How Do Fireflies Make Their Own Light?

On a summer night, the darkness over a meadow is not silent. It is full of questions and answers, written in light.Each kind of firefly speaks its own pattern of flashes, and each female replies after a delay so precise it works as a password. It is a beautiful system - and it has a flaw. In the grass sits a larger, patient hunter who has learned the passwords of several species, and who answers hopeful males in perfect, borrowed light. She is not looking for love. She is looking for the bitter chemical armour her victims carry in their blood, which she cannot make herself - armour she will pass, stolen, to her eggs.Tonight on The Quiet Shift: the lantern and its cold chemistry, the conversation and the con artist, the glowing bays and foxfire woods beyond the meadow, and the small, hopeful matter of keeping the dark. Settle in. It ends, like everything tonight, in sleep.

Settle in. There’s nothing you need to remember.