The Firefly and the Moon

There once lived in a great rainforest a single firefly named Tàní. He was small even for a firefly. His light was the soft yellow of a candle seen through a curtain. He thought it was nothing at all.

Every night Tàní looked up through the leaves and saw the moon. The moon was vast and silver. She lit up the rivers. She made the elephants visible from far away. She turned the sleeping faces of children into faces from a dream. The whole forest stopped to look at her when she rose.

And Tàní burned with jealousy.

"What is the use of me?" he said. "My light cannot wake a man. My light cannot guide a hunter. My light cannot even reach the next branch. I am a small joke that the night tells itself."

One night his envy became too heavy. He climbed up and up and up the tallest tree he could find, through the layers of the rainforest, past the homes of the parrots, past the empty nests of the hornbills, until he stood at the very top leaf of the very tallest tree, shaking with effort.

From there he looked the moon almost in the face.

"Mother Moon," he called out, his small voice trembling, "why did you make me so small? Why did you give me only this tiny light? You are the queen of the night and I am nothing. Take my light back. I do not want it."

The moon was quiet for a long time. The whole forest waited.

Then, in a voice as soft as her own light, she answered.

"Tàní, my child," said the moon, "come down from that leaf and walk through the forest floor tonight. Walk where I cannot reach. Walk where my light is broken by the leaves and cannot pass. Walk among the roots and the rotting logs and the dark places between the stones. Walk all the way through until morning. Then come back and tell me whether your light is nothing."

Tàní climbed down slowly. He flew low, between the trunks, into the deepest, blackest part of the forest, where even on a full-moon night not a single beam reached the ground.

There he found a small girl.

She was lost. She had wandered too far from her village in the afternoon, and night had caught her, and she was sitting under a root with her face pressed against her knees, weeping. She could not see her own hands.

Tàní landed gently on her shoulder. His small yellow light fell on her wet face. She lifted her head and gasped.

"A little light," she whispered. "A little light has come for me."

Tàní flew slowly in front of her. Step by step she followed him. He showed her the root. He showed her the stone. He showed her the snake curled across the path, so she could step around it. He showed her the small stream, and where to put her feet to cross it.

He led her, one careful pulse of yellow at a time, through the whole dark belly of the forest, until at last the trees opened and she could see the smoke of her village by moonlight. She ran the rest of the way home and fell into her mother's arms.

Tàní flew up through the canopy and stood on his high leaf, shaking with tiredness.

The moon was waiting.

"Mother," said Tàní softly, "I did not know."

"My child," said the moon, "I am beautiful, and I am big, and I am loved. But there are places in this world where I cannot go. There are nights when a great light is not what a frightened person needs. There are paths so narrow and so dark that only a small, faithful light, carried close, can guide a child home. You are not a small joke that the night tells itself. You are the answer to a prayer the night cannot hear."

That is why, even now, on the darkest nights in the deepest forests, you will see them — fireflies, dozens of them, hundreds of them, blinking like patient yellow stars between the leaves. They are not trying to be the moon. They are doing the work the moon cannot do. And there is no work in the world more important.