Firefly | Shelha Series 5 | ✔

Chapter Eighty-Four: By Night

The parallel came without prompting. As the forest phased from overgrown to eerily tidy, Sethral was transported back to the moment Dusk had stepped into the lead of the Darkwood search, moons before. How that forest too had darkened. How a trail then too had materialized from nowhere, winding away into the gloom.

Dusk reappeared and joined Phoenix in the lead. They did not stand as close as before, but Phoenix at least did not draw away. They seemed to have developed an unspoken language. At some turns, Dusk would defer to the Pyrya to decipher where the trail would reappear. At others, it was the reverse. Whipper retreated to Firebrand's back, unneeded.

By the time the last light had left the sky, the passage of bugs Phoenix had seen was visible to all of them. Sethral still could not make out the green ones he had identified, but fireflies, their yellow lights like candle flickers in the dark, drifted past like a scattered river whose current they were riding. Firebrand gasped as a moth's wings flashed like a mirage. A pair of green lights lingered where it had been. Sethral felt the breeze as feather-light wings investigated the group. The moth flashed again and flew away, leaving its afterglow to hang like a ghost in the air.

A firefly gave a spastic burst of flashes and spun a loop in the air. A second light darkened to orange and pulled away. The first pursued it. Their flashes synchronized into a game of call-and-answer as they danced away up the trail. Sethral jumped as a coloured light flickered close to the ground. Phoenix had just made a tiny flame run down his tail-tip. He was looking at Dusk. The Nightlock reached out a careful paw to bat him, but Phoenix hopped back. He made the tiny light again. Dusk hopped after him; he hopped back again. This time the flame scampered down the full length of his tail.

Was he asking Dusk to play?

This time when Dusk extended his paw, he went for the light. Phoenix almost let him tap it, then bounded ahead. Red fur and black shadow circled each other on the trail. Dusk pounced, and this time the light shot out of reach. Phoenix dove back into the group in a glowing blur. Dusk pulled up short as he found Taz between them, and Phoenix giggled.

Actually giggled.

Sethral found Firebrand's paw in the dark and squeezed it. Dusk was trying to find a way through the group without cornering Phoenix, who proved adept at evading such a situation. The light flashed again. Dusk dropped to his belly and scooted after it, and Phoenix bolted. They wound up behind the group, then whizzed through it again, now both giggling. Fireflies scattered off the trail as they pulled up. Phoenix landed a solid bat to Dusk's face and ducked a return one, but got hit on the recoil. The blows were no more than taps—Phoenix was still too underconfident to swat harder, and Dusk was matching him—but the speed was level with that of the twins.

A moth distracted both Coppertails. It flashed its wings again and fluttered away along the trail. The two looked at each other, then back at the rest of the renegades, who hurried to catch up.

The trail had changed. The trees around it were larger than ever, and the path they were on began to take them through arches of roots and soft, moss-and-fern hollows cradled by giant buttresses. Fireflies were thick in the air. Glowing moths flashed their wings like signals, and smaller things sparkled in the spaces between. A frog trilled. It hopped off its root and was swallowed by a swath of downy sedges somehow visible in the dark. Fletch tripped on a head-sized puffball mushroom, which discharged a smoky plume. Several creatures sneezed. Phoenix darted towards Dusk, caught himself and whined. He went to Taz and put his nose in the Rocklander's fur.

"No," moaned Dusk as Sethral offered him her blanket. "I can't handle that when I'm moving around."

"It's cooled down now."