Your young niece is staying over when you notice she keeps all the lights on in the spare bedroom she is sleeping in. When asked if she is afraid of the dark, she says, "No. I'm afraid of what is IN the dark."
Your move, writer.
There's a playful route where you lean into her logic instead of correcting it, asking what exactly is in the dark, and let her answer with the specific, confident detail only a kid could invent, turning the scene into comedy built on her total sincerity. There's a gentler route where this becomes about noticing her more closely than usual, realizing the lights are a small act of self-protection you quietly respect, and the story becomes about letting a child manage her own fear without rushing to fix it. And there's a quieter, eerier option where you humor her, check the room yourself to ease her mind, and find one small thing slightly out of place, nothing dramatic, just enough that you leave a lamp on too.
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