Where the Moths Go at Night

Written by Elysia · Folklore Fantasy

Word Count: ~875 | Reading Time: 4 minutes

Maris lived in the town of Dovewater, where the river sang in its sleep and the streetlights trembled like distant stars. Her days moved softly — quiet hours in the library, sorting through pages that smelled of dust and time. Nothing loud ever touched her life. It unfolded in careful rhythm, like breath caught between bookshelves.

✦ Visitors in the Dark

It began on a Wednesday, just past midnight. Maris sat beside her window, a flickering candle at her side, when she noticed them: white moths, dozens of them, clinging to the outside glass. They didn’t beat their wings or try to enter. Instead, they held still — silent and staring, as if waiting for something.

She watched for nearly an hour. The moths did not leave. They remained there, unmoving. When dawn crept across the horizon, they vanished without a sound.

That alone would have been strange. However, the next night, they returned. And so did the next.

✦ A Window Opened

Eventually, Maris left the window slightly open. She didn’t understand why — only that it felt right. On certain nights, she spoke to them in a whisper. Her voice barely crossed the air, yet the words mattered. She shared small things: memories too soft to carry aloud, hopes she had abandoned quietly, and the ache that never quite left her chest.

She began to wonder who — or what — had sent them. At times, she believed the moths carried pieces of someone she had forgotten. Or someone who might still arrive. Between waking and sleep, she sometimes heard her name outside the window — called gently, like wind through feathers.

✦ The Pull of Autumn

As autumn thickened and the scent of smoke entered her room, Maris started to feel it. Something beneath her ribs tugged, slow and steady, like the current of an unseen river. It wasn’t urgent. But it didn’t let go.

On the last night of October, she lit the candle and waited. The moths returned once more. They covered the glass, their wings folded like pressed letters. As a result, the room felt thinner — like the air knew what was about to happen.

She opened the window wider. The cool air drifted in. Then, without hesitation, she stepped through the frame and onto the ground below.

✦ A River of Light

The grass was wet with dew. The moths circled her gently. They moved forward, parting like a stream around her body. She followed them without speaking. Together, they slipped into the woods.

No one in Dovewater saw her again.

✦ Echoes That Remain

Yet some believe that if you stand beside the bend in the river — especially on quiet nights — you might see her. A soft silhouette drifting beneath the trees. Moths trailing like stars. Hair pale as memory.

If you listen closely, you may hear humming. Not a tune you recognize. But something familiar. A melody that almost returns —
from a dream you lost…
a long, long time ago.

Keepsake: The Mothkeeper’s Song

In the years that followed, a new kind of folklore settled gently into the town’s bones.

Children, their voices hushed with wonder, spoke of the Mothkeeper — a spirit of soft wings and sorrowful songs, who wandered the woods weaving forgotten dreams into the air.

Old Mrs. Alder, who ran the bakery with hands dusted in flour and memory, once swore she glimpsed her — a slender figure draped in the silver mist of early dawn, her hair caught with tiny, flickering lights.

“She smiled at me,” Mrs. Alder would say, voice trembling like a candleflame, “and for a moment, I remembered something I’d lost — something I must’ve loved very much, though I couldn’t tell you what it was anymore.”

No one ever found Maris’s little attic room above the library quite the same after she was gone.
The window stayed open, always, no matter how many times it was latched.
The candle she had left behind never fully burned down, its wick still curled like a sleeping moth.
And on certain nights, a pale gathering would appear at the glass once again — small, silent witnesses to the enduring, invisible threads that tie longing to hope, and memory to sky.

In Dovewater, it became said that those who follow the moths might find not what they seek, but what they had forgotten they were searching for all along.

And somewhere, deep in the breathing woods, Maris hums still — a song made of broken lullabies and stitched-together yesterdays — keeping watch over the soft places where dreams are too fragile to stand alone.

Moths have long been associated with transformation, intuition, and the search for truth across various cultures. Their nocturnal nature and attraction to light often symbolize a spiritual journey. You can explore these interpretations in this article on moth symbolism.