Firefly Show Quotes

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn.

That was what a best friend did: hold up a mirror and show you your heart.

When you’re telling a story, you’re trying to connect to people in a particular way … The way in which you guys have inhabited this world, this universe, has made you part of it, part of the story. You are living in Firefly. When I see you guys, I don’t think the show is off the air. I don’t think there’s a show; I think that’s what the world is like. … The story is our lives.

Fireflies out on a warm summer's night, seeing the urgent, flashing, yellow-white phosphorescence below them, go crazy with desire; moths cast to the winds an enchantment potion that draws the opposite sex, wings beating hurriedly, from kilometers away; peacocks display a devastating corona of blue and green and the peahens are all aflutter; competing pollen grains extrude tiny tubes that race each other down the female flower's orifice to the waiting egg below; luminescent squid present rhapsodic light shows, altering the pattern, brightness and color radiated from their heads, tentacles, and eyeballs; a tapeworm diligently lays a hundred thousand fertilized eggs in a single day; a great whale rumbles through the ocean depths uttering plaintive cries that are understood hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, where another lonely behemoth is attentively listening; bacteria sidle up to one another and merge; cicadas chorus in a collective serenade of love; honeybee couples soar on matrimonial flights from which only one partner returns; male fish spray their spunk over a slimy clutch of eggs laid by God-knows-who; dogs, out cruising, sniff each other's nether parts, seeking erotic stimuli; flowers exude sultry perfumes and decorate their petals with garish ultraviolet advertisements for passing insects, birds, and bats; and men and women sing, dance, dress, adorn, paint, posture, self-mutilate, demand, coerce, dissemble, plead, succumb, and risk their lives. To say that love makes the world go around is to go too far. The Earth spins because it did so as it was formed and there has been nothing to stop it since. But the nearly maniacal devotion to sex and love by most of the plants, animals, and microbes with which we are familiar is a pervasive and striking aspect of life on Earth. It cries out for explanation. What is all this in aid of? What is the torrent of passion and obsession about? Why will organisms go without sleep, without food, gladly put themselves in mortal danger for sex? ... For more than half the history of life on Earth organisms seem to have done perfectly well without it. What good is sex?... Through 4 billion years of natural selection, instructions have been honed and fine-tuned...sequences of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, manuals written out in the alphabet of life in competition with other similar manuals published by other firms. The organisms become the means through which the instructions flow and copy themselves, by which new instructions are tried out, on which selection operates. 'The hen,' said Samuel Butler, 'is the egg's way of making another egg.' It is on this level that we must understand what sex is for. ... The sockeye salmon exhaust themselves swimming up the mighty Columbia River to spawn, heroically hurdling cataracts, in a single-minded effort that works to propagate their DNA sequences into future generation. The moment their work is done, they fall to pieces. Scales flake off, fins drop, and soon--often within hours of spawning--they are dead and becoming distinctly aromatic. They've served their purpose. Nature is unsentimental. Death is built in.

Marah will come looking for me one day, Kate had said, pressing the journal into my hands. Be with her when she reads it. And my boys… show them these words when they can’t remember me.

The man-nurse was his age and had sleepy eyes with dark circles under them, and a jutting Cro-Magnon forehead. His name tag said, improbably, BIBLO. He had a spaceship tattooed on one hairy forearm: Serenity from the TV show Firefly. "'I am a leaf on the wind,'" Lou said, and the man-nurse said, "Dude, don't say that. I don't want to start crying on the job.

She went away, and the fireflies, on their electric circuits, fluttered after her like an errant constellation, showing her how to walk in darkness. I heard her say, faintly, "We've got to try, anyway.

She had never seen snow before, except in TV shows and movies. It had looked to her like the stars were flaking out of the sky. It had looked like thousands of fireflies in the moonlight; like breathlessness, like time stopping, like the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

The man-nurse was his age and had sleepy eyes with dark circles under them, and a jutting Cro-Magnon forehead. His name tag said, improbably, bilbo. He had a spaceship tattooed on one hairy forearm: Serenity from the TV show Firefly. “ ‘I am a leaf on the wind,’ ” Lou said, and the man-nurse said, “Dude, don’t say that. I don’t want to start crying on the job.

My firefly has brought beauty to a life that had lost it, created magic by showing me how to love. I have to let her breathe to let her live. And if she strays too far, I have to trust she’ll return.

Without even trying to be a teacher, Fredrika is teaching us, Showing us how to see things in new ways Instead of always thinking The same old thoughts That have been passed along by strangers Day after day, year after year Without any spirit of amazement Or wonder,

THEY WOULDN’T LET LOU WALK ANYWHERE, DIDN’T WANT TO TAKE A chance that the fat man might get dizzy and fall onto his face, so after his examination he sat in a wheelchair and a man-nurse wheeled him to recovery. The man-nurse was his age and had sleepy eyes with dark circles under them, and a jutting Cro-Magnon forehead. His name tag said, improbably, BILBO. He had a spaceship tattooed on one hairy forearm: Serenity from the TV show Firefly. “‘I am a leaf on the wind,’” Lou said, and the man-nurse said, “Dude, don’t say that. I don’t want to start crying on the job.

When a volcano lets fly or an earthquake brings down a mountainside, people look upon the event with surprise and report it to each other as news. People, in their whole history, have seen comparatively few such events; and only in the past couple of hundred years have they begun to sense the patterns the events represent. Human time, regarded in the perspective of geologic time, is much too thin to be discerned—the mark invisible at the end of a ruler. If geologic time could somehow be seen in the perspective of human time, on the other hand, sea level would be rising and falling hundreds of feet, ice would come pouring over continents and as quickly go away. Yucatáns and Floridas would be under the sun one moment and underwater the next, oceans would swing open like doors, mountains would grow like clouds and come down like melting sherbet, continents would crawl like amoebae, rivers would arrive and disappear like rainstreaks down an umbrella, lakes would go away like puddles after rain, and volcanoes would light the earth as if it were a garden full of fireflies. At the end of the program, man shows up—his ticket in his hand. Almost at once, he conceives of private property, dimension stone, and life insurance. When a Mt. St. Helens assaults his sensibilities with an ash cloud eleven miles high, he writes a letter to the New York Times recommending that the mountain be bombed.

It was the summer when fireflies showed up in Saint-Malo, and their father was very excited, building long-handled nets for his boys and giving them jars with wire to fasten over the tops, and Etienne and Henri raced through the tall grass as the fireflies floated away from them, illuming on and off, always seeming to rise just beyond their reach, as if the earth were smoldering and these were sparks that their footfalls had prodded free.

The teeth sold to the fairies are tombstones in the graveyard of the fireflies. By their cold caught light you can make out the big house submerged in the backyard creek, thought-minnows spinning in motes in the attic. The lovely young parents, so long preserved, are showing signs of rot, the kitten named Princess, signs of invisibilty. But look, the old dolls are doing well; they smile and smile. And the witch? Darling, the witch was real.

In the beginning of all things, wisdom and knowledge were with the animals, for Tirawa, the One Above, did not speak directly to man. He sent certain animals to tell men that he showed himself through the beast, and that from them, and from the stars and the sun and moon should man learn.. all things tell of Tirawa. What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

A memory rises: Etienne was in a field east of the city with his brother. It was the summer when fireflies showed up in Saint-Malo, and their father was very excited, building long-handled nets for the boys and giving them jars with wire to fasten over the tops, and Etienne and Henri raced through the tall grass as the fireflies floated away from them, illuming on and off, always seeming to rise just beyond their reach, as if the earth were smoldering and these were sparks that their footfalls had prodded free.

And yet, my research shows that this isn't actually the case. The lightning bug researchers discovered that when the fireflies were able to time their pulses with one another with astonishing accuracy (to the millisecond!), it allowed them to space themselves apart perfectly, thus eliminating the need to compete. In the same way, when we help others become better, we can actually increase the available opportunities, instead of vying for them. Like the lightning bugs, once we learn to coordinate and collaborate with those around us, we all begin to shine brighter, both individually and as an ecosystem.

Many people hear the word autistic, and they think of easily recognizable traits. They think of tics. Outbursts. They think of obsessions with trains. They don’t see the shy kid who’s fascinated with color and glass. They don’t think of the girl with few friends who shows strong leadership skills. But the autism spectrum is as vast and varied as those glass jars Ellis collects. No two situations are the same, and at the end of the day, ASD or not, Ellis is his own person. He’s his own unique person just like everybody else. He’s not broken. He doesn’t need to be fixed. None of us are perfect, but I love my son just as he is. And you do, too. Don’t you?

Simple spells were light and fun, like a good joke. This spell was as simple as a symphony and as splendid. After adding the last runes, I swirled power through the old spells ensuring they merged with the new spells. The entire castle of spells flexed with the added power, my sign to retreat and hope it worked. Watching the spells bend and move was captivating. One moment they were crawling over each other looking for structure and the next they'd formed a fortress of magic seeking targets, calling them home.... "Jones?" "Right behind you." He walked around to my left. "How'd it go?" "Good. Really good." "I can tell. You're glowing." I thought he was joking until I glanced at my hand. I had to look like a giant firefly. "Narselfart!" He laughed. "Don't worry about it. It's kinda' cute. Besides, those boys" - he jerked his head to indicate the younger cops - "aren't ever going to forget this power show.

Then she had noticed that Arin’s fingernails were blackened, and how he kept reaching into his pocket as if to reassure himself that something was there. She had told herself not to guess. But she could never help guessing. A smile warmed her face. He shut his eyes in mock chagrin. “Gods, can I keep nothing from you?” “I didn’t mean to.” “Devious thing. I won’t give it to you yet. It’s for Ninarrith.” Time seemed strange; it was as if the ring were already on her smallest finger, the most vulnerable one. “It’s simple,” Arin had hastened to say. “I will love it.” “Will you wear it?” “Yes.” “Always?” “Yes,” she had said, “if you show me how to make one for you, too.” Kestrel gave her horse a final caress. It was full night. She left the stables. Fireflies spangled the black lawn. She thought about Arin’s expression when she’d asked if he would teach her how to forge a ring for him, and the whole conversation glowed within her like one of those fireflies. Watching them, you’d almost think that a firefly winks out of existence, then comes to life, vanishes again, returns. That when it’s not lit, it’s not there at all. But it is.

Pieces of my self. I have come to realise that our soul is not a static element or something that we can ever put in words. It is something that we find and embrace in bits and pieces flowing through an endless journey of life. Sometimes we find a halo of it in the setting sun while sometimes we chase its harmony in a distant sunrise. We have moments in Life, defining our traits, when some incident or some part of our Life changes forever rather takes shape forever but that too is not entirely rigid, they too flow with our soul and may be years or even moments later they change shape into something that twinkles more with our soul. It is a process of learning, unlearning and relearning where everything that we assemble in this Lifetime is like a free flowing river which meanders its way onto an ocean. And the ocean is Love. Not the Love that we often imagine it be, it is something beyond any imagination or definition. It is an air that absorbs every other force of Nature and releases them through the filter of Wisdom. It is about understanding our innermost fear and fighting it out with the indomitable courage that is always lurking in the deepest part of our heart. It is about knowing how contagious kindness can be and becoming the reflector of grace through our very existence. It is about embracing every chapter of our life with gratitude for the path that our spirit has chosen beyond boundaries and limits. It is about growing and healing. Growing through a voyage that is endless in this Cosmic ocean and healing through the balm of connections. I have realised that every connection that we make even if it is for a fraction of a second stays on within our soul and every alley that we explore leads us to a place that is closer to our destination. Sometimes the Destination gets blurred through the noises of all that is tangible in our surroundings and we often grow exhausted on this journey, it is then that we grow, trying to walk over a pyre of our failures, lost bonds, detours and everything that are capable of pulling us down they become stars, like the fireflies that show us the path to bring us closer to our soul, to put back the pieces of our self. They make us all that we stand as a whole. So especially when we run out of our strength somewhere in some hidden alley of our soul, something burns in our soul, a flicker of our passion guiding us home, where the pieces of our soul dance in a mad harmony to awaken the flame that lights our way onto a destination, wandering along the edge of a purpose that breathes through scattered pieces of our self, basking in the halo of eternity.

Feelie Box—Cut a hole in a shoebox lid. Place spools, buttons, blocks, coins, marbles, animals, and cars in the box. The child inserts a hand through the hole and tells you what toy she is touching. Or, ask her to reach in and feel for a button or car. Or, show her a toy and ask her to find one in the box that matches. These activities improve the child’s ability to discriminate objects without the use of vision. “Can You Describe It?”—Provide objects with different textures, temperatures, and weights. Ask her to tell you about an object she is touching. (If you can persuade her not to look at it, the game is more challenging.) Is the object round? Cool? Smooth? Soft? Heavy? Oral-Motor Activities—Licking stickers and pasting them down, blowing whistles and kazoos, blowing bubbles, drinking through straws or sports bottles, and chewing gum or rubber tubing may provide oral satisfaction. Hands-on Cooking—Have the child mix cookie dough, bread dough, or meat loaf in a shallow roasting pan (not a high-sided bowl). Science Activities—Touching worms and egg yolks, catching fireflies, collecting acorns and chestnuts, planting seeds, and digging in the garden provide interesting tactile experiences. Handling Pets—What could be more satisfying than stroking a cat, dog or rabbit? People Sandwich—Have the “salami” or “cheese” (your child) lie facedown on the “bread” (gym mat or couch cushion) with her head extended beyond the edge. With a “spreader” (sponge, pot scrubber, basting or vegetable brush, paintbrush, or washcloth) smear her arms, legs, and torso with pretend mustard, mayonnaise, relish, ketchup, etc. Use firm, downward strokes. Cover the child, from neck to toe, with another piece of “bread” (folded mat or second cushion). Now press firmly on the mat to squish out the excess mustard, so the child feels the deep, soothing pressure. You can even roll or crawl across your child; the mat will distribute your weight. Your child will be in heaven.

There, on that bank, soaked in that water, basking in that sun-shine, lying on that man’s chest, I hoped for the first time that my real dad would never show up and take me home.

CUBBY ORDERED an express food delivery in the morning.  It cost extra, but he wasn’t worried about money.  His parents had left him well-off.  How well-off he didn’t know, never having inquired into the matter.  Month by month, year by year, a firm of accountants took his money to clubs on Wall Street where investments of easy virtue lounged.  At least that was how Cubby understood it.  It was a kind of escort service for money, though how the escorts reproduced was a mystery to him.  The same accountants handled his insurance, his tax and now his senior security.  His parents had set up the system when he was in college because they wanted him to concentrate on his studies. And Cubby had concentrated.  He graduated summa cum laude at Harvard, achieving a Ph.D. with a dissertation on synchronized flashing in fireflies. (This little-known phenomenon occurs in the mountains of Tennessee.  It is the insect equivalent of a rock concert.  The male fireflies show up around 8:30 p.m., flashing on and off, watching one another to get the tempo right.  The females, hot little groupies that they are, observe from the ground.  By 9 p.m. the males are flashing in unison and the females go wild.)

Things can explode in space. Explosions in space are possible but it is not as visually impressive as you would imagine. What do explosions need? Oxygen. Does space have any? Nope. What do explosions do? Make a deafening sound. The tagline for the movie Alien is, “In space, no one can hear you scream.” You can’t hear in space because sound cannot exist in a vacuum. Space ships in Star Trek and Star Wars wouldn’t make any noise in space. Movies like Interstellar and Gravity and tv shows like Firefly portray silence in space during an explosion accurately.

But no matter how tough a filming day can be, I’m grateful, and I look at it as getting paid to have dinner with my family. I am blessed. I’ve also realized, now that I’ve been blessed with a good paycheck, that I think I’m like my dad, and I really don’t care about money so much. It doesn’t make you happy. I had a great childhood, and I never even had my own bedroom. What does make you happy is doing for other people. Whether it’s taking fresh deer meat or ducks to some neighbors in need down the road or flying down to the Dominican Republic to help build an orphanage, it’s people that matter, not money. When I went to the Caribbean with Korie a while back to help build the orphanage, I came with bags full of new Hanes underwear and T-shirts. When I handed out those little packages, worth just a few bucks each, the kids literally fell to the ground, crying with happiness. They were the happiest, funniest little kids, grabbing my beard and smiling big. They have nothing, and some free underwear made them happy. It was a big wake-up call for me as I realized how much I have and how a little inconvenience like the Internet going out can ruin my day. I don’t want to live like that, like the world owes me a comfortable life and I’m not happy unless I have all the conveniences. I want to live a fulfilled life, and I want my kids to live a fulfilled life too. I want more for my kids. I want to show my kids how to have faith in Jesus, how to use the Bible as their guide to life, and when they grow up, I want my kids to change the world. I also want Jess and me to continue to learn how to love each other, and I want us to grow old together and be just like my mom and dad. My idea of happiness is being with my family in a cabin in the woods or at a campout, sitting around a campfire telling stories, roasting marshmallows, and watching the fireflies.

The first thing I’m gonna do is fuck you in every room we own. Then I’m going to start all over again and make love to you in each of them.” Oh my. “Sounds like you have your work cut out for you,” I mused. “But your forgetting something.” “What’s that?” “We don’t have any furniture.” “Oh, Firefly. If you think a little thing like that is going to stop me, you are in for a big surprise. There’s an island in the kitchen that needs to be christened, countertops in bathrooms, windowsills, and when all else fails, I’m not opposed to fucking you hard against a wall.” Swallowing, I nodded. “Okay, you win. Show me what you’ve got.

Many people hear the word autistic, and they think of easily recognizable traits. They think of tics. Outbursts. They think of obsessions with trains. They don’t see the shy kid who’s fascinated with color and glass. They don’t think of the girl with few friends who shows strong leadership skills. But the autism spectrum is as vast and varied as those glass jars Ellis collects. No two situations are the same, and at the end of the day, ASD or not, Ellis is his own person. He’s his own unique person just like everybody else. He’s not broken. He doesn’t need to be fixed.

It's just the two of us. She shows me more secret passageways through the woods until the trees clear to reveal a large, moonlit meadow. We stop at the edge. Emma's looking at me expectantly, and at first I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see. I see tall, unkempt grass surrounded by trees. Then, like my eyes are playing tricks on me, fluorescent green lights flash on and off in the field, some of them rising up like bubbles in a pot of boiling water, some shooting across and lighting up the ground below them. "Whoa." "Pretty, right?" Emma says, turning her neck slowly from me to the meadow. "I almost never see fireflies." "I did some research, and they're not even supposed to exist west of Kansas. I have no idea why there's so many of them here." We walk through the field together, and in the blinking green lights I can see Emma's hand inches from my own, I see the curves and dips of her face in profile and I wonder how it is that I can find the space between things beautiful. Emma stops for a second and reaches into the waist-high grass, her hand disappearing in the dark. She pulls it back out to reveal a berry I have never seen before, not in the smorgasbord of rainbow-colored fruit at American grocery stores and definitely not anywhere in Mexico. It is the size of a child's fist, and the skin is prickly, like a lychee's. "When I was a kid, if I was mad at my mom, I'd hide out here for the day, picking out berries," Emma says. "I had no way of knowing if they were poisonous, but I'd feast on them anyway." She digs her thumb into the skin to reveal a pulpy white interior. She takes a bite out of it and then hands it to me. It's sweet and tangy and would be great in a vinaigrette, as a sauce, maybe along with some roasted duck. "I don't even think anyone else knows about these, because I've never seen them anywhere else. I'm sure she'd put it on her menu if she found out about them, but I like keeping this one thing to myself." We grab them by the handful, take them with us down the hill toward the lake. Sitting on the shore, gentle waves lapping at our ankles, we peel the berries one by one. A day or two ago, I thought of Emma as pretty. Tonight, her profile outlined by a full moon, she looks beautiful to me. I wish I could drive the thought away, but there it is anyway. The water---or something else about these nights---really does feel like it can cure hopelessness.

Prepare drones," Metatron commanded. Nephilim grabbed her backpack and put it on the ground beside her feet. She opened it and revealed a black metallic cube. It made a soft click as it came to life. Within seconds it enfolded itself and turned into a flying drone—slightly resembling a black firefly—that was about the size of a small eagle. It hovered next to Nephilim's head, humming softly. Each one of the soldiers had unique drones, directly linked to their neural system. Some drones had flying capabilities, others resembled ground predators in the form of insects or mammals. To be able to simultaneously, mentally control a drone during actual combat was difficult, required years of practice, and brought the term multi-tasking to a whole new level. However, once mastered, it was an incredibly effective combat tool. Nephilim held still and waited for the commander to order the assault. She wasn't excited or scared that she was about to go into battle. Her artificially augmented heart didn't beat faster. Her lungs, securely sealed through a silicate membrane from any kind of poison or chemical warfare attack, didn't enhance their pace. Her mind was focused and clear. So were her ice-cold, artificially blue eyes, studying the target area. She came here to do her job, her duty. What she had been created for. The righteous thing. Furthermore, it was something she was very good at. Adriel had stated, prior to leaving Olympias, that they should be back by breakfast. The target area ahead was in shabby condition. Shacks and makeshift houses built in and around the ruins of old, overgrown industrial premises. The location was partly hidden by the remains of an old Highway bridge, its old asphalt cracked, with weeds growing everywhere, and some of its circling sidearms had collapsed. The ancient roads and self-made paths were covered with mud. It had been raining a lot, as it almost always did in this area. This was only one of the reasons why any sane person would never understand that people actually chose to live here. The small settlement was surrounded by some archaic plantations and little fields, hidden in between old buildings. Everything here was designed to stay unnoticed, to not be found. And yet they had been discovered. Eventually, all of them were. Metatron was right. These subjects here were completely oblivious of what was coming their way. Only a few guards were on duty, sitting on two of the old chimneys of the facility. They would have no chance to spot the attacking troops before sharpshooters took them out. After that, they would ambush those that remained in their sleep. Standard procedure, requiring a minimum of time, resources, and casualties. Nephilim's scanner showed one hundred twenty-six human life forms in the settlement. There wouldn't be any left when the sun rose in less than an hour. *** Jeff woke up from a bad dream. He couldn't remember what it was he had dreamt, but it had left him with this uneasy feeling

I Want More Cheese Jasper Van Dumpken was a twelve year old boy that lived on a farm. He had rosy cheeks, bright red hair, and a huge appetite. He ate rye bread with cheese and fresh milk for breakfast. At lunch, he usually ate macaroni and cheese. At dinner time, he ate a portion of meat and potatoes with lots of cheese of course. As you can see, cheese was Jasper’s favorite kind of food. Although Jasper’s parents weren’t particularly rich, they always had plenty to eat. However, because of Jasper’s craving for cheese they often ran out of it. His father would poke fun at him and ask him if he had a hole in his tummy, because he just couldn’t understand how he put so much cheese in there. One summer’s evening, Jasper climbed into bed with his stomach a little more filled than usual. He had stuffed himself with cheese curds all day. He felt a soft wind blow through his window and he took a sniff of the piny smell that came in from the tree nearby. That tree seemed to glow and he thought he saw beams of lights dancing under it. They seemed to be shaped like a girl. He laughed at the idea of it. Pretty soon though, he heard a voice whisper, “Come with us, there’s plenty of cheese.” Then again the voice whispered, “Come with us, there’s plenty of cheese.” Now Jasper was a very curious young man, and although something deep inside of him told him to stay put, he was ready for an adventure. So he put on his shoes and carefully climbed out his bedroom window. As he stepped out, he noticed three little women. They were absolutely beautiful and had wings that shined like fireflies. “Come with us and we will show you where we keep all of our cheese,” they said together. Their soft voices sounded like music to his ears. He wanted to try their cheese so he followed them to end of the forest. They told him to sit down. They disappeared and came back carrying all different kinds of cheese. Some that Jasper had never even tried before. Jasper ate until his poor little tummy ached. “Stop, please, stop! No more cheese!” he cried out. But the fairies kept bringing more until a huge wall had formed around him. Jasper was now trapped. He started to scream for help, but it was no use. He yelled until he was tired and fell right to sleep. Several hours later Jasper woke up, he rubbed his eyes and expected to see mounds of cheese around him. But instead he was back in his bedroom. Jasper breathed a sigh of relief because it had all been a terrible nightmare. From that day forward, Jasper never ate another piece of cheese again. Although he had once loved it, after that horrible dream, he couldn’t even stand the smell of cheese anymore.

You don’t have to have all the answers right now, Sydney. You just have to want to find them. The minute you let that desire take over, your future will show up right in front of your eyes.

The phosphorescence was particularly good that night. By plunging your hand into the water and dragging it along you could draw a wide golden-green ribbon of cold fire across the sea, and when you dived as you hit the surface it seemed as though you had plunged into a frosty furnace of glinting light. When we were tired we waded out of the sea, the water running off our bodies so that we seemed to be on fire, and lay on the sand to eat. Then, as the wine was opened at the end of the meal, as if by arrangement, a few fireflies appeared in the olives behind us – a sort of overture to the show. First of all there were just two or three green specks, sliding smoothly through the trees, winking regularly. But gradually more and more appeared, until parts of the olive-grove were lit with a weird green glow. Never had we seen so many fireflies congregated in one spot; they flicked through the trees in swarms, they crawled on the grass, the bushes and olive-trunks, they drifted in swarms over our heads and landed on the rocks, like green embers. Glittering streams of them flew out over the bay, swirling over the water, and then, right on cue, the porpoises appeared, swimming in line into the bay, rocking rhythmically through the water, their backs as if painted with phosphorus. In the centre of the bay they swam around, diving and rolling, occasionally leaping high in the air and falling back into a conflagration of light. With the fireflies above and illuminated porpoises below it was a fantastic sight. We could even see the luminous trails beneath the surface where the porpoises swam in fiery patterns across the sandy bottom, and when they leapt high in the air drops of emerald glowing water flicked from them, and you could not tell if it was phosphorescence or fireflies you were looking at. For an hour or so we watched this pageant, and then slowly the fireflies drifted back inland farther down the coast. Then the porpoises lined up and sped out to sea, leaving a flaming path behind them flickered and glowed, and then died slowly, like a glowing branch laid across the bay.

Just tell me this: when did a shipload of criminals, desperadoes, and fugitives become such a bunch of do-gooders?” Inara had the answer. “When their captain showed them how.

I’d say it’s just showing up. During the good times, the bad ones, the moments you can’t believe you’d ever be as busy as you are, just be there for each other. Show up.

It was our show. The neighbours could watch if they wanted but it was ours. We were the actors, the directors and the audience. Part of our script came from films we’d seen, parties we’d been to before. The rest we made up as we went along and it was perfect. Whistles and crackles sounded above us, shooting out swarms of fireflies that faded before they reached us. We were magic and fearless.

Not again,” Daphne muttered angrily when she came in for dinner one night. “How can Muggles listen to such dribble?” “It’s ‘Joy to the World,’” Justin responded importantly. “How can that possibly be dribble?” She scoffed at him. “Evidence shows that your Harry Potter figure—“ Harry gagged at her phrasing and nearly choked on the pumpkin juice he was drinking. “As I was saying,” Daphne began again, “your Harry Potter figure was most likely born in March. Your scholars say so.” Justin rolled his eyes. “The only reason that your Christmas was placed at the end of December was because of pre-existing pagan holidays celebrating the darkest time of the year, when the pagan god is reborn having died at Samhain. Your god’s death and resurrection had been told hundreds of times before that in all notable pagan religions. And you stole our date and our customs—including evergreen trees and mistletoe.” “I don’t think I like Jesus being called a Harry Potter figure,” Harry murmured to himself, finding the entire conversation suddenly frightening. “I can’t believe you just said that,” Justin said to Daphne, who pointedly ignored him. “Why not?” she questioned Harry. “He somehow survived death to rise again when he shouldn’t have and was born to save the world. He clearly is a prefiguration of the entire prophecy situation we currently have. Who knows? In two thousand years there might be a religion surrounding you.” Harry paled just at that horrifying thought, and was glad that Octavian celebrated Yule. After this Christmas, he would try never to think about those parallels ever again. “What about angels visiting the shepherds?” Justin asked Daphne defensively. “Or the three kings? I bet you don’t have those!” “You really think you came up with the kings?” Daphne laughed. “Don’t get me started on the three magical kings. They’re not even human!

It’s a rare type of synchronous firefly that lives in a few places around the world. Scientists from Tennessee used to travel to Asia to study them until they realized we had them right here! Nowadays in June, tens of thousands of people come from all over the world to see the show.

A light had caught his eye. Not, this time, the glint of a gun. These were fireflies, lighting up just outside his window. Armand watched them for a moment. Losing himself, briefly, in what looked like a lighthearted dance. He tried to guess where the next one would appear, but couldn’t. He wondered what part of evolution this served. Why had a fly been given the ability to light itself? Or perhaps, he thought as he placed the paper where only Reine-Marie could find it, there was no purpose. Perhaps being a small light in the night was purpose enough. A show of defiance. These tiny creatures were the resistance against a vast darkness.