The Last Star

On the last night of autumn, when the moon hung low and gold, a small fox named Pim could not sleep. The forest was too quiet — and quiet, Pim thought, was the loudest sound of all.

He padded to his window and looked up, where the stars were going out one by one, the way candles do when a long day is done.

So Pim wrapped himself in his warmest scarf and set out along the silver path between the trees. He counted the stars as he went — one for courage, two for kindness, and three for the friends he had not met yet.

Above them all hung a single wish-star, brighter than the others. Pim had been saving that one for something special, though he did not yet know what.

By the old stone well, Pim heard a small, sad sound. There sat a firefly, her lantern dark and cold.

“I've lost my light,” she wept. “Without it I cannot find my way home, and my little ones are waiting.”

Pim thought hard. He looked up at his wish-star — the one he had saved for something special — and understood, all at once, what special meant.

“Take mine,” he said. And he lifted the star gently down from the sky and set it, glowing, inside her lantern.

The lantern kindled warm and bright. “But it was your wish,” she whispered.

“A wish shared,” said Pim, “is a wish come true.” And as her light returned, a hundred fireflies rose from the grass to guide her — each one a small, dancing star of its own.

When Pim came home, the sky was full again — for every kindness, he learned, lights a star somewhere.

He curled beneath his blanket, warm to the very tips of his ears. The forest was quiet once more, but it was a soft and friendly quiet now — the kind that means goodnight. And Pim slept, and dreamed of fireflies.