Jasmine of the Fireflies

Jasmine of the Fireflies
by Margaret Smoke

A cool breeze meandered through the trees, granting fleeting relief from the thickness of summer air. Jasmine smiled, letting the grace of nature tickle her skin, and watched the fireflies flit and flicker around her. The humble beetles still reigned in this palace of peace, shrouded by trees with emerald leaves and healthy bark, and they graciously allowed Jasmine to take refuge here with them. As a child, she had come to believe it was they who had hidden her from the troubles of the world, and the belief carried her into her early twenties, a time, she discovered, that was full of discarded masks the world had worn to lure her into believing its smile was benign, not menacing.

When she first told her mother about this wooded spot that lined the neighborhood, this place with the "cool trees!" and the "cute little log you can sit on, and play on, but sometimes it's soggy when it rains, but it's really cool, Mom, and you can come with me!", her mother worried for her.

"It's hard for us out there, Jazi." That's what Mom always said when she talked about their brown skin or the curls of their hair. Jasmine had been safe from most of those hardships, until she turned twelve. After Dad's heart gave up, she began to understand the world outside of the fireflies' haven, the world Mom had warned her about since her earliest living memory.

The fireflies understood too. They had been understanding for years. They saw the tears for her father, the tears for the doctor who refused to believe her mother when she reported on her father's symptoms, the tears for Blessing, who could not love her anymore because God told her not to.

They understood her now, too, only she wondered if they realized that this would be the last time she would see them.

Her smile faded. Farewell, she wanted to utter. Fare well. I hope you fare well after I'm gone. Only they wouldn't. Their haven had been bought by scoundrels who didn't use nature's currency, by folks who didn't care that fireflies were suffering everywhere, that they could not migrate if their homes were destroyed.

The breeze subsided. Humidity made itself known again.

The cute log had since given itself over to the life cycles of nature, and Jasmine had replaced the seat with a hunk of tree trunk from her own front yard, when the power company had decided that the tree's life and the beauty its life lent to the neighborhood—a neighborhood otherwise defined by its cracked pavement and fading façades—was over. She sat on the trunk now, trying to reclaim her earlier smile, trying not to succumb to the uncomfortable summer heat that often clouded the happiness of minds when no relief existed. How could she tell those she loved that they were about to die? How could she give this truth life in her own mind?

I have to do it. She steeled herself against the next breeze, against the coming cold that would crawl over her heart.

"They are going to pave over your home."

She waited, anticipating a surge of tears, anticipating a portentous gust that carried the scent of tar and asphalt.

The fireflies flitted and flickered.

Until they stopped.

All at once.

The haven went dark, lit only by the structures of humanity many yards away. Other insects chimed in now, and a small animal rustled nearby. Jasmine shot up, glancing here and there and back again. The fireflies weren't gone, were they? Even if this were a coincidental lull in their signals, wouldn't she still be able to see them? To feel one buzz past her ear? She sighed and closed her eyes. She had killed them, killed her companions who had kept her safe every summer, killed them with but a few words, the same way others killed with their words in the world that took everything and left only pain. She had brought her world to their world, and it had snuffed out their starry light for good. She reached out her hand, hoping for just the gentle touch of a wing...