Southern Starr Publishing Southern Starr Publishing creates family-friendly books, comics, and faith-inspired stories with imagination, strong values, and cross-media creativity.
The light in the cabin should have been out.
Winter had settled in early that year, the kind that pressed close to the walls and made the firewood disappear faster than expected. The cabin sat alone at the edge of the woods, far enough from town that no one would notice a thing unless they were looking for it.
No one was supposed to be there anymore. The man who built the cabin had passed the previous spring from heart trouble. Quick, they said, also merciful, they said. But death rarely feels merciful to those left behind. His daughter, Clara, hadn’t returned since the funeral. Couldn’t bring herself to until now but tonight she was drawn to the cabin.
She was driving home late, with snow beginning to fall, when the cabin appeared between the trees, and there it was a warm glow in the window, steady, and familiar.
She pulled over into the driveway without thinking about it. After, parking the car and turning off the ignition, she stepped out of the car and walked up to the cabin. The door wasn’t locked, but that was not unusual because it never had been.
Inside, the cabin the smell of pine and old smoke was in the air. As she scanned the room she noticed the table was set for one. A kettle rested on the stove, warm to the touch. The chair by the fire was occupied by a figure shadowed by the flame. Her father looked up from the flames.
“You made it through the storm,” he said, like no time had passed at all.
They didn’t speak much after that, they didn’t need to because some conversations happen in the quiet spaces between words. Clara sat on the floor like she used to, listening to the crackle of the fire, letting the ache in her chest finally loosen.
When the fire burned low, her father stood.
“I don’t need the light anymore,” he said softly. “You carry it now.”
When Clara woke the next morning, she was in her car, parked safely by the roadside. The cabin stood dark among the trees, cold and empty.
The light never appeared again, but Clara never feared the dark the same way she had before.
This has been a Fireside Tale—
a quiet story meant for the in-between hours,
when the world slows and the heart listens.
Some lights are not meant to last forever.
They only stay long enough
to help us find our way back.
