Crossposted at The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire and West Virginia Blue.

There might be no greater joy on the planet than watching a 6 year old chase fireflies on a pleasant June evening.
I had finished mowing tonight and was putting tools away in the tool shed. The sun was setting beyond the hills and the sky above the ridgeline to the west was a light blue while to the east it was dark and the first stars were out. My daughter chased fireflies and asked me to join her and instead I watched. “There’s one,” she said. “Ooh, I almost caught it…Dad, you’re not chasing them.”

She took me by the hand. “Do you want to see where we picked the blackberries?” she asked. I told her yes and she guided me through the twilight darkness around their treehouse and behind a neighbor’s abandoned, wooden shed bordering our property. She and her siblings had picked a large bowlful of berries during the day. “They grow so quick,” she said. “We must have picked 200,000!”

We walked back to the yard and she chased another firefly.

High above a silver crescent of a moon hung while fireflies sparkled over the neighbor’s cornfield behind our back yard. A bat circled over us snatching bugs in flight. “Cool,” she said as I pointed it out to her. “Do you think it’s a vampire?” I told her it probably wasn’t.

I leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “Do you know how happy you make me?” I asked quietly.

“Yeah,” she said nonchalantly. “I know.”