Late last night, sitting by the side of a snapping fire in a clearing in the black woods, my daughter hopped out of my lap, ran across the damp grass, and caught a firefly in her hands. She trotted back, tenderly opening her dirt-encased fingertips, just a little, to reveal the strange creature inside.
“Look, dad, a firefly!” she said.
We gazed at it for a moment. We had no vented jar in which to put this being, so I urged her to let it go. She opened her hands completely, like ten pink drawbridges easing down from a fleshy castle, and the bug ascended and hovered in front of our faces in the night for a moment.
“Hadley,” I said. “Because he was trapped, and then you let him go, this will be the greatest day of his life…”
As I finished my sentence, the firefly took off and plunged directly into the leaping flames of the fire around which we sat.
“…Oh!” I said. “Never mind.”