Catharsis: a fairy tale

I'd been travelling for nearly three months. This was as close to a home as I was likely to experience for some time to come. My hosts were lovely, gracious people, wonderful cooks, and understanding of my need to meditate quietly, write my journal, and digest the experiences that I had had up to that point. Don't get me wrong, I revelled in their company, as enjoyable as any I'd had up to that point. We ate and drank our fill most evenings, went for walks in their beautiful springtime countryside during the days, and often as not spent the wee hours singing songs and telling stories. My hostess Christiania had spent some years in Eastern Europe, and had such a trove of songs as I couldn't imagine a girl of her age possessing. It was on my fifth day there, that I saw them. It was almost as if it was something that was meant to happen. A catharsis of sorts, I suppose you might say. It was close to dusk, and I had come to the veranda to smoke an evening pipe before dinner. I heard Ludwig in the kitchen, preparing some portion of flesh from a carcass he had shot and skinned himself the day before. I had begun recording some thoughts in my journal, and looking out on the peaceful pastoral scene before me, I started to feel a profound melancholy. I could only imagine it was sorrow at having to leave this place so soon. I had to spend another two months heading northward across uncharted territory before I could return to my offices in the regional capital. There were other settlers in the region, even some frontier towns, but I doubted any could match the joyful mixture of refinement and rustic self-reliance that this couple displayed. As I tamped the bowl of the pipe, sitting on a carved wooden bench, I saw a flash in my peripheral vision. I whipped around, thinking one of my hosts had troubled to come and offer me a light, and found myself alone. The thought ran through my mind that I would always be alone, and the melancholy seemed to settle even firmer on my shoulders. It was then I saw the second flash, as if someone had struck a match in the long grass, but it had been just as quickly snuffed out. I thought then of some of the old stories my grandmother had told me, of the fires of the Good Folk, and I also recalled some of the tales Christiania had related over the fire on previous evenings. And just as if they read my thoughts, I saw another flash to my right, and an answering flash to my left. Rising from the bench, I leaned on the railing of the porch, my pipe unlit in my left hand, and gazed awestruck across the sloping meadow leading toward the small stream at the foot of the hill. It seemed as though each blade of grass were home to a dancing flame, now visible, now gone. The stand of trees on the far edge of the brook lit up occasionally, and brought the hoot of an owl to life. The weight on my shoulders lifted perceptibly, and I almost felt something speak to me. I knew that this was nature's way of telling me it was time to move on. The introspection I'd been brooding on was pointless, and the past felt like just that: the past. I felt elated. The dancing lawn was my burning bush moment. I knew what I had to do. At that point I felt a soft hand on my wrist. "Fireflies" she murmured. "They always arrive this time of year. I've never seen quite so many though." She looked at me with an amused glint in her eye, as if she knew what I was thinking. "You've never seen them before, have you?" She was right. We stood in silence for a long moment after that, as the twilight deepened into the dark of night. By and by we smelt the aroma of roasted meat, and turned to go inside to the roaring fire and a beautiful meal.