The flickering glow of fireflies cast soft, golden lights against the cold stone walls. They drifted lazily inside the small jar, pulsing like living embers of a dying dream.
He stared at them, his golden eyes unreadable.
Then, her note slid across the floor.
"Do you know the deal?"
His gaze flickered to the paper, then back to her. "What deal?"
She took a moment before writing again.
"I read in a book… Fireflies carry the unfulfilled dreams of those whose names were spoken."
A dream, huh?
He chuckled, low and bitter. "What nonsense."
She didn't react. Instead, she wrote another question.
"How was your home?"
He froze.
A strange, suffocating silence filled the air. The fireflies continued their slow, rhythmic glow, but he no longer saw them.
His fingers clenched around the note.
Which home?
His first memory was not of warmth or safety. It was of hunger. Cold. And orders whispered in the dark.
Steal this. Hide here. Take that. Do not get caught.
He was five when they first called him. "Do you want to eat with us? Like a family?"
He had never been invited before. Never been allowed near them when they ate.
His small heart had swelled with something close to joy.
And then, he ate.
And then, he woke up in chains.
The taste of drugged food still haunted his tongue.
He blinked, snapping back to the present. The fireflies blurred in his vision, their tiny bodies glowing like distant memories.
Why was he even saying all of this?
He let out a sharp exhale and muttered, "I must be an idiot."
He turned away, closing his eyes. But the past never lets go.
That night, in the darkness of his cell, memories crept back in—the sound of chains, the scent of damp stone, and the voice of a child crying for a family that never wanted him.
And the fireflies continued to glow, carrying the weight of dreams long forgotten.