A Story From a Reader – ‘Nothing Ever Grew There Again’

Many thanks to Valerie for leaving this story in the comments. It was created with the help of Gemini. I thought I would give voice to it with the help of ElevenLabs. The voice is one from their library and the description is – ‘Michael – Deep, Resonant, Confident – a male British voice for a storyteller with a rough undertone.’ I hope Valerie approves.

I’ve included the audio and Valerie’s original text. I also put the story into ChatGPT’s new image generator for the picture above.

I hope you enjoy.

Nothing Ever Grew There Again – Audio

Nothing ever Grew There Again – Text

The sun was a blister in the sky, cracking the clay earth into a mosaic of despair. Elias knelt by the ruined plot, his fingers scraping at the dust. He remembered the seedlings, bright green promises against the brown, planted with a hope that now felt like a cruel jest. He’d watered, he’d tended, he’d even spoken softly to the soil, but the blight, unseen and absolute, had taken root first. His wife had wept when the last shoot withered, a sound Elias carried like a stone in his chest. Now, only the brittle, pale husks of dead weeds remained, monuments to a vanished dream of bounty. He pushed himself up, wiping the grit from his calloused palms. The air tasted of defeat, dry and metallic. Nothing ever grew there again.

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