Here is me taking a first run into StoryWeaver to see what the AI chat can do. It was fun to plug into so I'll share my story here.  

StoryWeaver Story from Jamie 

There is a young girl who has traveled a very long way to a distant mountain village. She knows that she will find “her people” there but is not sure what will be required of her before she can arrive there. Her name is Sil. It is spring.

Beneath her feet there is a slight rumbling sound and a small crater opens. It is filled with hot lava. She is afraid and unsure of what this means and how it may interfere with her path to the mountain and her people.

While she pauses, searching inside for answers, the crater widens. It opens wider and wider and wider and she is suddenly standing just on the edge of it. She begin to walk slowly around it's edge noting that even as she walks the opening grows wider and wider yet. It looks hot. And scary. And just a little bit exciting.

Everything in her want to stay safe. And everything in her wants to jump into that crater, to feel the heat and the burn and the reconstruction of it all. But instead she walks. She walks for ten years, and then another ten. Everytime the urge to jump in and be consumed overcomes her she walks with even more determination. A decade becomes two, then three, then even four. She knows she is aging, that time has not paused at her first moment of awareness but it seems the more she walk and the more time passes the harder it is for her to even consider the consequences of that leap intot the fired. It makes her feel sad, that her fear and her doubt and her lack of bravery have kept her from that lovely mountain place beyond and her people. She thinks she cannot bear to spend yet another decade or five walking this rim. Or worse, to just lay down when she can no longer walk and to end that way alone, without her people.

Suddenly she hears music, voices singing, harmoniums droning, drums beating. It is the most beautiful sound she has ever heard. It feels like it is calling her to come and it is coming from the mountain, from her people, an invitation, a waiting, a sigh and a sign that if not now, when? If not here, where? As she listens to the distant music, it quells the many voices in her head that have told her not to leap, not to burn too hotly, not too dream to big, not too reach too far. Those voices seem weak and measly now that she has heard such beautiful music. They cannot hurt her. They cannot disuade her. They cannot weaken her resolve. She wants to burn brighter, hotter, and make big flames leap and she wants it now. She steps off the edge and into the fire. Smoke rises and dances around her. They form women, so many other women dancing together in smokey images and those formless forms, so powerful, pull her straight out of the fire and up to the mountain. The only parts that got burned away were the parts of her robes and wrappings that no longer fit or belonged. They were gone.

The Elders track their history back only a few hundred years, infant time in the longer history of the Stone People. Even so, these human Elders who call themselves simply “The Storytellers” have held the stories from all time and understand that all stories arise from Still Mountain as naturally as rain flows down its slopes.

Their early prophets saw a time when stories themselves would be threatened by a too-rapidly changing world. Their mission was to preserve not only the Story Board game, but the generative nature of stories themselves. They saw this generative quality as the primary force of the creative universe. Without it, all of earth would wither and die.

None of the current Elders, except perhaps Simon, knew the exact origins of the Story Board. An earlier version of the board was preserved under glass and is thought to be a thousand years old. Its images, drawn on a tanned hide, were so beautiful that sometimes Simon did his morning prayers before the glass case trying to feel in his own fingers the energy of the one who had drawn such images.

The tanned hide traced a trail of spaces around and around in an ever-tightening spiral toward the center where Still Mountain was drawn. The green of the forests was a fresh, spring green, the white of The Great Desert of Lost Ideas as white as bone, and the dusty brown of Still Mountain itself looked as if the hand that had painted it had just put his brush down that morning.

A quiet reflection
What is it in your own life that feels worth protecting—not because it is fragile, but because it is generative?

Still Mountain keeps its distance from the larger range of mountains forming a ridge from east to west. It is not stand-offish, this mountain, but rather preserves its solitude and its silence for a very special purpose. It can tolerate no interference from the younger mountain ranges with their deep rumbles and grumbles as they still react to whatever ancient upheaval disturbed their own flat quietude.

Still Mountain is not high, less than five-thousand feet above sea level, but it has stood unmoving for millions of years while the wind and rain soothed all of its sharp edges to soft curves and valleys. Many ancient races have occupied the place behind Still Mountain; animals and plants, the people and, of course, the first occupants which are the mountain itself—The Stone Family. It makes sense that all legends have declared Still Mountain as the birthplace of story. It also makes sense that the human Elders, in their effort to preserve the storytelling tradition, would locate their main encampment and training school there.

Their village is on the north side of the mountain hidden entirely from the eyes of all the other villages that dot the valley between Still Mountain and the Southern Range. The Elders track their history back only a few hundred years, infant time in the longer history of the Stone People. Even so, these human Elders who call themselves simply “The Storytellers” have held the stories from all time and understand that all stories arise from Still Mountain as naturally as rain flows down its slopes.

Their early prophets saw a time when stories themselves would be threatened by a too-rapidly changing world. Their mission was to preserve not only the Story Board game, but the generative nature of stories themselves. They saw this generative quality as the primary force of the creative universe. Without it, all of earth would wither and die.

A quiet reflection
What feels ancient and steady beneath the surface of your own life. Feel free to leave a comment below.

(An excerpt from the unpublished novel, Still Mountain by P. Jamie Lee)

For the month of January 2026, I’m opening a story world.

Each day, I’ll be sharing a short excerpt from a longer, unfinished novel called Still Mountain. These are not lessons or essays. They are moments—small crossings, pauses, scenes where something subtle is happening beneath the surface. A boy writing in the dark. A girl listening too closely. A mountain that seems to be listening back.

Still Mountain is not a place--it is a state of being. It is the quiet center we sometimes touch in childhood, sometimes lose, and sometimes spend a lifetime circling back toward. The excerpts you’ll read this month come from many years of writing and revisiting this world. They’re offered here just as they are—unedited, unpolished—so they can do what stories do best: work on us sideways.

You don’t need to remember characters or follow a plot. You don’t need to “understand” anything. Let each piece stand on its own. Read it once. Or twice. Let the images come and go. If something stays with you, that’s enough.

It’s about letting the story meet you where you are.

As you read, notice one image, feeling, or line that lingers. You don’t need to do anything with it. Just notice what stays.