The house was never truly dark. Always, there was light somewhere; the nightlight by his shared bunk, or a lamp in his parents' bedroom late at night. He found this a bit unfortunate, though he never said so aloud. He secretly liked the darkness. But with light everywhere, he rarely got to experience it. It was all-encompassing, it made his family home feel like another world, unknown and exciting, full of mysteries he might never get the chance to uncover. He'd never switch off the nightlight, though; he wouldn't be responsible for scaring anyone, especially not his brother. It hadn't yet occurred to him that it wasn't his entire family who was afraid of the dark, that it was only his brother, sleeping in the bunk below, who needed the constant reassurance of light. The reason his parents began flicking switches each night, in the hour between sunset and full darkness? He believed they were scared too- that was why his mother always seemed to flinch when the lights flickered. Why his father looked so unsettled when she did that; of course, he didn't like to see her scared, though he was surely too brave to show his own fears.

The lights didn't keep him awake, neither did the sound of his brother's quiet snoring. What kept his eyes from closing, his mind from letting go and drifting off into dreams, was a question.

Driven by this incessant curiosity that he couldn't satisfy on his own, the child sat up in the dimly lit room and crept over to the bunk's ladder. It creaked with each step, his bedsocks squeaking as they gripped to the metal. There was the lightest thump as he dropped to the carpet, followed by a soft creak as his door opened just wide enough to slip through with a simple push, letting a thin beam of light into the room and briefly illuminating the bunk. The child only glanced back a moment before continuing down the hallway, following the voices from the kitchen.

"We've talked about this," she said it for what sounded like the millionth time, the phrase worn out in the way that old clothes do, threads fraying away at the seams and letting the cold get through. The child, by contrast, was warm here, standing just around the corner from the fireplace, resting one hand against the wall as he listened. For now, he was more curious about the nature of the conversation he'd stumbled across than finding his answer right away.  "They're at that age where their father is always right. Besides, it's far easier to close an open mind than it is to open a closed one."

The child did not know what that phrase meant; maybe it was another question to ask. He stepped out in line with the fireplace, prepared to speak up and draw their attention to his presence, but his father spoke again before he could, aggravation in his tone.

"I'm not trying to 'close their minds'. I'm not filling them with fairy stories, making them afraid of things that don't exist. I'd much rather him be afraid of spiders than afraid of the dark." His gaze shifted from challenging hers to the subtle glow of the nightlight in the children's bedroom, towards which the child was hiding. He shrank back out of sight, heart hammering at the thought of being seen. He was suddenly very sure that this was a grown-up conversation, one that he was not meant to hear. Was his father truly angry at his brother for being afraid of the dark? Would he be angry at his mother, too, since she had the same fear? Even now, the light in the kitchen flickered, casting an instant of shadow over their faces. She averted her eyes. Though he'd never noticed it before, the expression he'd seen so many times on his father's face when she looked away from the lights now seemed more like irritation, rather than concern.

"Alright, then, suppose they do believe you. No magic, no monsters, no gods. Then what are they supposed to do if they come across something?"

The stories they were told about monsters were sometimes quite scary, but their mother told them all sorts of ways to stay safe. Never walk by a lake alone on a foggy day. Tell other people about your dreams; that way they can't be used against you.

Not knowing these things would be dangerous, the child thought. He wouldn't want to come across a monster and not be able to scare it away. Eager to hear more, he crept as close to them as he could without being seen, crouching low to the carpet to shelter behind the box of the fireplace. His fingers tangled around the fire cage, the warmth calming him even as he felt the composure of their conversation disappear.

"What do you mean, 'If they come across something?' There's nothing to come across. I don't know how you haven't realized this yet. Monsters aren't real. There's no monster under the bed, no skeletons hiding in the closet, no ghosts in the mirror..."

The child was rapidly becoming confused. Were monsters real or not? Surely his parents should know. They were grownups... and his mother had seen them before, hadn't she? She'd said so. But now his father was saying that there was no such thing as monsters at all. They couldn't both be right...

If they couldn't answer that question; one that he thought was quite simple, then how could they answer his?

The argument continued, but he was no longer listening, wrapped up in his own questions about who he thought his parents should be. They knew so many things; but how could they help him find his answers if they didn't have answers of their own?

There was no way he could step out there without revealing he'd been listening the entire time. He didn't want to hear them fighting anymore; he'd hardly ever heard them like this. Unwrapping his fingers from the fire's cage, he stepped back into the not-quite-shadows of the hallway, his eyes hot with tears.

He'd made his decision. If his parents couldn't find the answers, he'd have to discover them on his own.