Firefly Liturgy

I mean…c’mon. Fireflies are one of the best things about summer. There is something almost magical about them.

The first little flickers appearing in the grass at dusk. Kids running around with Mason jars, trying to catch them without hurting them. Punching holes in the lids because somebody's grandmother taught somebody's mother how to do it, and nobody remembers exactly when the tradition started.

Fireflies are summer. So how could I possibly leave them alone? I couldn't.

But I also didn't want to take away their beauty. That's the trick with this kind of story. I don't want to turn something beautiful into something ugly just because I'm writing horror. I want to leave the beauty exactly where it is and then ask what might be happening around it that nobody is noticing. What if everybody is watching the fireflies?

What if everyone knows exactly where they're supposed to look? What if there's a tradition so old and so lovely that nobody thinks to question what it might have been protecting all along? And what if somebody understands that better than everyone else? That was the little seed that became Firefly Liturgy.

I loved the idea of a summer tradition passed down through generations, something that had become so familiar that the meaning of the words had almost disappeared. Children would catch fireflies. Families would gather. Someone would say the old words. The jars would open.

Beautiful.

Perfect.

And just a little bit…………wrong.

Because that's where I like to put the darkness. Not in the obvious places. In the traditions. In the things nobody questions because they've always been done that way. In the stories people tell themselves because the alternative is harder to live with. And fireflies were the perfect accomplice. They're tiny lights against a huge darkness. They're beautiful because of the darkness around them. Take away the darkness and you don't really see the light anymore.

That seemed like a pretty good place to hide a secret. And then I got to play with another thing I love about small communities: the stories they create to make sense of things they don't understand. Sometimes a community would rather believe in an old mystery than face an uncomfortable truth. Sometimes a beautiful story is easier to carry than an ugly one. And sometimes, if you're very lucky—or very clever—you can use that story as a door.

That's what I wanted the fireflies to become. Not something frightening. Something useful. Something beautiful enough that everyone would keep watching. Because that's the thing about darkness. It doesn't always need to hide something.

Sometimes it only needs to give everyone something else to look at. And if that something else happens to be a meadow full of fireflies on a warm June night……… Well………..I couldn't possibly be blamed for taking advantage of that.

Could I?