magisternihil's 100-word story for June 3, 2026

magisternihil wrote the following micro-story on Hectalex on June 3, 2026. Each story on Hectalex is inspired by a daily visual prompt and must be exactly 100 words.

Call it a ritual, a compulsion, a habit, whatever, but every year Mira watched the balloons float slowly across the sky, each one pointed out by her parents, and she waited. Sure, she enjoyed what they showed her, all the multicolored stripes, dots, and starbursts peppering the sky with languid excitement, but deep inside her she knew things wouldn’t be okay, they couldn’t be, until she saw— There it was, the comical egg giving way to gravity. The words she heard long ago rose up. “Humpty Dumpty had a great Fall,” and now she could be confident she would too.

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