This was on the Afterword site, and demonstrates the advances AI is making. Very clever.
Mike: Please write me a short story of no more than 1000 words about a man and a woman, strangers, at Stonehenge for the Summer Solstice.
Strangers at Stonehenge
The crowd pressed forward in the pre-dawn darkness, thousands of pilgrims shuffling toward the ancient stones. Maya clutched her thermos of coffee, wondering why she’d driven three hours to stand in a field with strangers, watching the sun rise through rocks that had stood for millennia.
“First time?” The voice came from beside her—a man about her age, maybe forty, with kind eyes and a worn leather jacket that looked like it had seen many solstices.
“That obvious?” Maya smiled, grateful for the human connection in the sea of faces.
“The wonder in your eyes gives it away. I’m David.” He gestured toward the towering trilithons ahead. “I’ve been coming here for fifteen years. Never gets old.”
“Maya. And I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this many people.”
David chuckled. “Twenty thousand, usually. But something about sharing this moment with strangers from all over the world—it’s oddly comforting. We’re all here for the same reason, really.”
“Which is?”
He considered this as they shuffled forward with the crowd. “To witness something bigger than ourselves. To connect with people who stood in this exact spot four thousand years ago, watching the same sun rise through the same stones.”
Maya had come on impulse, fleeing the empty house that still echoed with her ex-husband’s absence. She’d told herself it was about experiencing history, but standing here now, she realized it was about not being alone with her thoughts on the longest day of the year.
“Are you here for spiritual reasons?” she asked.
“Partly. But mostly for the continuity. My father brought me here when I was twelve, right after my mother died. He said some things are too ancient and too beautiful to let grief overshadow them.” David’s voice carried a comfortable melancholy. “He’s gone now too, but I keep coming. For him, for me, for the connection to something enduring.”
They found a spot near the outer circle as the sky began to lighten. Around them, people sat in meditation, played gentle music, or simply waited in reverent silence. A woman nearby had brought her teenage daughter, whispering explanations about the monument’s alignment. A group of friends shared a breakfast of pastries and laughter.
“I got divorced six months ago,” Maya found herself saying, surprised by her own honesty. “I keep thinking I should feel liberated, but mostly I just feel… untethered. Like I’m floating without reference points.”
David nodded. “After my wife left—that was eight years ago—I felt like I’d lost my place in the world. Like I was reading a book and someone had torn out all the pages that explained who I was supposed to be.”
The eastern horizon began to glow, a soft amber that painted the stones in golden light. The crowd grew quieter, more focused. Maya felt the anticipation building like a held breath.
“How did you find your way back?” she asked quietly.
“I’m not sure I have completely. But I learned that some anchors aren’t other people—they’re moments like this. Rituals that connect us to the long story of being human.” He paused, watching the light grow stronger. “My marriage ended, but my need to witness beauty didn’t. My father died, but my connection to what he taught me about wonder didn’t.”
The sun’s edge appeared on the horizon, perfectly framed by the heel stone. A collective sigh rose from the crowd, twenty thousand people exhaling together as light flooded the stone circle. Maya felt tears on her cheeks, unexpected and cleansing.
“It’s extraordinary,” she whispered.
“Every year, I think it will be less magical,” David replied. “Every year, I’m wrong.”
They stood in comfortable silence as the sun climbed higher, painting the ancient stones in shades of gold and amber. Maya realized that for the first time in months, she wasn’t thinking about what she’d lost or what came next. She was simply present, part of an unbroken chain of humans who had gathered to witness light returning to the world.
“I think I understand now,” she said as the crowd began to disperse. “Why you keep coming back.”
“It’s not about the stones, really. It’s about choosing to show up for wonder, even when—especially when—life feels uncertain.”
As they walked back toward the car parks, Maya felt something shift inside her. Not healing exactly, but a recognition that she could carry this feeling with her—this sense of being part of something larger and more enduring than her own small story.
“Same time next year?” David asked as they reached the place where their paths diverged.
Maya smiled, feeling the first genuine lightness she’d experienced in months. “I think so. For the continuity.”
They parted ways among the crowd of strangers who had briefly become a community, united by their willingness to rise before dawn and witness something ancient and beautiful. Maya drove home as the sun climbed higher, carrying with her the memory of light flooding stone and the quiet wisdom of a stranger who had reminded her that some anchors transcend circumstance.
The stones would wait for another year, patient and eternal, ready to frame the sun’s return for whoever needed to remember that they were part of something larger than themselves.
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