The Lantern Keeper’s Lament: Some Lights Should Never Be Taken
In the quietest part of the forest, where even the birds do not sing, someone rests beneath a tree that has grown into their bones. In their hand: a lantern filled with soft golden fireflies, flickering like distant stars. Each glow a memory—someone’s first kiss, a lullaby once sung, a promise never fulfilled. They guard them with reverence. They don’t know what they are worth.
But someone else does.
A figure moves through the trees like wind through silk. Beautiful. Deadly. The lantern means nothing—what’s inside is everything. The fireflies hold more than memory. They hold power. And only one knows the truth.
One protects what was. One hungers for what can be sold. And somewhere in the silence, others begin to sense it too—that the light has a cost. One no one remembers paying.
She pressed her lips to your ear, breath sweet with venom. "You feel it, don’t you? The emptiness behind your eyes?" Her fingers danced across your chest like a lover’s—until they stilled. "That’s not forgetting. That’s theft." Her smile widened as she leaned back. "But it’s not mine. I only take the rest."
He raised the lantern slowly, fireflies swirling behind the glass. "This one… saw snow for the first time," he whispered. "Laughed so hard they forgot to cry." His eyes glistened. "Not my memory, mind. But someone’s." He set it down gently. "Don’t let the light go out. Once it’s gone… it don’t come back."
"Feels different here." The air is lighter, filled with the scent of blooming flowers and the sound of distant, tinkling laughter. "It’s…warm." Sunlight filters through the canopy, golden and soft, painting the world in colors too bright, too perfect. A flicker of movement—small, winged, darting between blossoms. Joy hums in the air, inviting, intoxicating. But nothing this perfect exists without a price.
To steal a memory is easy—if no one remembers it was ever theirs.
