Library

FR · ≈ 5,228 words · 4 chapters

À l’abri des certitudes : l’anse du Poul et le Logeo

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Philcad

À Sarzeau, Maëlle Le Guen reçoit une mission séduisante et embarrassante : créer une promenade patrimoniale entre l’anse du Poul, la pointe du Logeo et le port. Une affiche promet déjà des « abris oubliés », mais le terrain, les archives et les habitants racontent une histoire moins docile. Avec Yann, ostréiculteur attentif aux marées, et Odette, gardienne de souvenirs locaux, Maëlle explore un paysage où chaque carte soulève une nouvelle question — et où l’eau peut défaire en quelques minutes le parcours le mieux préparé.

EN · ≈ 5,156 words · 3 chapters

After the Call, Before the Speech

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Baptiste

On a cold November night in 2008, Cody, a young software worker whose H-1B visa depends on his job, joins the crowd near Chicago’s Grant Park. Barriers block the stage, giant screens carry the election coverage, and every new projection raises the tension. Waiting beside his practical friend Lena and a retired transit worker named Marcus, Cody wonders what this public moment can mean for someone who cannot vote—and whose future still rests on paperwork, employment, and promises no election can guarantee.

EN · ≈ 5,170 words · 3 chapters

After the Last Pour: One Night in Boomtown Bodie

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Baptiste

Autumn 1879 finds Bodie crowded with miners, merchants, teamsters, and newcomers chasing uncertain fortunes. Boardinghouse worker Ada Price knows how quickly wages can disappear after dark, especially when her proud younger brother heads toward Ellis Ward’s saloon. Following him into a night of gambling, strained tempers, rough roads, and divided loyalties, Ada must decide how far protection can go before it becomes control—and whom she can trust in a town still awake behind every doorway.

FR · ≈ 5,266 words · 4 chapters

Douze sur le terrain

Produced by Narrative Lab

Entre 2004 et 2007, Mathis, junior de l’US Nemours-Saint-Pierre, veut prouver que son équipe compte dans le rugby seine-et-marnais. Sa cousine Inès l’aide à préparer un dossier pour les nouveaux inscrits, mais leur travail fait apparaître une difficulté inattendue : le club est bien ancré à Saint-Pierre-lès-Nemours, dans le sud de la Seine-et-Marne, tout en appartenant à un réseau régional plus vaste, et les archives ne disent pas tout. À travers un match gagné contre Tournus, les déplacements, la montée des seniors et l’afflux de jeunes après la Coupe du monde 2007, Mathis apprend à transmettre une histoire réelle sans la transformer en légende.

FR · ≈ 5,233 words · 4 chapters

Les murs du terrain creux

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Baptiste

Entre 1818 et le 1er janvier 1825, Jeanne Vautrin, maçonne sur le chantier du futur cimetière du Nord, doit transformer un ancien paysage de carrières de gypse en un lieu funéraire stable et praticable. Elle travaille avec Martin, son oncle attaché au petit Champ de Repos, et Farid, un aide-géomètre qui apprend à confronter ses plans aux irrégularités du sol. À mesure que les terrains voisins sont acquis et que les murs, plateformes, rampes et escaliers prennent forme, Jeanne comprend que la dignité d’un cimetière dépend autant des décisions administratives que du travail discret de ceux qui retiennent la terre et rendent les chemins possibles.

EN · ≈ 2,616 words · 3 chapters

The Book of Many Irelands

Produced by Narrative Lab

In April 1998, heritage worker Aisling Keane returns to a divided border community to prepare an exhibition about a nearby ringfort. Carrying her grandmother Moira’s notebook of fairy stories, Aisling wants to prove an unbroken line from ancient Ireland to the present. Local historian Ciaran Bell challenges her certainty. As they follow the site’s changing meanings through Christianity, monastic learning, Viking Dublin, medieval lordship, plantation, famine, revival, independence, partition, and the Good Friday Agreement, they must decide whether truth requires them to silence inherited stories—or to tell them more honestly.

EN · ≈ 5,104 words · 4 chapters

The Cave in the Headline

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Roxy

In December 1997, freelance writer Eleni Vardaki is assigned a television feature linking Koutouki Cave above Paiania to the widely reported “Satanists of Pallini” case. Her producer wants a frightening story before the appeal ends. But as Eleni visits the public cave, follows the case through court reporting, and consults a retired police records clerk, she finds a harder truth: the crimes occurred in the wider eastern-Attica area between 1991 and 1993, while no available evidence establishes Koutouki as a crime scene. To publish responsibly, Eleni must risk her job and challenge a story that has become more powerful than its sources.

EN · ≈ 5,116 words · 3 chapters

The Count on Main Street

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Baptiste

During a busy agricultural season in 1928, Blair Fuller, a fictional San Francisco motorcycle traveler, stops in Locke to rest and make a quick travel note. He mistakes the people gathered around Main Street for the town’s permanent population and assumes the street itself is where most work happens. Mei Lin, a market clerk at Yuen Chong Market, challenges him to stay long enough to see the town’s changing rhythm. Across one day, Blair learns that Locke’s roughly 600 permanent residents lived within a much larger seasonal world of farm laborers, boarders, merchants, service workers, families, and visitors—and that Main Street’s commerce depended on labor performed elsewhere in the Delta.

EN · ≈ 5,397 words · 4 chapters

The Night Shift Ledger

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Baptiste

In contemporary Chicago, audio editor Maya Ortiz seeks a sleep study to reveal the hidden meaning and single cause of her recurring predawn nightmares. The study can identify REM sleep and the body's physiology, but it cannot read a dream. As Maya learns how emotional urgency, memory fragments, imagery, and reduced reality-checking interact in the active brain of REM, she must decide whether to keep hunting for a perfect explanation or accept practical care before fear of sleep damages her work and daily life.

EN · ≈ 5,343 words · 4 chapters

The Price of a Flower

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Baptiste

July 1967. Celia Moreno earns her rent altering fashionable clothes in a Haight Street boutique, surrounded by tourists, runaways, merchants, volunteers, music, and promises of a freer life. When June, an unprepared nineteen-year-old from Oregon, asks for work, warmth, and a safe place to sleep, Celia is drawn beyond the limits of her shop. Their crowded day carries them through the storefronts and aid networks of Haight-Ashbury, where every open door raises another question about belonging.

EN · ≈ 5,280 words · 4 chapters

The Shore Was Already Named

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Baptiste

On Guanahani in 1492, Iria knows the reefs, canoe routes, gardens, and names that shape her island home. Then three unfamiliar ships appear beyond the water. Their crews bring bright objects, metal weapons, strange ceremonies, and words no one can understand. As Iria watches the first meetings unfold and reports travel toward Yarima’s community on Hispaniola, both women must judge what the visitors want—and how much can be learned before curiosity and hospitality become dangerous.

EN · ≈ 5,058 words · 4 chapters

The Song Before the Beat

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Baptiste

In 1978 Paris, Camille Moreau, a young records-office assistant hoping to become a music journalist, is assigned to prepare background notes for Patrick Hernandez’s new disco single. Expecting a simple success story, she instead follows the song backward—from clubs and foreign charts to an uncertain 1973 Pigalle origin, an acoustic folk-like beginning, and an unsuccessful Paris Palace Hotel recording. Under pressure to produce a clean publicity myth, Camille must decide how to tell a compelling history when the most important evidence—the exact first draft—has not survived.

EN · ≈ 5,256 words · 3 chapters

The Texture Test

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Alba

With one week to prepare a public proposal for a long-duration space meal, Alba, a food designer specializing in edible flowers, and her feta-loving younger sister Roxy must turn two competing ideas into one credible meal system. Their first prototypes reveal that altered flavor in space is not simply a loss of taste: aroma, congestion, appetite, texture, moisture, packaging, nutrition, and personal preference all matter. As practical failures force them to revise their assumptions, the sisters learn to design not one magical recipe but a safe, adaptable menu built around controlled texture, contained sauces, and choice.

EN · ≈ 5,139 words · 3 chapters

When the Train Stops at Drawbridge

Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Baptiste

Winter, 1926. Before the first train reaches the marsh settlement of Drawbridge, hotel worker Rosa Valente is already carrying water across slick boards and preparing for the weekend rush. Then hunters, cabin holders, excursionists, and hired workers pour onto Station Island, each expecting something from the hotel and the marsh. As the tide rises and narrow routes become crowded, Rosa must decide whose demands can wait—and who has the right to decide.