The Egg of Echoes

No one remembers when the purple ghost first arrived in the glade. There were whispers, of course. That Peep had wandered from a far-off orchard where spring never ended. That they were born of an egg themselves, cracked open by moonlight on the morning of the vernal equinox. That they weren’t a ghost at all, but something older, gentler—a guardian of something no one could quite define.

But what everyone remembers are the eggs.

Peep is always seen with one held close, the others resting at their feet like forgotten offerings. The eggs are small, smooth, and marbled in pastel swirls of rose and sky blue, as though the winds of spring had spun colour into stone. Some say they pulse faintly, like a heartbeat.

Children who find Peep are the first to hear it.

A whisper.

Not in the ear, but in the heart. A sudden memory that doesn’t belong to them: a birthday long before their time, a song sung by someone they never met, the sensation of dancing barefoot in grass under a sun they’ve never seen. Peep tilts their head, almost curiously, as though listening too.

But they never speak.

One spring, long ago, Edmund Ravenwood encountered Peep during a solitary ramble through a patch of wild woodland near the outskirts of Matlock. He had been following an owl that shouldn't have been out in daylight. It vanished behind a twisted hawthorn tree, and there stood Peep utterly still, watching him with pale, soft eyes.

Drawn by the strangeness, Edmund knelt and reached toward one of the eggs. The moment his fingers brushed the shell, a voice filled his mind a woman calling her son in a language he didn’t know, the rush of joy as tiny hands clutched a painted egg, the scent of baking and bonfires.

He staggered back, heart pounding.

Peep didn't move. But Edmund knew. These were not simply keepsakes or decoration. They were vessels.

Each egg held echoes of lives, moments, memories. Whether gathered from the newly dead or drawn from dreams, he couldn't say. But they were real.

And they were guarded.

Peep, he would later write in his journal, was not a ghost in the traditional sense. They did not haunt. They did not warn. They simply were. A living archive, perhaps. Or a librarian of emotions, curating a collection of what made life beautiful, and tragic, and whole.

Every spring, Peep appears again. Sometimes in churchyards where children once played. Sometimes by rivers where sweethearts met. Once, someone found them on the windowsill of a hospital room just after a patient had passed. The nurses swore the air felt warm, like sunlight on soil.

No one has ever taken one of the eggs. Those who tried—a greedy collector, a desperate mother, a foolish student found themselves suddenly overwhelmed. Some fainted. One wandered for days, unable to remember their own name. Another spoke only in poetry for a week, reciting verses of grief and joy from voices that were not theirs.

The eggs always found their way back.

Peep has no known home. No lair. They are seen only during the early weeks of spring, vanishing as the season ripens into summer. Some believe they follow sorrow appearing wherever hearts need mending. Others think they trace joy, preserving it before it fades.

I once hypothesised that Peep was drawn to the cusp of memory the moment where one forgets and another begins to remember. That threshold, he believed, was sacred.

Perhaps Peep guards that place.

Perhaps they are that place.

Whatever their nature, one truth remains: no one forgets meeting Peep. Their presence lingers like the scent of spring rain, gentle and haunting. And long after they are gone, the whisper of the egg’s echo can still be heard, if you listen with a heart that's willing to remember.