I can be found where the song goes, that much is true. No one has to guess; those who know me could say as much and those who only know what I do could as well. These are not two separate groups, anyway, I only divide them for my own sake. At other times, in other places, these are two; here, they are not. I ponder at how such things befall me. “Oh, to be beautiful,” or “Oh, to be talented,” or “Oh, to be a wanderer,” are all disguises for the truth. I wear them like a rich aunt’s finest coat. Most of us do, I hope. It makes me feel a little less alone, to think that.
Word spread fast of the fireflies and their blankets of light. Poet to poet, and in this manner I am one of the first to know, but that doesn’t mean much because everyone told everyone else, and so we are all here, together, first to know. Not even the children clamber over each other to reach for the light; we are united in song and beauty and a deep deep love. I sing, of course, and have only left the violin elsewhere so that she is not broken by a careless dancer. I dance, too, and the fireflies fall in strings over and under and around me, the river set aglow as they turn my dappling to mirror-light. I only give pause when my merriment leads me to bump into another. ”Excuse me,” I sing, melodious and slow, so the fireflies cover us both. I think not of drowning in the river-water, but in the light.
"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."
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Asterion isn’t prone to doubting, not after years of witnessing magic, and gods, and the wonders and terrors wrought by both. Even so, when the rumor reaches him - fireflies, countless as the stars, that answer to song and cluster so thickly as to form structures of light - he wonders.
But the mood is festive, and the night is young (the moon is only skimming the treetops) and there seems little harm in finding out what truth is behind the singers’ tales. So, caught up in a small crowd, the bay stallion goes.
The sound reaches them first. Not the thundering laughter of the river as it tumbled over rocks but something above it, bigger than it; the sound of many voices raised in song. Regardless of fireflies, Asterion knows the rumors must be true, for he has never heard anything like this, not in half a decade of festivals, or the years before that spent walking with gods. It raises gooseflesh on his skin, it drives his pulse quicker; where he had held himself apart from the crowd now he forgets to, now he longs to join them, to become a part of the dance.
And then they crest a little hill, and the other side flows down to the river, and everywhere there is light. Each way he looks bodies are illuminated as though strung with stars and suns; he finds himself laughing, though the sound is lost even to his own ears, crushed by the myriad of other voices, other instruments.
He tries to lose himself, after that. It’s not the fireflies that interest him so much - they are ticklish, the times they brush against his skin, and it pains him to think of any crushed underfoot - but the surge of life they’re drawn to. Asterion joins in song, joins in movement, though he is not particularly proficient in either; it is enough to simply join in. And he is breathless with both when someone bumps into him, and he turns to find the unicorn, and smiles at the way she sings her words.
“They favor you,” he says back.
what's past lies still ahead, and the future is finished.
He’s singing and dancing too, a his coat a muddle of colors that look only like something dark in this light. A shame, for all the things the darkness is hiding. He smiles at me; I smile back. Something about him looks kind. “They favor you,” he says.
I shake my head. “Hardly. They favor the sound. And they may favor you just as well, with your coat of stars.” I can just barely see the specs of white on his coat, turned moon-gold in the fireflies’ light. He’s handsome - in a subtle sort of way, like well-aged parchment covered in illegible, curling hand. Lovely, but indecipherable, and worn.
“I have not seen anything like this before. Sing with me. More than fireflies may favor you yet.” I’m humming again; I start to think it must be a tune from somewhere far away, and then remember, sheepishly, that it is my mother’s own. I suppose that I was not wrong, anyway.
@asterion
"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."
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Her hair, adorned with fireflies, looks like clouds with light glowing softly beyond. She does not look at all out of place here, and makes him feel less so, when she speaks.
“Nor have I,” he says, but to the rest of her words - the last of them - he only smiles, a slip of a thing tucked in the corner of his mouth. He likes this stranger, the easy way she has, the grace and the matter-of-factness.
He doesn’t know the song she sings, but he can pick up the key; he hums along, a complimentary note, soft and low with both self-consciousness and then, after that wears off, a kind of reverence. This, he thinks, feels more like worship than any solitary words he might say, or any religion droned from within stone walls - better than worship, even, because it is not the gods they sing for, only the mystery of magic and life.
He is less dancing than merely swaying, now, and watching the way the fireflies alight on her - like snowflakes, like moon-dapples on the water. More and more settle on her, from her slender ankles to winding streams of lights around her horn, and he feels them landing on him too.
At first he is just trying not to sneeze, and then - partially with the effort of this but mostly with the wonder of it all - he laughs, breathless and unselfconscious, like a boy. And the fireflies don’t seem to mind, or find it any less acceptable than the other music.
what's past lies still ahead, and the future is finished.
![[Image: 26y3cfu.png]](https://i.imgur.com/26y3cfu.png)
