Cage: a second variation

The youngest prince had gone missing and the royal city of Kyoto was in a dark mood. No one was more unhappy than three sisters who had decided that they were going to marry him. They had been fighting together for at least two years about it, and the screens in their house kept breaking when they threw one another around during epic battles.

Now they decided mark the loss of the prince by travelling together into the fields around the city to watch the fireflies.

"But where are they?" they said when they arrived. "It's the right season. Where are the fireflies?"

The fields were as dark as the inside of a hat.

"Wait. There they are. Is that a house?"

It was a tiny house. Three beads of light moved restlessly in a cage outside the front door. "Old woman," they said to the owner, who was sitting outside. "Let the fireflies loose."

She refused. "I'll keep them in this cage. That way you won't have to move your eyes so much to see them."

Impatiently and without respect, one of the younger women leaned forward and opened the cage herself.

One dot of light flew free and the first sister said --

"Oh, I don't want to be married to the prince after all."

Then another dot of light flew free and the second sister said --

"I don't want to be married to him either."

A third dot drifted away and the third sister said --

"Nor do I."

So they all went home and wrote poems to one another and the old woman was left to sigh after her lost fireflies.