The Village That Forgot to Feel

In a village where no one can feel pain, joy fades like smoke. Each morning, the cursed and the curious line up for pastries filled with memory.

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I’m Luna Asli Kolcu, your host for this month-long fantasy writing challenge. Each day, I’m sharing a new original prompt to help you explore strange magic, forgotten worlds, and the stories that live just under the surface.

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In the village where no one feels pain, they eat the bitter pastries together.

Not because they are hungry.
Because the wind doesn't sting here. Because grief no longer blooms behind the ribs like it once did. Because nothing ever truly hurts. Without ache, even beauty slips through the fingers like smoke.

Not because they like the taste.
Not because it’s tradition.
But because if they don’t, joy fades too.
Not suddenly. Quietly. Like a laugh forgotten mid-breath.

The curse has no name, but everyone knows its rules. No wounds. No sorrow. No fear. No shame. No guilt. No grief. No sharpness to mark the edges of a life. But with no contrast, happiness flattens to a smile you can’t feel. Love dries up like bread left out too long. Music becomes the memory of music, hollow and weightless.

So every morning, just after the bell tower sighs seven times, two lines form outside the tea shop.
One line of villagers in silence, wrapped in thick wool and ritual, their eyes dull, their movements precise as clockwork. And one of visitors—shivering with anticipation, cheeks flushed from wind and wonder, gold rings on their fingers, velvet gloves clutched tight around scraps of paper and phone screens. They speak in low voices, always looking around, as if the strangeness might rub off on them and make them beautiful.

The villagers offer no greetings. No handshakes. No glances. Their silence is not shyness, but absence—the pause left behind when nothing is worth saying.
Only the soft shuffle of feet, the hush of breath held in anticipation, the metallic clink of coins trading hands, and the scent of scorched sugar curling through frost-heavy air like memory through a wound.

The tea is plain. Calming, if you want it. But it’s the pastries they come for. The visitors photograph them, post them, gasp at the first bite like it’s revelation. They laugh too loud. They close their eyes as if light is pouring from the crust. One woman weeps and calls it joy. Another licks the sugar from her fingers and begs for another. For them, it’s a joyride through a stranger’s tenderness, not sorrow—sweet and thrilling, like riding a carousel of borrowed light. They savor it in full, licking the warmth from their fingers, eyes too bright, as if joy could be swallowed whole. And then they leave, chatting and radiant, the flavor already fading behind them. The sweet ones are golden and warm, filled with memories not their own. They buy joy without pain, never knowing what it costs.

Inside, the baker stands behind the counter, the air thick with cinnamon and grief. Pale flour clings to her arms like frost, her knuckles red from heat, her face dappled with the faint glow of the oven's breath. Her apron is always gray. Her eyes darker. She doesn’t ask what they want. She already knows.

She places two trays on the wooden board by the window. One holds the bitter ones. Never more than thirteen. Never less than nine. The other holds the sweet: delicate, fleeting, always vanishing by midday.

Each bears a sigil, baked deep into the crust. Not letters. Not language. Just impressions. Fragile dents where memory once pressed their weight. Shadows of moments no one remembers until they’re tasted. The past preserved in flour and fire.

Burnt fig folded into miscarriage.
Cracked rye filled with farewell.
Clove and iron laced with the first time a brother raised a hand in anger.

The villagers pass the tray.
No one takes more than a bite. A whole pastry would be too much. Pain rushes in hard when there’s no scar tissue to hold it.

One bite is enough. It tilts the world back into feeling.

A boy tastes the crust of abandonment and remembers how warm his grandfather’s coat once was—the coarse wool scratch against his cheek, the smell of smoke, soap, and safety. A woman swallows grief and, for a heartbeat, hears her mother singing over the clatter of pots, the window open to late spring, her voice a ribbon of honey and thyme, stretched thin by time. An old man chews through betrayal and feels again the cracked leather of the seat beside her, the weight of silence between apologies, the slow-burning ache of choosing to stay anyway.

No one cries.

Tears belong to another kind of world.

They chew slowly, reverently. They do not speak. The silence stretches soft and holy, like the hush between thunder and rain.

And when the last bite is taken, the baker wraps the tray in a cloth and returns to the back room, where the oven burns not with fire, but with names.

The curse resets every night. Feelings thin, then vanish. The joy fades first. Then the longing. By morning, the villagers wake up soft and blank, shadows without weight.

Only the taste stays, a whisper beneath the tongue. Enough to draw them back.

They don’t remember what the bitter ones cost. But they know they must keep paying.

---

Once, a stranger came to the village.

She wasn’t from there. She could feel everything. The sting of cold air, the heaviness of eyes watching her, the raw bite of hunger wrapped in loneliness. It showed in the way she moved. Too fast. Too loud. Smiling like she meant it.

She asked for the sweet ones.

“Those aren’t for the ones who’ve forgotten,” the baker said.

“But I’m not from here.”

The baker didn’t answer. She brought out a single pastry, golden and glowing with warmth. One of the famous sweet ones. Honey and apple, folded into the memory of first love. Payment was one bitter memory, offered without words. The stranger ate it in two bites.

She returned the next day, and the day after. Then she stayed.

And on the seventh night, the village forgot her.

She stood in line the next morning, blank-eyed, waiting for a bite of pain.

She took it. Chewed slowly. Did not speak.

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The villagers don’t talk about the first time. The thing that made the curse.
But every year, on the coldest morning, one pastry is passed and no one bites.

It smells of something too old. Too sharp.

The pain that made the curse.

It sits on the tray, untouched. The baker, with hands dusted in ash, does not insist.

She simply whispers.

"Next time, then."

And the village walks into the joy of morning.

Soft with sorrow.

THE END