The Memory Thief

The market smelled of boiled roots, rusting metal, and desperation. In the heart of the memory district, vendors hawked bottled recollections: First Kiss, Child’s Laughter, Victory on Graduation Day—each sealed in delicate glass vials that shimmered with ghostly light. Buyers wandered with glazed eyes, ready to trade away pain for a moment of warmth, or relive joy for a price.

Seventeen-year-old Lira didn’t need vials. She walked through the crowd unnoticed, invisible by design. Her coat was threadbare, her boots secondhand, but her gaze was sharp. She didn’t steal food. She stole memories.

They called her a thief, if they knew she existed. But Lira didn’t touch anyone. The memories came to her. When someone cried, or smiled just a little too long, she could feel the shimmer of emotion flicker near their skin. A pulse behind their eyes. She reached—not with hands, but with a thought—and plucked.

A flash: a boy chasing his sister across a summer field. Lira staggered slightly. That one was sweet.

She always gave something back—an echo, a dream, a blurred replacement. Enough that no one noticed, not right away. She couldn’t explain how she did it. She only knew that she had done it since she was five, since the night she woke up with her mother sobbing beside her, and no one could remember why her father never came home.

That memory was hers now. And she hated it.

A sharp voice sliced through the air. “You.”

Lira froze. A man stepped from the shadows of a pillared archway. He wore a black coat stitched with silver wire—a Collector. Elite enforcers of the Memory Guild.

“I’ve been watching you,” he said, stepping closer. His eyes shimmered faintly, like polished glass. “You don’t buy, don’t trade. Yet your aura is… overflowing.”

Lira backed away, heart pounding. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.” He pulled a small silver disc from his pocket. “Memory scan. Standard procedure.”

She ran.

She darted through the market like a breath of wind, slipping between carts, over crates, under tables. Behind her, the Collector followed, not running, just walking—too confident.

She dove into a back alley and slid into the shadows, pressing her back to cold stone. Her breath fogged in the chill air. Think. He had her scent now. Her aura. She had one shot.

Closing her eyes, she reached inward—not to someone else, but to herself. The first time she ever took a memory. The hollow scream in her mother’s arms. The overwhelming sorrow. The moment her gift had been born.

She held it in her hands like a knife.

When the Collector turned the corner, she struck.

Not with force, but with feeling. She shoved the memory into him, like a wave crashing against glass. He staggered, gasped. Eyes wide.

Lira whispered, “Take it. You want my memories? Take this one.”

The Collector sank to his knees, trembling. His lips moved in silent disbelief.

Lira stepped over him and vanished into the mist.

By morning, rumors swirled through the memory district: A Collector found broken and weeping, whispering the name of someone long gone. No memory vial near him, only tears.

No one saw Lira again. But sometimes, in the corner of a dream, people felt a presence. A warmth. A sadness.

And if you were lucky—if you were hurting just enough—you might wake with a memory you thought you’d lost.

Or a new one you never lived.