Cambria's Corner

In the few heartbeats that I leave the way open, a moth flutters inside. 

She settles gently above the mantle, her luminescent blue wings like stars that glitter brilliantly in the dim light, her antennae like gossamer strands of moonlight, her ciliae like the soft warmth of a featherlight blanket.

I find myself drawn to her, as if I am the moth and she the flame. She clings there, unmoving, but for the slow and calm beat of her wings as she rests. I sit in silence, watching her, for what feels like an eternity. In here, in the warmth and safety that is this moment, the dark emptiness beyond the walls can not reach us.

When I wake, she is gone. I search for her, desperately. I tear my world apart, ripping open wallpaper and skin to expose the polished wood and bone beneath. She is nowhere to be found.

Perhaps she’d slipped through the cracks and found her way to the beyond. There is so much out there, past the emptiness. If so, I send her my best.

Perhaps she is still here, hiding somewhere deep and dark. I am too large, and she too small, for me to be able to find her again in her hiding place. If so, I hope she emerges soon.

Perhaps she is still with me, hiding just beyond my vision and flitting back and forth, just out of sight. If so, I wish she’d stay still.

Perhaps she is dead. Crawled into a crack in the floorboards and beat her wings one last time, passing peacefully into the beyond. 

If so, may she rest well. I may yet see her soon.

The world passes by. I stay in my warmth, my safety. Alone, but for the whispers of the wind, the songs of the wild, and the chattering of my teeth where the cold seeps in. I stay here for an eternity—or perhaps a day. The beyond pulls at the edge of my mind like a nagging half-remembrance. I feel my moth, beckoning.

When I wake next, I find her corpse.

She lay on her back, in the center of the floor. Her legs curl inwards, and her wings splay out like a spatter of the macabre. The blue of her wings is just as scintillating, her antennae and ciliae just as captivating in death as they had been in life.

I thought that perhaps she’d laid here on purpose. Some part of her, in that incomprehensible mind of the other, wanted me to see her here. I hold her gingerly, and I weep.

I bury her in the yard. Silly, perhaps—she was just an insect, and one I’d known for but a day at that. Somehow it felt right, though. Perhaps it is that I can do nothing else for her, after all she’d done for me. I let her go, and make to leave.

I turn, and see a butterfly. Her wings are bright and orange where my moth’s had been blue and dun. She flutters around me, not staying still for long enough to feel. 

I hold out my hand. She alights on it for the space between heartbeats, and I feel that moment stretch onwards to eternity.

The butterfly flutters by, and away, off out of my sight. Perhaps it is just my imagination, or perhaps my heart, but the darkness feels just a touch less cold with her passing. I close my eyes, breathe deep and long. I take in the scents of the earth and of the green. I let the wind and the light of the sun caress my face like the gentle beating of her wings. I let the breath out, and I take one step forward. In my passing, I see a shimmer of blue, like a gossamer thread of moonlight. I smile, and turn once again to face the sun

Perhaps the beyond is not so cold, after all.