Word Prompt: Tablet
A single word meant to inspire immediate thought. Write what your imagination dictates.
In the lush, humming meadows of Caerwen, where ponies talked in riddles and fairies lit the air like drifting stars, a boy named Justice lived with dirt on his boots and a hunger in his belly. He herded moon-calves and fetched water from wells that whispered secrets. No one expected much from him—just that he stay out of the way and not dream too big.
But dreams have teeth.
It began in the Hollow Tree, a place children were told never to go. Justice wasn’t looking for trouble, just a cool place to nap. Instead, he found the tablet—a slab of black stone carved with letters that bled shadow, humming in a tongue older than the sun. He touched it, and the sky flinched.
That night, he dreamed of fire raining down and the stars screaming. A voice—coiled and cruel—promised a new age of ash if the stone was not returned to its birthplace: Mount Veyra, the Stonemother’s spine. Return it, or the Witch Queen Avena would take it and open a gate that should never be opened.
Justice woke with one word burned into his mind: pilgrimage.
He told no one. Just packed what little he had—a slingshot, three crusts of bread, and a charm given to him by a hedgehog seer—and slipped away before dawn. As he walked, the land changed. The meadows gave way to whispering forests. The fairies grew quieter. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
A silver-maned pony named Thistle found him in the Thornscrape. “You carry the stone,” she said, not unkindly, “and the stone carries you.” She offered her back and her teeth, and from then on, they were two.
They passed through haunted valleys and over rivers that ran backward. A witch-fire nearly caught them in the Vale of Broken Bells, but Thistle ran like lightning while Justice clutched the tablet and screamed a prayer he didn’t know he knew.
At every stop, the power of the tablet grew. Flowers wilted when it drew near. Birds flew in panicked spirals. A squad of star-knights tried to take it from him, but he saw the rot behind their eyes—Avena’s doing. She was hunting him now, the Witch Queen with lips like frost and a voice that turned men to dogs.
In the high places of the world, where air thinned and trees no longer grew, Justice reached Mount Veyra. The mountain didn’t welcome him—it judged him. Thistle could go no farther. “The stone is yours,” she said. “But so is the choice.”
He climbed alone.
At the summit, a mouth yawned in the earth. Not a cave. A wound. The birthplace of the stone. Before he could cast it in, Avena arrived, wreathed in flames and lies.
“Give it to me,” she whispered. “You’re no hero. You’re a boy with mud in his teeth. Let me fix the world.”
Justice looked at her. Then he looked at the stone. It pulsed with a dark heartbeat. It wanted to be used.
So he didn’t destroy it.
He threw himself in with it.
Stone and flesh became one. He sank into the mountain, into its veins. A lock. A seal.
A warning.
Now, when the wind howls across Mount Veyra, it carries one word: Justice. Not a boy anymore.
A promise.
1.7562 Billion Miles 