short fiction- fireflies

It was just after dusk, that magic hour before true dark. They had made a fire, even though it was June, because it was nice to read by. Through the open windows, they could hear bullfrogs chanting in the lily pads and crickets keeping time in the long grass, where wild roses tangled and climbed the trees, perfuming the night air.

You looked up from your book, from the pool of yellow lamplight across its pages, from the crackling embers of the dying fire.

“What?”

“Let’s take the boat out,” you said.

We gathered oars and pillows and a lantern and set out from the house. On the path down to the pond, we saw them. The woods were strung with their flashing light, a faerie landscape happened upon by chance, as it can only be.

Fireflies.

We stood very still for a moment, to catch our breath at the sight of it, afraid too it might evaporate before our eyes.

“I think you started dancing first.”

“Probably.”

“Like when we were kids.”

“I’ll never forget that night.”

We cast off in the blue boat you loved so much. Stars, millions of them out over the water and those dancing in the trees along the shore. The two of us, quiet, drifting, where we dropped anchor at the center, our heads back against the pillows. The water was lapping on the sides of the boat and there were stars in the water too which was so clear and still it had become a mirror. We drifted there, like that, at the heart of everything. We were the heart of everything, that heavenly night, at the very center of the universe.

“I’m leaving, you know,” you said, after a fashion. And the words suspended themselves in the air for a long time before I answered.

“I know. At the end of the summer.”

“At the end of the summer.”