A man was fishing surrounded by fireflies. They were always around him and he never knew darkness. No one ever saw him, firstly because there was no one to see him and secondly because there were too many fireflies.
There weren’t any fish, and the man knew that. But he liked the look of the fireflies on the water and he liked the look of productivity.
All was well until he heard a voice. His heart swelled and sunk like a towel thrown into water. He reached out his hand and caught a rock that was spinning around a firefly, the way rocks do.
It little and blue and green and it was crying. He knew the disease. But he didn’t know the cure. Every so often there would be a rock who became self-aware, not unlike the way the man was self aware. But the rock was not self-satisfied like the man and the rock could not be consoled. And since the man was perfectly happy he didn’t understand. At first he thought the rock might be alright for a little longer, but then it called him by name.
What he had to do next saddened him but he couldn’t let the rock infect the rest. So he went down to the one place the fireflies were afraid to go. It was a dark cellar made of loneliness and death. He had to take the rock’s firefly too--and he felt a chill as he went down down down.
Sickened, he looked up at the other jars, previous rocks that cried amid the glimmering light of dying fireflies. And he put the firefly and its rock into the jar and set it on a shelf. Immediately the light dimmed to match the glow of the death, and the man returned to the surface. He didn’t feel like fishing and he lost himself in thought as the rest of the bugs whirled around among oblivion and balance.
Copyright 2014 M.Kehl
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