I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness,
the astonishing light of your own being.
— Hafiz

For years now, she had been carrying stones. It had been so long that most of the time she barely noticed them. She couldn’t remember when they first appeared. Some days the stones felt big and heavy, made of grief, guilt, and anger; on other days they were as small as pebbles, no heavier than a shadow on a sunny day. But they were always there.

She found them everywhere — in her pockets, in her shoes, lying around the house in the most peculiar places. Some days the stones weighed her down so much she couldn’t get off the couch; other times a pebble lodged itself in her throat and she could barely breathe, unable to form a single word. At times, they piled up right in front of her, and all she could see was a rocky mountain — impossible to climb, impossible to go around.

She tried to get rid of the stones countless times. She dropped them in the park, threw them from her balcony, and on the days when they seemed lighter she shook them off like a bad dream tangled in her hair. Somehow, they always found their way back to her.

One cold evening, as she walked home through the park, the darkness was deep and empty. Only the dimmed lanterns lit her path. She looked up through the bare branches and noticed a whispering cloud of tiny flies circling one of the lanterns, as if performing some secret ritual. She smiled faintly, imagining what spells they might be weaving.

The next moment, a large moth drifted toward her and landed silently on her sleeve. Her first instinct was to shake it off, but the stillness of the night — and the flies dancing around the lantern’s flicker — made her pause. Instead, she lifted her arm to look at it.

There was something different about this moth. Its wings glimmered with faint, iridescent dust, a soft halo surrounding it with almost invisible sparkles rising into the air. She stood still, enchanted by the fragile beauty of this seemingly magical creature. She watched the tiniest specks drift upward and touch her face, gently threading themselves through her hair. When she looked down, she realized her whole body was covered in a pale glow, just like the moth.

She felt her heartbeat and breath slowly shift, matching the rhythm of the floating sparkles. When she looked into the moth’s face, she had the strange sensation that, for a moment, it was looking directly back at her. It seemed as if the moth whispered a silent message — one she could hear only with the heart. She didn’t want the moment to end. Comfort and solace washed over her — light, tender, impossible to describe.

A sudden gust of wind broke the silence, rustling the branches and ending the spell. The moth lifted off and vanished into the night. Coldness rushed in, like waking from a beautiful dream. She looked up at the flies; the world seemed ordinary again. She walked home briskly, unaware of the faint veil of sparkling dust trailing behind her.

She woke the next morning remembering nothing of the night after the moth had flown away. She made herself a cup of coffee and sat in her living room. Something felt different. The space looked larger, as if the whole room had taken a long, deep breath. Curious, she walked through the house and realized every corner felt more open, more spacious. Even the trees outside the window seemed farther apart, as though the world itself had expanded overnight.

Bewildered, she sat back down with her coffee. She slipped a hand into her pocket, expecting the familiar cold hardness of the stones — but found nothing. She checked the other pocket, her shoes, her bag. She looked around the house. No stones anywhere. Where were they?

As she stood by the window, a single speck of iridescent dust drifted down and landed on her sleeve. She stared at it, a faint warmth blooming through her chest before the shimmer dissolved into the morning light. Her fingers curled instinctively toward her pockets, still searching for the weight that was no longer there. A tremor of unfamiliar freedom moved through her, and a half-formed memory brushed the edge of her mind — something soft, a glow, a shimmering wing that might have carried her through the night.

She closed her eyes and let the empty spaces settle around her, unsure whether the world had changed — or she had.