This is a short story written in January 2025 for the 2025 Sokol High School Literary Awards Contest but was never published by them. The plot follows a woman named Lucia whose been hanging out in graveyards late at night recently when a white moth flies by her, enticing her to follow it into the nearby forest past the graveyard, curious at what she’ll find. The story’s ending is left up to the reader to interpret and focuses on themes of death and a person’s acceptance of it.

The light of the moon shined down on her as she looked over the graveyard she was surrounded by. Lucia was unsure of when she began to find places like this so fascinating. Maybe it was the silence. Maybe it was the shining look of the gravestones that were caused by the illuminating moon. Maybe it was because it was the only place she could feel seen. Regardless, she never failed to come back whenever she had the time, quietly wandering the seemingly endless columns and rows of headstones for amounts of times she couldn’t recall. The repeated passing of people’s engraved names who were gone but seemingly never to be forgotten. At least, that’s what the living like to tell those they’ve lost.

This time, a moth had flown by her, passing so close she swore she could feel the wind from the flapping of its wings on her cheek. Its white coloring was eye-catching, almost glowing like a ghost one would hallucinate seeing in a graveyard themselves. The slow yet graceful movement of the creature entranced Lucia, feeling as though it was beckoning her to follow it. As if hypnotized, she followed the shining moth along the cemetery just like she would every night, weaving through the untrimmed grass and wilting bouquets of flowers that were placed in front of almost every headstone. This insect had her lost in its gentle beats of flight, a gentle whooshing sound that broke through the silence of the dead of night. 

For what she assumed was over a few minutes, the following continued even till past the graveyard and now into the forest ahead. Strangely enough, Lucia felt no fatigue from this, light as a feather almost. Perhaps she was too distracted to notice how long it’s truly been. Her wandering caramel legs moved fast but elegantly, one akin to a ballerina you would find in a theater, both powerful and fragile all at once. The young lady suddenly tripped on something, falling comically straight onto the ground and scraping her cheek against the pebbled soil below her. Above her, the moth appeared to stop for her. Its soft twitching antenna and large compound eyes looked strangely human to the girl, expressing what she could make out to be sympathy as she rose off the dirt and back onto her feet. What a ridiculous thought, moths can’t feel such things for people. Lucia couldn’t entertain the thought for long, though, because as soon as she arose, the chase was back on, leading her deeper into the dense night shadowed forest.

Lucia now found herself in the deepest part of the forest. Her emerald eyes could barely even find the glistening trail of the ghostly white moth in front of her, its light becoming ever dimmer as the foliage gets thicker and thicker. But still, the light of it encouraged her to persist. 

The moth finally stopped for what seemed the final time, resting its fuzzy feet on a large dark object. Lucia squinted and tilted her head, trying to get a better look, wondering why the creature would bring her all the way out here. As if detecting her lack of sight, the moth began to glow its white light even brighter, which revealed the object to be…a slab of stone against a tree?  

Bewildered, the girl kneels down to get a closer look at the giant thing. Peering at the rock, it reminds her of the countless headstones she’s seen all too many times at the graveyard. Coming off the perch, the moth chooses to illuminate a particular part of the stone: an unfinished engraving. It’s hard to say for certain what the person who made this wanted to say, the markings have faded, and the site is more than likely to have been abandoned. Lucia stands up once more and turns her head back the way she and the moth had come, though a morbid curiosity was telling her to stay just a little longer.

 Turning back around to the unmarked headstone, she shook upon seeing that, somehow, the grave had suddenly been dug up. Casting her gaze down into the ground, a shoddy plain coffin could be seen in the sunken earth, like it had been tossed by someone that hadn’t a care in the world for whoever was buried here. The thought disturbed Lucia and looked up to the moth who stared between her and the coffin, silently urging her to get a closer look. Despite her better judgment, she obliges and drops herself into the ground and dusts off what essentially looks like one step up from a cardboard box. Her hand shaking, she lifts up the lid to the coffin and carefully sets it beside her, then noticing a scrap of newspaper, a huge headline. Picking it up to examine, the title reads “YOUNG WOMAN STILL MISSING! GONE FOR 2 MONTHS NOW WITH NO LEADS!” Strange. Why would this be here? 

Keeping the paper in her fist, she at last takes a look in the coffin and sees….

Well, we’ll never know. At that moment, the burning light of the moth suddenly vanished and it’s not known if it ever glowed again. But we do know this , though. After that night, Lucia was never seen at a graveyard anymore, not that anyone remembers seeing her there in the first place.