Firefly Nights

PROLOGUE

When a firefly burns too bright, does it know it's dying?

Maybe not.
Maybe it just keeps burning—
reckless and golden,
too enamored with the glow to see the dark rising at the edges.

The wind came first.
Not in a hurry, not loud. Just that soft kind of hush that curls through tall grass like it already knows the ending. It moved like breath across the field, cool and violet-sweet, brushing the underside of my jaw, trailing down the line of my throat like a memory. I ran barefoot through it, the blades of grass slick with dew and bending like they'd been waiting for me all night.

The ground was spongey, still holding the weight of the day. I could feel the press of it beneath each step—not pulling me under, not pushing me forward. Just... there. Steady the way only the land can be. Like it had memorized the way my feet fell. Like it had been listening this whole time.

Daddy always said, The darker the soil, the deeper the secrets.

He'd kneel in the rows beside me, rough hands pressing mine into the dirt like he was teaching me how to pray. Feel that? he'd whisper, eyes scanning the sky like there was something written up there worth chasing. That's memory. That's truth. That's everything buried that doesn't want to stay buried.

And I believed him.

Because the soil never lied—not like people did.

I learned early how to listen.

When the house got too loud or too quiet in that wrong, hollow kind of way, I'd slip out the screen door without a sound and follow the fence line down toward the creek. That path knew my footsteps. The mud there was thick and cold, the kind that clung like it had something to tell you. It pulled at my ankles like it remembered my name. I'd stand there with my toes sunk deep and wait for my thoughts to still.

And when they did, I'd hear it. The hush beneath the hush. The stillness tucked inside the silence.

But tonight... it wasn't the mud that called me.

It was the fireflies.

They flickered across the meadow like sparks loosed from the stars. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Little pulses of light, blinking in and out like they were speaking a language I was just on the edge of understanding. I reached for one, slow and hopeful, but it vanished before my fingers found it.

Of course it did.

For a second, the world felt paper-thin. Like a dream you didn't realize you were inside until the waking had already started.

The air shifted, cool against the sweat at my neck, slipping beneath my hair. The whole meadow seemed to pause. Not stop. Not hesitate. Just... wait.

The fireflies thickened near the oaks at the far edge of the field, their light threading through the branches like stitches in a dark quilt. Gold sewn into black. I knew those trees. I knew the one with the split in the bark where my foot always landed second. I knew the knot that wasn't quite a handhold but still held me every time I dared one branch higher. I used to climb them barefoot in the dusk, chasing that edge between courage and fall.

I used to think maybe if I climbed high enough, I'd hear Nanna in the wind. That if I reached the right kind of quiet, the kind past fear, I'd catch some piece of her voice tangled in the leaves or snag a corner of sky that hadn't been named yet.

"Mama?"

It slipped out before I could stop it—too soft to matter, barely louder than the hush of the wind threading through the tall grass. But once I said it, I couldn't un-say it. Couldn't call it back and pretend I wasn't hoping for an answer.