Pip squeezed through the midnight ferns and stopped dead. A single petal lay on the moss — pulsing soft gold. Warm as a whisper.
He lifted it — warm as a whisper — and the fireflies around him leaned in, drawn to its glow. Pip tucked it into his quills and set off. Something bright is meant to be seen.
A beetle tapped his leg from the dark. Click-click-click against the bark. Pip offered the petal, and the beetle's shell flashed silver with reflected light as it scuttled upward.
The petal dimmed a little in Pip's quills. But the beetle's clicking sounded like laughter — bright and echoing — as it vanished into the canopy above.
Higher up, beneath a twisted branch, a bluebird lay tangled in shadow. Beak pressed against the dark. Pip nudged the petal into its beak, and the feathers drank the gold like water.
Then the bluebird burst into a trail of shimmering sparks that drifted upward. The sparks fanned the darkness, and the shadows around them began to thin.
The forest shuddered. Every glow the petal touched woke at once — the beetle's silver shell, the bluebird's trailing sparks, the moss, the ferns, the fireflies themselves. Light raced outward in a wave.
Pip dropped to his belly as the ground beneath him bloomed gold. The last ember of the petal lifted from his quills like a released breath — and the wood caught fire with light.
By morning, the entire forest shone. Each flower a lantern, each leaf a prism. The darkness was gone for good.
Pip curled at the base of the oldest tree, surrounded by a ring of glowing blooms that hummed in the morning air. A single golden petal rested against his nose, and the forest seemed to sigh.