In the floating markets of Nimara, where crystalline bridges span between cloud-anchored islands, Elara kept the last memory shop in existence. The other merchants had long since pivoted to selling bottled starlight and woven dreams, following trends that promised better profit margins. But Elara remained, her weathered hands carefully arranging glass orbs that held fragments of forgotten lives.
The morning mist had barely cleared when a young woman approached, her designer robes marking her as nobility from the upper islands. She clutched a silk purse with trembling fingers.
“I need to sell something,” she whispered, glancing around as if afraid of being overheard.
Elara nodded, gesturing to the chair beside her counter. Memory selling was intimate work, requiring trust between strangers. The woman sat, her perfect composure cracking like expensive porcelain.
“What memories do you wish to part with, child?”
“My wedding day.” The words tumbled out in a rush. “Three months ago. Everything—the ceremony, the feast, the… the way he looked at me before I knew what he truly was.”
Elara had seen this before. In a world where memories could be extracted and sold, heartbreak had become a commodity. The wealthy often purchased their most painful moments removed, leaving behind carefully curated versions of their lives. But something in this woman’s desperation felt different.
“Memory extraction is permanent,” Elara warned. “You’ll retain the knowledge of events, but not the emotional imprint. No joy, no pain, no sensation of having lived it.”
“Good.” The woman’s voice turned sharp. “I want to forget how it felt when he smiled. How the wedding cake tasted like honey and hope. How I believed I was the luckiest woman alive.”
Elara prepared her tools—a silver circlet embedded with memory crystals, a focusing lens, extraction threads so fine they seemed made of spider silk and starlight. As she worked, the woman spoke in fragments, her story spilling out like water from a cracked vessel.
Her husband had been conducting illegal experiments on captured merfolk, harvesting their songs for black market potions. The discovery had shattered her world, but the memories of loving him remained, beautiful and toxic.
“Who buys wedding memories?” the woman asked as Elara carefully drew the silver threads across her temples.
“Young people, mostly. Those who fear they’ll never find love. They purchase happiness secondhand, temporary fixes that last maybe a year before fading.” Elara’s voice grew sad. “It’s not real fulfillment, but hope is a powerful drug.”
The extraction took an hour. Elara watched the memory crystals fill with golden light—laughter, dancing, champagne bubbles catching sunlight, the weight of a ring sliding onto a finger. Beautiful moments, corrupted by truth but pristine in isolation.
When it finished, the woman sat quietly for a long moment, her eyes distant but clear.
“How do you feel?” Elara asked.
“Empty. But clean.” The woman stood, leaving a pouch of silver coins on the counter. “What will you do with them?”
Elara looked at the glowing orbs, each one containing fragments of joy that had turned to poison. “Store them, probably. Wedding memories don’t sell well anymore. Too much risk—buyers worry about inheriting the seller’s pain along with their happiness.”
After the woman left, Elara held one of the memory spheres up to the light. Inside, she could see the ghost of a dance, two figures spinning in perfect harmony, unaware that their story would end in betrayal. It was beautiful and tragic and utterly human.
She placed it carefully on a shelf with thousands of others—memories of first kisses that ended in heartbreak, childhood summers shadowed by loss, moments of triumph tainted by guilt. Her shop had become a graveyard of discarded emotions, a museum of human experience that no one wanted to claim.
As the day wore on, fewer customers came. A old man browsed her shelves of childhood memories but left without buying. A teenager asked about memories of courage but balked at the price. The world was moving toward artificial experiences, synthetic emotions that carried no risk of inherited trauma.
At closing time, Elara sat among her inventory of forgotten lives, wondering if she was preserving something precious or enabling people to edit themselves into strangers. In the distance, she could hear the memory merchants from other islands advertising their modern alternatives—customizable experiences, guaranteed satisfaction, no messy human complications.
She touched the wedding memory again, feeling the warmth of borrowed joy pulsing against her palm. Perhaps tomorrow she would find someone who needed to remember what love felt like, even if it came with the risk of pain. Or perhaps she would be one step closer to becoming the last of her kind, keeper of a trade the world no longer wanted.
Outside, the first stars began to appear between the clouds, and Elara locked her shop, carrying the weight of ten thousand discarded moments into the gentle night.
Leave a Reply