust and speckled with the remains of old rain, the sign above the door so faded you could barely make out the words T. Wren, Horologist.If you didn’t already know it was there, you would walk right past it. Most people did.Elsie had been here before—when she was seven, clutching her grandfather’s hand, staring at the ticking forest of pendulums, dials, and winding keys. The air...

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The Hymn to the Ash-Haired One

Sing first not of the wars of kings, nor of the spears of heroes, but of the hearth, the first and last altar, where bread is broken and wine poured for friend and stranger alike. Sing of She-Who-Warms, She-Who-Welcomes, the Gentle One, the Unseen Keeper — for her name is the oldest, and her flame the most faithful.It is told that in the third age of men, when the gods walked less often among us, a woman was found adrift at sea, carried on the back of a fisherman’s boat.Her hair was dark but streaked with pale ash, as though she had stood lo...

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After Midnight

It’s 2:47 a.m., and the house is the quietest it’s been in months. Not the kind of quiet you get during the day when people are just in other rooms, but the kind that swells and presses against your ears like a held breath.I’m awake because I heard it again—the scraping.The first time it happened, last Tuesday, I was scrolling my phone in bed, blue light spilling across the cracked plaster walls. I thought it was nothing—maybe the old heater kicking on, or pipes settling. But pipes don’t pause mid-echo. The heater doesn’t hold a breath. And ...

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A Second Name

The night I broke out of Westbrook Juvenile, the air tasted like rain and rust—metallic, sharp, like the whole world was holding its breath. I’d been watching that drainpipe for weeks, counting the seconds between the guard’s footsteps, memorizing every flicker of the security lights. My body knew the rhythm of escape before my mind could catch up.I didn’t think about the alarms, or the dogs, or how far the next town was. I just thought about not sleeping on a concrete bed another night. About not eating the gray mush they called dinner. Abo...

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Diary of Emmeline Grace Carter

Weekly Contest #314

July 14th, 1923It is the hottest day of the year…Mama says the heat makes people act strangely — says it sours the milk and curdles good sense. But I don’t think it’s the sun that’s gone to my head. I think it’s him.The morning started like a sigh. Heavy and slow, like the air itself was stuck between breaths. The kind of heat that makes your skin feel tight, like the sky’s leaning in too close. Even the bees seem drowsy, bobbing through the garden like they can’t be bothered. I hear a cicada start up just after breakfast, and the sound buzz...

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Before the Waters Knew My Name

Weekly Contest #314

They said I was beautiful. As if that were ever mine to keep.I lived where the cliffs met the sea, a sliver of land kissed by foam and flame. The sun rose behind the hills and set over the waters, and in between, I lived—not as a nymph or goddess or monster, but as a girl. Just a girl. I would dip my feet into the cool salt tides and sing to the horizon. No crown on my brow. No curse in my blood. Just sea air and soft silence.But beauty is a treacherous thing. It makes you visible to gods.And I—I only ever wanted to be invisible.Glaucus love...

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The Air Between Us

Weekly Contest #314

The air was thick. Not just hot, but wet. Clinging. Swollen. Like the sky was pressing its mouth to the windows and breathing down their necks. Like the city had exhaled and forgotten how to inhale again.Lila stood with the fridge door open, letting the artificial chill wrap around her stomach like a cold hand. The milk had turned to sour water. The grapes had collapsed in their skins. Her skin was damp, salt-slick, already sticking to her thighs—and still, she hadn’t put a bra on today.That would’ve made him angry. Not for the reason it sho...

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The Hound at the Gates

Weekly Contest #314

I have three heads, each with a mouth full of fangs, each capable of rending flesh from bone. My paws shake the earth. My growl makes the dead turn in their graves—or would, if they weren’t already still.They call me monster. Hellhound. Beast.But I am only a dog.A good one, I think. Or I try to be.I do not remember the moment I was born, only the weight of the world that waited for me. I remember the warmth of Mother—Echidna, half-serpent, all patience—curling her tail around my brothers and me as we fought over bones and shadows. Orthrus, b...

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I Can't Sleep

Weekly Contest #314

The first time Elio heard the voice, it was 3:12 a.m.A buzz. Then a hum—low, like someone breathing through static. And then: “I can’t sleep.”He blinked at the sound, half-asleep, disoriented. The voice hadn’t come from outside his window or from the hall.It came from his phone.He picked it up. No calls. No apps open. Just the black screen, glowing faintly with nothing at all.The words hung in the air, brittle and cold.“I can’t sleep.”Elio stared at the phone for a long time. Then set it back on the nightstand, face-down, like it could still...

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The Rewrite

Weekly Contest #310

The first time, Eli didn't even notice. He slumped over his shattered desk, his work area cluttered with half-full cups of coffee and rejection letters crumpled along the edges. The cursor on the computer screen was blinking mockingly. For the tenth time that night, he read the sentence through: She found the lost ring buried under the floorboards, where she'd always thought it would be. He sighed. Too tidy. Too step-by-step. But it was 2:47 a.m., and deadlines weren't interested in the quality of literature. He saved it, shut his laptop, an...

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The Graduation Stage

Weekly Contest #310

Content warning: This story contains substance abuse and implied suicide.The lights were blinding.From up here, the gym looked like a blur—faces, caps, restless bodies shifting in metal chairs. My palms were slick. The paper in my hands had folded creases, like veins, from how many times I’d rewritten the speech. My knees felt weak under the robe, and I prayed no one could see them shaking.I stepped up to the microphone. It squealed. Someone chuckled nervously, then silence spread like fog. I forced myself to breathe."I just want to say than...

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The Summer The Ocean Forgot Me

Weekly Contest #308

They say the sea never forgets. But I wonder now, and I sit on the lip of the world with my pen trembling against vellum paper, if it ever has. It was summer 1954. I was ten, nearly eleven, all knobs and knees and terrified of deep water. My parents rented the same salt-bleached cottage every year in Ashwood Bay, a town too small for maps but big enough to have secrets. I remember the heat curling off the sand like specters, the sunburn on my shoulders, and the endless expanse of time that only children possess. That was the summer I knew he...

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Excerpt from The Weight of Ananke (a book I'm writing)

Weekly Contest #308

5 Atlas was still on the empty beach, his limbs aching, his flesh salt-burned and battered. The tempest had gone, but had left him shattered in more than one way. His arms and legs pained him, the lead of the sea's wrath still running through his bone. When he was at last capable of standing upright, burning pain stabbed through his ribs, and he doubled over, hissing.The silence that had closed over him was oppressive. No gulls cried overhead, no waves gently lapped at the horizon—only the wind keening over the empty ground, talking to him a...

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