Elaine, as a child of the hollers, had, of course, a certain innate nostalgic fondness for fireflies, which had been the gently glimmering paint strewn across the canvas of all her childhood summers.

It had been a pleasure, therefore, when she moved to Destiny City, to discover that she had not left them behind her. And she had for weeks been waiting patiently for their return, feeling a thrill of excitement when every isolated, individual golden spark had caught her eye in the early evenings.

Nothing, of course, was as it used to be. The hills no longer coruscated with synchronized lights - no longer teemed with millions of little sparks. Perhaps this was true everywhere. She had found herself discreetly Googling whether the coasts of France had fireflies - they did not; only glow worms - and then laying up in bed wondering if it mattered, since the Garde wasn’t really in France anyway, and had, besides, occupied a place that must have been very different a thousand years ago. She found herself wishing and praying when she visited the Garde, turning her eyes to the dark banks under the trees with each nightfall and awaiting a sudden cascade of stars.

None came, of course. This challenged her ideas that the Garde was attempting to mold itself to her desires. But that idea had been challenged anyway, by the persistent and stubborn lack of seagulls. Each time she returned she found herself holding her breath, awaiting the raucous chorus of them, only to be met with the usual quiet - broken only by cicadas, by thrushes and nightingales, by the windchimes she had brought to disperse the unsettling silence before those little noisemakers had arrived.

She had therefore to content herself with what Destiny City gave her, and found herself waking up early in the afternoons to sit on her apartment’s little porch, Petitcru cradled in one arm and a White Claw in the other hand, her eyes turned expectantly to every dark patch under every tree in the scantily-landscaped yard between the buildings.

And tonight, finally, she was answered. First one, then two or three - just as it had been for days. And then, all at once, a gentle wave of answering lights blooming across the blue shadows of the yard, and she grinned, putting the dog down inside and going out to meet the fireflies like old friends.

But as with so many things in Destiny City, what ought to have been familiar and gentle was not. She found to her surprise that they were not simply yellow - and at first thinking of nothing but how nice it was to see a blue and a pink firefly, and wondering how common this was - she put out a hand to the nearest one, catching it gently in her palm as she had done a thousand times as a child.

She was met with a sharp sting, like touching an electric fence she’d been warned away from again and again, and she let it go with a startled curse.

She thought immediately of the Hollow - of purple lighting streaking down, heralding the end of the world. <******** this city, she thought angrily, shaking out her hand and turning back to the apartment. One of the horrible things about knowing what others did not know was that it seeped into everything, even the things you thought you could simply enjoy.

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