Prompts for 14 November 2025 from
Write about a legendary figure
spiraling pyres
“there’s only one way to find out”
A character who is an unreliable narrator
This story was inspired by picture I scrolled past in Notes. This is not that picture.
“Oh, the story is true,” murmured the old woman. “Whether it is factual may be up for discussion.”
The teenager rolled her eyes. She picked at one of the holes in her black net tights and relaced her scuffed black combat boots before responding.
“If is isn’t factual, Gran, what does that make it? Personal ‘truth?’” She scoffed as she fiddled with the safety pin in her left earlobe. It hadn’t hurt when she pushed it through, but she suspected it was infected, because it was now hot and sore.
“Leave it alone, J. You’ll just make it worse. I have some vapor rub that will help in the second drawer to the right of the sink in the bathroom.” J looked at her Gran skeptically, but wandered from the porch to the bathroom. Gran thought vapor rub cured everything from a cough to a hangnail. J slathered a fingernail’s worth onto the ear and noticed with satisfaction that the dark nail polish had finally chipped to perfect imperfection.
The screen door screeched as J returned to the porch. “Hey Gran, do you think vapor rub will fix the door?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Gran answered. “Bring the jar out and we’ll test it while I tell you something about true myth.”
J returned to the bathroom. Gran was getting more mystical by the day, it seemed. True myth? “Oxymoron,” she thought, testing a word she had read recently. She liked that it included “moron” as part of it. J would never admit to it, but she loved words almost as much as she loved Gran, something else she would never admit. Her mask was more than the heavy kohl eyeliner she wore; it guarded her mind from the people who wanted her far away from them. She didn’t want their approval or their affection anyway. Gran was just odd enough to be acceptable, but even she didn’t get to glimpse beyond the hard shell of J’s preferred look.
The vapor rub did seem to quiet the hinges. Gran looked at J with satisfaction, as if to say, “See? It is a magical compound.” J rolled her eyes again.
Gran looked carefully at the teen. “Tell me what you think about the difference between fact and truth. I’m curious to know why you think only facts can be true.”
“Because facts are the only real thing. Fact, I live in a dump of a trailer. Fact, my dad is long gone and I don’t know where my mother is most of the time. Fact, everyone at school hates me. Fact, I hate everyone at school. Fact, the sky is blue…” she stopped suddenly when she saw warning flashes in Gran’s eyes.
Gran’s voice was quiet when she finally spoke. “J, the things you called ‘facts’ are not complete accurate. Yes, you live in a trailer—with my daughter—remember that when you speak poorly of your mother. Yes, your father left you and your mother, but bitterness will not bring him back and will only leave you miserable. As for hate,” Gran stumbled over the word, “There is too much of it in the world and it only destroys.”
“Yeah, yeah,” grumbled J. “What the world needs now is love, sweet love and all that other hippy-dippy stuff. Do you watch the news Gran? The world is falling apart and the only thing anyone cares about is power, control, and stepping all over us to get it.”
“Have I ever told you about my grandfather, J?” The change of subject startled J, but since she could feel the rage surging in her chest, she went along with it. Getting mad about the things she couldn’t control never made her feel better—and since she couldn’t control much of anything, misery was her most familiar emotion.
“He used to tell me that there are facts and there are perceptions. Most of the time, we react to our interpretation of facts, which means we can’t really know what facts are actual and which are simply perceptions repackaged. In our daily lives we have facts that we know to be actual, like you are my daughter’s daughter and I am your mother’s mother. But when we look at mothers and daughters in this family, you see things differently than I do. So which perspective is true?”
J thought for a moment, pulling a thread from her unraveling tights. “So, what is truth? I guess facts don’t mean truth if perception changes them. Are you telling me that gravity is all in my head and that the sky isn’t blue?”
“Well, scientifically speaking, gravity does exist and we live in that reality every day. But the sky really isn’t blue. A legendary politician expanded on a line from an even more legendary philosopher when he said that there are things we know, things we don’t know, and things we don’t know that we don’t know.”
“What does that even mean?” J felt herself fall into her habit of exasperation if she didn’t understand something. “We know that we don’t know anything? Gran, I don’t know if this is depressing or infuriating. Are we just supposed to go around waiting for everything to make sense while at the same time knowing that nothing makes sense? And what does any of it have to do with my mother, your daughter or the story that you told me earlier being true, but not necessarily factual?” She blew her dark bangs out of her eyes with the last comment.
“Sometimes,” Gran said, “sometimes the story is true despite the accuracy of the facts. There is a deeper and purer love. And it is always true, even when it seems to appear in story. The true myth is one that works beyond and through our perceptions of facts. I know you love your mother, even when she makes you crazy with her comings and goings. I also know that I love my daughter in spite of the terrible decisions she makes. The truth in the story of our family is love—even when it feels like an illusion because we see things that happen that don’t look like we think they should.”
J rolled the thread from her tights in her fingers. “So basically, life is just a series of spiraling pyres of things that happen that we may or may not perceive as facts—but they might be true? Gran, it makes no sense.”
At that moment the clouds broke out in an array of dizzying colors. Gran pointed to the iridescence. “What do you see?”
“A rainbow, but it’s not a rainbow. It’s part of the clouds? It’s not a arc, but the colors are the same as a rainbow. I don’t know, Gran, what is it?”
“That, my dear girl, is an example of an unknown unknown. Five minutes ago you had never seen anything like it, but now you know that it’s something you didn’t know that you didn’t know. It’s called a ‘rainbow cloud.’ You know rainbows because you’ve seen then, but they aren’t facts. They are your mind’s perception of light refracting through water droplets. This rainbow cloud is light bending—technically diffracting— around tiny ice crystals. Those are the facts, but they aren’t true facts because the light doesn’t change. Only your perception does.”
J’s head hurt. She loved her Gran, but she also knew what she saw, and rainbows of course were factual. But she was too tired to argue about it. She was too tired to think about her mother or knowns and unknowns and whether truth even mattered. The rainbow cloud disappeared as quickly as it had come. All J wanted was something she could rely on. Someone who would be there. Something real and factual and true.
Fifteen was hard. J looked at Gran who was still looking at the darkening sky with a small smile.
“Gran?”
“Yes? Can we make cookies?”
“Absolutely. We know we can make them and we know they will be delicious. Those are facts that also happen to be truths because we will make them together with love.”
