The Firefly Journey

by Nick Yee

After twenty years of wandering, the minstrel found his way back to village where he was born. Perhaps it was the way the setting sun cast its hues on the village, or the absence of lingering magnolias, but never in his twenty years of wandering had the minstrel felt so far away from home. The journey had ended where it began, but somewhere along the way, there was no longer a path that led back to home.

The euphoric yearning that he thought he would find suddenly reveals itself with its departure. As night fell, the minstrel realized that following the moon all these years was what made the wandering worthwhile. There are no journeys of suffering that lead to happiness, no destinations that can overcome the end of a journey. Happiness, the minstrel realized, was a journey, not a destination.

And so the minstrel turned to leave, finally understanding that this journey was set in motion when the Northern Wind coursed through the village the day he was born, and that every song he learned could only be judged against those he already knew. He sung out the Song of Long Sorrow - the song that was taken from him under a wispy moon and that he remembered as his willow leaves were shed into the river. Like the celestial vault that never revealed all its treasures, this journey of a thousand rivers revealed only certain songs, and each song came to carry a burden imbued not by the composer but by the voice that brought it into this world.

The minstrel wandered for another twenty years, through river gorges and sand-swept dunes, finding the happiness that only he alone could find. It was mid-winter when the minstrel arrived at a pristine mountain lake, and as he hummed out a final song, he laid down to sleep with the snow-covered majesty surrounding him.

That night, a shepherd ran back to his village in the mountains telling others he had seen a hovering cluster of shimmering lights being swept across the lake until it faded over the mountains. The villagers searched the area the next day and found a discarded robe and a satchel bearing the famous minstrel’s name. They built a small stone shrine in the bamboo grove where the satchel was found, hoping the minstrel’s spirit would bring blessings to their village. Whenever the bamboo grove cascades into an echoing chorus, the villagers tell themselves that the minstrel has come back to rest before setting out again on his journey.