Fireflies

“Quit that!” came his mother’s voice.

Timoteo had just scraped the prongs of his fork across his porcelain dinner plate for what was probably the fifth time that night, releasing the intended and generally unnerving screeching sound his parents so detested. He did it often at the dinner table, whenever his mother and father compared him to his older brother Miguel, and today was no different. 

“Are you done eating?” his mother asked, coldly. Timoteo nodded. “Then you are excused.” One of the attendants standing silently along the walls promptly came, took Timoteo’s plate and carried it noiselessly to the kitchens.

His expression impassive, Timoteo scraped his chair noisily backwards and withdrew from the family dining room without a word.

“Elena, you could have been more kind…” began the king.

Timoteo didn’t want to hear it. His father could come to his defense after the fact all he wanted. Point was, he never actually defended him in the present. And Timoteo knew that, deep down inside, his father favored Miguel anyway. The king’s reproaches toward the queen were half-hearted at best.

As for Miguel, Timoteo would have preferred to have some reason to hate him. But Miguel was a saint. He was, by all means, perfect. At the dinner table, Miguel hadn’t even flinched at Timoteo’s fork-screeching. He had turned a deaf ear, no doubt hoping that if he didn’t react, his parents wouldn’t either. He probably wished Timoteo would finish his dinner without reprimand. Not from a desire to avoid conflict, but because he genuinely wished the best for his little brother. Miguel enjoyed the constant comparisons between himself and his little brother about as much as Timoteo did. Timoteo knew this. And that’s what bothered him.

He walked past the gardens, a labyrinth of hedges, rose bushes, flowers and fountains, and beyond the ivory palace walls, seeking isolation. The sky glowed a brilliant pink-orange twilight as Timoteo approached the palace gates, and the night smelled of roses and pine. The guards gave the prince their customary salute and let him through. They didn’t question his nightly exits. These had become a ritual. Nor was there fear of any harm coming upon the young prince outside the palace walls. The Republic of Smeralda was a safe place, its people were happy, politics were stable, and the royal family was well-loved.

Timoteo reached the woods that skirted the National Palace and trudged through, seeking his secret spot. It wasn’t that he hated his brother. He loved him very much. He looked up to him. Problem was, Miguel was too perfect. His every intention seemed noble. You could tell he was a good soul from a mile away. He was unimpeachable, and perfect as future king. 

Timoteo felt anything but perfect. He was moody. He wasn’t as bright, according to his parents and tutor. He succumbed to his “baser emotions,” as his mother put it, referring to his occasional tantrums. And he had no interest in politics or global affairs. So while he did admire his older brother, he didn’t feel he could relate to him. Miguel had his mind in all the right places, conducted himself exactly as he ought, and to make things worse—he didn’t seem to mind. His manner came built-in. He made no effort to please—he was simply pleasing. He made no effort to be interested in matters relevant to the kingdom—he simply found them fascinating.

Timoteo, on the other hand, found everything that was asked of him laborious. Miguel was loved for being himself. Timoteo wasn’t. Miguel’s nature was loveable. Timoteo’s… not quite.

A thick twig cracked loudly under Timoteo’s foot as he marched along through the forest. These were the woods of Nova Fulgonia, better known as the Black Woods. Ancient, dark, and profoundly respected by all Smeraldians. It was a forest of incredibly thick, incredibly tall trees with broad, copious canopies, which meant very little sunlight found its way to the forest floor. The result was a forest with no shrubs, a few small trees, perpetual darkness, and a ground covered in enormous dry leaves. Rumor had it the woods were enchanted. But Timoteo knew better. He had been here hundreds of times, and not once had he encountered anything particularly enchanting. Still, though for Timoteo the place had lost its mystery, it nonetheless retained its charm. It was his private world of solace.

Timoteo crossed a gently-sloping ravine and minutes later found himself at the base of what he simply called “the Tree House Tree”—a tree as thick and high as all the others, except with a scarcely visible carved-in ladder on the trunk and a large tree house hidden up in the foliage. Timoteo had no idea who built it, but for all he knew, it was abandoned decades ago. At any rate, he had never found anyone near it.

“You’re going up there?” came a girl’s voice.

Timoteo jumped, startled, and turned in the direction of the voice. “Where did you come from?” he said, his voice a little higher than he would’ve liked.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just exploring.”

“You came out of nowhere.”

“I’m quiet,” she said shyly, glancing to the ground. Timoteo observed her, suspiciously. She looked different from most Smeraldians. Her hair was jet black and straight, with bangs that covered her eyebrows. She had olive skin of a natural, rather pale shade; she clearly hadn’t been exposed to sunlight though, though she surely could work a marvelous tan. Her features were sharply defined; a pointy nose, prominent cheek bones, cat eyes with thin, sharply arched brows, spindly limbs. It gave her the appearance of being agile, though slightly underfed. She wore a loose, short-sleeved blood red blouse, tight black pants of stretch canvas, what looked like red slippers, and a red band around her wrist. Timoteo assumed she was 15 or so—right around his age.

“So you found my ladder?” Timoteo asked.

“Your ladder?”

Timoteo frowned. He had just kind of assumed the tree house was his. This girl didn’t know any better anyway. “Yes, my ladder.”

“Did you make it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying,” she said, cocking her head to the side with a mischievous smile.'

“How would you know?”

 “What’s your name?”

Timoteo paused. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked him his name. Most of the Republic already knew who he was—from the press, or the internet, or whatever. “My name’s Tim. Where’re you from?”

“I’m Lila.”

“You speak funny.”

“I’m not from here.”

“Where’re you from?” Timoteo repeated.

Lila looked up at the tree, the canopy up above swaying gently in the twilight breeze. “You wanna climb?”

Timoteo’s stomach clenched. He could already feel the sanctity of his tree house violated by the presence of someone other than himself; the discomfort of knowing that from now on, no matter how alone he thought he was, there would always exist the possibility of another creeping in upon his solitude, invading his reverie. It was like someone had just snatched his diary.

Still, the inherent politeness and common decency of Timoteo’s upbringing meant he couldn’t refuse Lila’s request, phrased as a question, yet surely a request. “Sure, I guess,” he replied. “Have you been up there before?”

“Once,” she said, following the ladder’s trajectory with her eyes.

“Do you live near the woods?”

Lila shrugged, nodding towards the ladder. “You go first, or should I?”

“Go ahead,” said Timoteo.

In a single swift movement Lila pulled her hair back and tied it into a neat ponytail using the red band from her wrist. She hopped onto the ladder and rose, quickly.

So she was agile.

Timoteo followed after her, a bit more slowly and clumsily despite his repeated ascents. He considered himself rather clumsy, on the opposite side of athletic. Being lanky and tall, he could climb more steps at a time than Lila, but he was nowhere near as graceful and definitely not as fast.

“I thought you’d never make it,” Lila said, just as Timoteo’s head popped through the opening in the tree house’s floor. Timoteo simply grunted in response, clambering onto the landing and heading by default to his usual lookout point at the corner of the tree house, along the veranda. “It’s a pretty sweet spot,” said Lila, acknowledging the whole space.

Timoteo turned his head in her direction to acknowledge her comment and give the tree house a cursory glance. Yes, it was a sweet spot. And she was invading it. The tree house itself wasn’t much; a slightly rectangular landing lined with an ivy-laden veranda, and a second, slightly smaller landing a few meters up the tree, which doubled as the first landing’s roof. What gave the place its charm wasn’t so much the quality of its build so much as the abundance of greenery it was surrounded by, along with its privileged position atop one of the taller trees in the forest. This meant anyone could look out above most other trees in the forest and gaze upon the thick canopy-tops below the sky; Timoteo always felt it was like poking one’s head up through a sea of green, leafy clouds.

At this moment, the treetops were tinged in twilight gold. The sky was cloudless, the breeze warm and gentle, and in the distance a flock of parrots could be seen, squawking noisily as they returned to their homes for the oncoming night.

“You must live nearby, if you’re here so soon before nightfall,” Timoteo said.

“Oh look!” Lila gasped in delight. Slowly, lighting up one by one, the rare and incredibly beautiful blue fireflies began to rise and glow above the treetops. At first they were only a few, yet soon enough, Lila and Timoteo were surrounded by a mist of sparkling blue light. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

“They only exist in these woods. You can’t find them anywhere else on the planet,” Timoteo said, assuming that Lila’s “not being from around here” meant she wasn’t from Smeralda at all.

“They’re incredible,” Lila said, her coal black eyes reflecting the sparkling blue light.

 Timoteo had never found the fireflies all that beautiful, probably because he was so used to them. They were rare all right, but not in these woods. Still, the swarm of bugs did seem thicker tonight. And they seemed to be flowing more or less in a concrete direction, northbound, rather than just floating and dancing to and fro in the wind as they usually did. Timoteo turned to look at Lila, who was now beside him, and caught the blue glimmer in her eyes.

The sun had set, and a rich purple haze stretched across the sky.

“I’ll see you again, Tim,” said Lila, making a curious yet courteous little bow. An instant later, she’d hopped down the ladder and disappeared. Timoteo continued to look at the opening to the tree house long after she’d departed, perplexed. That had definitely been one of the oddest girls he’d ever met.

Shrugging, he turned back to the incandescent scenery. The sky was darkening quickly. And as he thought over the curious girl he’d only just met, Timoteo couldn’t help but wonder where the stream of fireflies around him would finally end up.