✨ Flicker Series #14: Thaw (1,110 words)
A speculative romance about loss, memory, and the slow ache of returning warmth.
Welcome back to the Flicker Series—tiny stories built from stubborn creativity, random sparks, and a little bit of magic.
This week’s genre is Speculative Romance, and the emojis we spun for inspiration were: 🍫🧖♀️⛄️.
The result? A quiet love story about grief, transformation, and the choice to melt.
Thank you for reading. Here's Thaw.
Thaw
The cold had been inside her for ten years.
It crept in after he vanished, settling in her lungs and fingers, along the curve of her spine. No doctor could name it. No lover could banish it. She carried winter in her bones like a second soul.
Most days, she managed. Her little chocolate shop in the Hollow District stayed warm enough, the scent of melting sugar and toasted nuts masking the chill in her skin. She smiled when she had to. She stacked truffles in neat little rows, dipped candied orange peel into dark ganache, and told children not to lick the glass.
But once a year, when the snow reached its softest hush, she checked into the Thaw House.
It wasn’t a spa in the usual sense. No robes, no steam rooms. Just white rooms, silent corridors, and women like her—women iced over by something they couldn’t explain. They spoke in half-sentences and looked at nothing for too long. The kind of women who once loved too hard, and never quite thawed.
This year, the receptionist looked younger. Sharper. She barely looked up when Mira signed her name.
“You’re overdue,” the girl said. “Three hundred and sixty-eight days.”
Mira smiled without meaning to. “I must’ve missed the summer.”
“Everyone does.”
The treatment room was colder than usual.
She didn’t shiver. She never did.
The new technician was already waiting, long braids tucked under a knit cap, eyes a shade too bright to be normal. She didn’t offer a name. Just helped Mira onto the reclining chair and pressed two fingers to the base of her skull.
“You carry it all here,” she murmured.
“I know.”
The technician adjusted a dial on the wall. A low hum filled the air—barely sound, more like the memory of one. Mira exhaled slowly. The frost in her chest shifted.
Then came the scent.
Rich. Familiar. A kind of bittersweet warmth she hadn’t smelled in a decade: chocolate and clove, melted slow. The room blurred. Mira’s fingers twitched.
“He used to bring me cocoa,” she said quietly, before she could stop herself. “Even in the summer.”
The technician didn’t answer. She unwrapped something from a velvet cloth and placed it on Mira’s lap.
A single truffle. Glossy, perfect, dusted with powdered snow.
Mira stared at it.
“I didn’t order the memory confection.”
“It’s part of the new program,” the technician said. “You’re a candidate.”
Mira’s throat tightened. “For what?”
The woman’s gaze didn’t soften. “Closure. Or collapse.”
The first bite tasted like the balcony of her old apartment: rain on the railing, his laugh echoing up from the street below. She closed her eyes, and the memory bloomed without mercy.
It was their last good night.
He’d brought her cocoa with too many marshmallows, stolen from the shop when she wasn’t looking. They’d danced in the kitchen to a song neither of them knew the words to. He’d whispered something into her neck that made her laugh and cry at the same time.
She’d almost told him she was ready. Ready to marry him. Ready to try again. But the words got lost somewhere between her ribs and the rim of her mug.
The next morning, he was gone.
No note. No warning. Just one half-empty bag of cocoa powder and the mug he’d always used—still warm on the stove.
Mira blinked, and the room returned.
The frost on her knuckles was thinner now. Wet at the edges.
The technician knelt beside her, eyes studying the shift. “You’re melting.”
“It’ll come back,” Mira said automatically. “It always comes back.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
Mira looked away. The truffle sat heavy in her stomach. She could still taste him on her tongue.
“Did he die?” she asked. “Or did he choose to leave?”
“We don’t answer those kinds of questions.”
“Can you?”
The technician hesitated.
Then, quietly, “He’s not gone.”
Something in Mira’s chest spasmed. “What do you mean?”
“He came to the Thaw House. A year after you did. Said he couldn't carry it anymore. That the cold followed him too.”
Mira’s voice was barely a breath. “Where is he now?”
“I’m not allowed to say. But...”
The technician rose. Crossed the room. Opened a small drawer.
And returned with a second truffle.
This one was darker. No powdered sugar. Just a simple heart pressed into the top with a fingertip.
“He left this. Said you’d understand.”
Mira didn’t reach for it.
The technician placed it in her hand anyway.
She didn’t eat it that night. Or the next.
She kept it in the drawer of her bedside table, nestled in tissue paper like something alive.
The cold in her body continued to recede. Her fingers regained feeling. Her toes didn’t ache in the morning. She laughed once—startled herself with the sound.
The memory of him didn’t fade.
It stayed, just beneath the surface. Sharper than before. Clearer.
She remembered the way his hand fit behind her neck when he kissed her. The way he always bought the broken chocolates for himself so she could keep the pretty ones on display.
She remembered the hurt, too.
But it didn’t feel like drowning anymore.
The third morning, she unwrapped the second truffle.
Held it.
Smelled it.
Bit down.
The world shifted.
She was back in the shop. But it was warmer. The lights were golden. A snowfall drifted just outside the window, lazy and slow.
He was there. Joren.
Standing behind the counter, scooping ganache into a piping bag like he’d never left.
He looked up. Froze.
Then: “You ate it.”
“I wasn’t sure I would.”
He smiled—hesitant, fragile. “I wasn’t sure either.”
She stepped closer. Everything felt breakable.
“I wanted to hate you,” she said.
“I know.”
“I thought about it a lot.”
“I did too.”
A silence stretched between them, trembling like spun sugar.
“I was afraid,” he said. “That I wasn’t enough. That I’d ruin it.”
“You did.”
“I know.”
Her hand found the edge of the counter. White marble. Cool to the touch.
“You can’t stay here,” he said softly. “This is just memory.”
“I know.”
“But I had to try.”
Mira looked at him—really looked. The little scar on his chin. The softness around his eyes. The weight he carried now, visible in the curve of his shoulders.
She reached for his hand.
Their fingers met.
Warm.
When she woke, the frost was gone.
The room was quiet. Empty.
No technician. No truffles.
Just a note on the pillow beside her.
“I still remember the way you laughed with your whole body.
If you ever want to try again—find me in the Hollow District.
I kept your favorite mug.”
—J.
💬 Before you go:
Did something in Thaw stick with you? A moment, a line, a feeling you can’t quite shake?
Drop a comment and tell me—your words keep the warmth going.
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See you next week for new emojis, a new genre, and a new world.