T'was a fortnight before May day...I was younger then, not yet burdened with the wisdom of old age. It was the first evening I had ever wandered into the evening alone, but it was that night I learned the comfort of solitude---and met the ugly face of ingratitude.

The moon imbued the sky, winking coyly as a virgin. I admitted her from afar. At fifteen years of age, I was already weary of women. When the fireflies emerged from the grasses, I still stood back. I marveled at their bulging bottoms, certain that if I caught one, a star would die. Somehow, these celestial bodies had gone astray. I would've stayed there in the meadow, drinking in the glory of a sunless world, but something drew me away. 

A soft moaning crept into my ear, burrowing deeper and deeper into my head until I could ignore it no longer. Then there was a scream. I whipped around, beckoning the woods to reveal the creature who had made that sound. Silence. I moved towards a skeletal sycamore with fleshless fingers scraping the tree beside it. It was as eerie as the cry that had pierced the air moments before. Nestled in its roots was a child, pulsing with pain. 

She glowed...like a firefly.

I knelt before her, startled by the stench of death. Even as a son of a butcher, I could not bear the smell of blood.

"Are you all right?" I whispered. I rustled her gently, careful not to touch her wound, but I had not been careful enough. The child screeched and rose up,

shooting six feet above me. Before I could run, the sycamore crumpled into a pile of comets, groaning with the cacophony of a dozen slaughtered cows. The girl

swept her wet hair from her face and murmured foreign words. The sky trembled and spat a million fireflies into the meadow. They curled around the chicken coop and then flew in my direction. If I had not jumped into a fox hole, they might have killed me.

I never went into the night alone again.

As I said before, I was younger then, not yet burdened with the wisdom of old age. I know now what I didn't know then: some people don't want help.