Behind Old Madam Tessie's cottage there was a garden that had been growing for so long that nobody quite remembered what it had looked like when it was young. There were climbing roses along the stone wall, lavender in thick purple rows, and a great oak tree so old its lowest branch touched the ground like a sleeping arm.
Every evening, just as the sun finished its last stretch of gold across the grass, the fireflies came out. First one, then ten, then a whole soft constellation — rising from the clover and drifting through the lavender like tiny wandering stars.
Pip was the smallest firefly in the garden, and her light had always been a warm honey-gold that she was quietly proud of. But one evening, when she opened her wings and rose into the cooling air, something was wrong.
She didn't glow.
She tried again — harder this time, the way you squeeze your eyes shut when you really want something. Nothing. Around her the other fireflies blinked on and off like small lanterns, and Pip floated alone in the growing dark, invisible.
She landed on a large dock leaf near the garden pond, and there she found Horatio the snail, making his slow evening rounds along the stone path.
"You look very dim tonight," he said, not unkindly.
"I've lost my glow," Pip said. "Completely. I can't make it come back."
Horatio considered this with the slow seriousness of someone who had all the time in the world. "What were you thinking about last night, just before you fell asleep?"
Pip thought. "That I wasn't bright enough," she said quietly. "That the others were so much brighter. That maybe I wasn't doing it right."
"Ah," said Horatio. He was quiet for a moment, watching a moth drift past on its unhurried way. "I don't think your glow is gone. I think it got shy."
"Glows don't get shy," Pip said.
"Everything gets shy when it's watched too closely," Horatio said. "Even fire. Have you ever tried to catch a flame by staring hard at it?"
Pip didn't answer. Instead she looked out across the garden. The cricket had started its evening song — not because anyone was listening, but because evening had come and that was what crickets did. A fat frog on the pond's edge opened his golden eye without urgency. Old Madam Tessie's cat stretched out under the oak tree and simply blinked at the stars.
Nothing in the garden was trying to be anything. The roses didn't strain to be more fragrant. The lavender didn't count its blossoms.
Pip let out a long breath she'd been holding since yesterday. She stopped waiting for her glow. She just watched the garden — the way the dew was already forming on the big flat leaves, the way the last stripe of purple remained on the horizon, the way the whole garden smelled of warm earth cooling down for the night.
And then — very quietly, like a candle catching — she began to glow.
Not a blazing light. Just her own warm honey-gold, pulsing gently in the dark.
"There you are," said Horatio, and trundled on his way.
Pip rose off the dock leaf and joined the other fireflies in the lavender — not worrying about brightness, not comparing, just drifting easy through the garden that had been growing since before anyone could remember. And as she floated up past the oak tree's old branch, she noticed something she hadn't before: every single firefly in the garden was a slightly different shade. Some cool white, some amber, some almost green. Each one distinct. Each one exactly enough.
~ The End ~
— Iannie Auramie
Also by Iannie Auramie
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