________________________________the white moth - by adire___

The first few paragraphs of this story are true. The rest is only fiction, made to pass the time. But the moth really was only stunned, and woke up to begin struggling across my desk at around 11 a.m. I�fm watching it twitch and shudder as I write this, and wondering if I can keep it here safely until I can take it outside to let it go, hoping that its wings are fit enough to fly. It may give up these struggles and die before I can complete these pages; there�fs nothing I can do to help. Perhaps I�fm hoping that my story will bring it back to life.

There was a moth on the sidewalk, on the way to work that morning.

It was white, like feathers in the snow, with gentle, nearly-invisible mist-grey striations marking its wings. It was white, and very dead, its jointed little carved-ivory legs curled close to its soft-furred body but its black eyes still very, very bright.

I wouldn�ft have seen it if not for my habit of walking with my head down. People assume it�fs because I�fm shy; in reality I�fm only watching for the little accidents that get left behind on the sidewalk when people don�ft pay attention to their pets. Instead I found a little white snowflake, and barely stopped before I stepped on it.

Its upper wings were spread, the lower turned inward and tucked together to make a vertical line like a rudder; I grasped it by those lower wings, lifting it carefully to keep from breaking anything. It didn�ft seem right to leave it there, lying in the dirt. Someone would step on it, crush it, grind it into the muck beneath a patent leather heel, and not even notice that while he was cursing his cellphone reception, he�fd destroyed a beauty whose life had already fled. So I cupped it in my palm, and curled my fingers into a dark and hollow chamber around it, and cradled the loose fist close to my stomach as I made the trek to the daily nine to five.

There was dust on my palm, when I finally let it go in the semi-private recesses of my cubicle. Dust like crushed pearls, and I was reluctant to wipe it off as I set the fragile thing beneath the small florescent lamp that I hate so much, simply to see it shine. When the air conditioner gusted, sometimes I imagined that it moved, that it wasn�ft dead, only stunned, and that if I left it beneath the lamp to warm, then it would raise itself and fly away. It distracted me from my work all day, and I found myself simply staring at it at times, wondering at its existence. I rarely wax poetic on dead insects, so this was strange for me. Even stranger was how oddly protective of it that I was; if I was forced to leave my cubicle-something that I did rarely as I preferred to avoid the denizens of my office-I would nudge a sheet of paper or the arcing overlap of a notebook�fs cover over it, to hide it. It was only too easy to see someone passing and, thinking that the living thing had alighted there, and slamming a book down atop it with a shriek. So I guarded it all day, and carried it home with me just as carefully on the evening�fs walk.

The moth found a place on the bartop in my apartment�fs kitchen, settled carefully inside a small, empty little round tray that had once held breathmints in its golden enclosure; I saved such things by habit, and had fished this one out of the shoebox of clutter nestled in the corner of the kitchen counter. I couldn�ft think of where else to put it, or even why I still kept it; its jeweled dust was on my palm again, but its wings hadn�ft faded, lost their lustre, as they were wont to after death. I stared at it for a while, thinking but not, and then left it there for the rest of the night, intent on my dinner and my bed.

That night, I dreamed.

At least, I told myself that it was a dream. I awoke in the calm, quiet recesses of my room; all was still, save for the sleeping chirps of the birds outside, their nests on a level with my second-story window. Occasionally I could hear the television next door, belonging to The Neighbors Who Never Sleep(and never want you to, either). Nothing should have awakened me; there was no disturbance, no change from when I had fallen asleep-save for that the lamp was on; I thought I�fd switched it off before bed. Sometimes I fall asleep with it on, a book draped over my face, my limbs too lethargic to even move the tome aside before I fell asleep ankle-deep in its intricate tales, but usually I turn it off; otherwise when I roll over in the night and suddenly the hot shine flashes against my photosensitive eyes, burning even through the closed lids, I snap awake as though struck. Dousing the light was a safety precaution to preserve my sanity and that of those that would have to deal with me after yet another sleepless night.

The lamplight was probably all that had woken me; there was nothing else around to indicate �eware, alert, danger, nothing amiss-until I looked to the far side of my bed, and jumped so sharply that I�fm surprised I didn�ft leap fair out of my skin. Instead I only clutched the covers over my naked body, as though suddenly shy, and stared.

Black eyes stared back at me, black as obsidian, black as jewels, black as every nightmare that you don�ft quite want to wake up from. They were large and slanted and pixielike, and unbroken by any hint of white save for the glitter of golden lamplight, absorbed and bleached and thrown back. For a moment I wondered if I stared at a giant insect, but it was only a boy-a boy not much younger than I, but small, and slight, with skin the color of raw silk ground into cocaine powder, hair in threads of milk and moonlight, and thick lashes that made me think of peeping dove-chicks�f fledgling feathers. An albino, if not for those blackest eyes; beneath his frail and translucent skin I could see the thin grey traceries of veins, making spiderwebs inside his flesh. To this day I couldn�ft tell you if he was clothed or not at that time; his lower half was blocked by the edge of the bed, and everything except for his eyes and his fine, soft, delicate face was only peripheral, taken in hazily.

He spoke before I could, which was probably a blessing; I doubted I could have managed anything coherent, or anything other than the typical, �gWho are you?�h He spoke, and his voice was soft and shushing, like the whisper and brush of dusty wings laced with a low and melodic hum.

�gWhy did you pick me up?�h I only stared at him, puzzled, and he repeated himself, a tinkle of laughter in his voice this time. He was amused by my confusion. �gWhy did you pick me up?�h

That was when I knew that I was talking to the moth. The dead white moth that I�fd left on the bar in my kitchen, cold and still in a little golden mint-tray. If I looked past the boy, looked in the way that you look at things when you�fre a child trying to see the things-that-are-not, I could almost see the shimmer and flutter of wings, dancing like snow-diamonds on the air. I was dreaming a little moth-boy, and he wanted to know why I�fd picked him up.

�gI don�ft know, �g I answered finally. My voice was dry and low, to my own ears; I don�ft know how it sounded to him. �gBecause you were beautiful. Because you were dead.�h Or he had been dead. But I was only dreaming, and so of course the moth was still lying devoid of life in my kitchen. Of course.

He stared at me. I don�ft know how I could tell where those liquid black eyes focused with no iris, no pupil to shift left and right, up and down, but I knew that he looked at me because I felt it, like fringed feelers sliding down my spine. He never blinked-not once--but he smiled. �gOh? What attracted you, then, man-thing? The beauty, or the death?�h

�gI don�ft know, �g I said again, and my tongue felt like a thick and useless thing in my mouth, my brain a sluggish lump incapable of churning out anything other than that repeat response. I shook my head, and my vision wavered, and I pressed my fingers to my temples. �gBoth. I....you were beautiful because you were dead. I didn�ft want anyone to crush you.�h

�gWhy? If I am dead, then what does it matter if my body is crushed?�h

�gIt mattered to me.�h That, at least, I could say with some conviction. This dream was making my head hurt, swirl with hot and cloudy things that made a tightness behind my eyes. I�fd looked away from him some time before, and was staring into my own palm, held close by the fingers rubbing my temples.

�gI suppose it made you sad, then, �g he whispered thoughtfully, and the pensive note in his voice made me look up again. But he only laughed at me, a trilling, quiet thing, and then put his cool hands on my cheeks. �gYou are a strange man-thing. Lie down, and sleep.�h

It was almost impossible to say no. He stroked my cheeks with his feathery touches, and I laid back, and felt the worlds of his dark eyes swallow me until my own closed. I felt something on my lips, something that felt like a kiss, smooth and warm and dry in the way that velvet is dry, and then I drifted back to sleep, sinking into black dusted about the edges with a haze of powdered white that didn�ft scatter like rushing cloud cover until the alarm�fs rude, piercing thrust.

The dream didn�ft return to me immediately upon waking, or even after my first fog-hazed morning cup of bittersweet apple cinnamon tea. It didn�ft return upon showering, but then neither did my brain. That rarely happened before noon. Nothing fully registered until I looked into the mirror to shave, froze with a palm full of shaving cream hovering an inch from my cheek, and stared.

On my cheeks and on my lips was a light dusting of pearl, as though it had snowed on me some time in the night, the lightest flurry of not crystallized water, but little sparks of starlight. It was subtle, barely catching the light, but there nonetheless, suffusing my face with an ethereal glow.

And it would not wash away.

At first I dismissed it as a trick of sleepy eyes; it was just the light catching the hard shine of the short, stiff hairs shadowing my cheeks and chin, or maybe a little of that wing-dust had been on my fingers and I�fd touched my face in my sleep.

A coating of shaving cream, the razor�fs cold kiss, and twin splashes of water and aftershave later, and I still shone like a raver dusted with pearlesque body glitter.

I thought about the moth-boy, and the dream, and shivered. He had touched his palms to my cheeks, kissed my lips, and left his mark on me.

It wasn�ft real. It couldn�ft have been real, and on impulse I checked the kitchen, and the tray. The moth was still there, and still quite dead, in the same position that I had so gently placed it in. It was just a dead bug, and the very thought that it might have come to me in the night as a boy was ludicrous. I laughed at myself, touched my oddly sensitive lips. The sheen was a trick of the light, nothing more; software engineers didn�ft believe in dreams about strange moth-boys in the night. I�fd have to check the many bulbs in the bathroom and see if any were on the verge of blowing out, and try to sleep more at night so I wouldn�ft be subject to such half-mad flights of fancy. Though I knew the latter would do me no good; I was a night person, and the corporate nine to five never suited me. I stayed up until past midnight every night anyway, and then slept fitfully and restlessly, and dragged myself in late every morning, tired and groggy and cursing the sunlight. It was inherent in my makeup, something that would never change, and it had never made me prone to my imagination before. I just didn�ft want to admit that.

Instead I gave the dead moth one last long look, almost challenging it, before dismissing it and turning back to get dressed.

I didn�ft have time to think of the dream, or the boy, at work. It was one of those days that we usually call Hell Days, because everything�fs gone wrong and it�fs only too easy to believe that Hell really has broken loose. A record six clients called in reporting errors and crashes that they�fd caused screwing with things we told them not to screw with, and they had to be fixed now. Project managers kept finding things on their desks that should have been finished last week and flinging them at the rest of us in a rushed panic. Four different deadlines got pushed up, because someone got laid off or someone had to go somewhere before the previous projected deadline or someone over in the client office just felt like being a prick and watching us dance so we wouldn�ft lose their multimillion dollar contracts.

But sometimes in the flash of shuffling white papers, I�fd see shifting wings, in the corners of my eyes. Diaphanous things that fluttered and ghost-brushed my cheeks and vanished. Someone would appear in the doorway of my cubicle, just over my shoulder, and I�fd turn, expecting to see smooth white skin and slender limbs and black moth-eyes, and it would take a moment of blinking to banish the image, a moment of strangeness that my mundane visitor would dismiss to their interruption of my absorption in my work. A few stared at my face oddly, squinted for a closer look. I wondered what they thought of my newly-acquired shine, then reminded myself that it wasn�ft really there. It couldn�ft be.

It certainly wasn�ft there by the end of the day, and I�fd forgotten about it by the time that I made it home to make a single detour into the bathroom to strip and wash my face before collapsing into bed, making good on my vow to get more sleep hours after I�fd already dismissed it from my mind. Days like that always exhausted me, even if I never did anything but sit on my ass in front of a computer with short bursts of activity to run to and from others�f cubicles. It�fs a wonder I managed to keep my physique. Guess I�fve always had a good metabolism; just shitty sleeping habits.

And it didn�ft look like they were going to get any better. I don�ft know how long I slept; five minutes or five hours, but when I woke, I never thought to look at the clock. Lying on my stomach with my face buried in the pillow, I couldn�ft see-but I knew the light was on again from the luminous, reflective hue of my hair scrunched in front of my vision, when I was certain I�fd turned it off this time.

And I knew he was there....because those feelers were stroking down my spine again, as palpable as a real, solid touch. I�fd have ignored it anyway, forced myself to sleep again, if his voice hadn�ft thrummed over my skin.

�gYou�fre awake, man-thing.�h I felt a light weight indent the bed, no more than a....well, than a moth�fs, and I whipped around, sitting up and edging away. He was perched on the edge of the mattress in the Lotus position, watching me with curious eyes. �gWhy do you fear?�h He still didn�ft blink, and I wondered if moths had eyelids. Probably not.

I only now realized that my heart was hammering, and forced it to calm with a slow, deep breath. It was only a dream, and I would take this in stride, deal with it on its own terms and then banish it. �gI�fm not afraid, �g I answered, and when I said it, it was true. �gWho are you?�h

He smiled, like a little boy with a secret about who had their hands in the cookie jar. �gYou know who I am. You brought me here.�h

�gYou�fre dead, �g I challenged, and he laughed.

�gYes, but I am here.�h

�gWhy?�h

His smile faded then, and he sighed, and although I couldn�ft see his eyes move, I know they glanced away as his shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug. �gYou are the flame.�h

Like a moth to a flame.... Was he drawn here, then? Did this apparition have no choice in his second nightly visitation? I shook my head. �gI don�ft understand.�h

�gYou don�ft need to.�h He smiled faintly, then reached for me, and stopped when I shrank back from the small, slender, outstretched hand. �gI thought you weren�ft afraid.�h

I wasn�ft, but he still unnerved me. �gWhy do you want to touch me?�h

A strange look, now, as though I should know that. �gThe moth always wants to touch the flame.�h

�gBut the flame always kills the moth.�h

�gAnd if the moth is already dead?�h We shot the retorts back and forth like philosophers, like old friends bantering over some much-debated topic, and when I could supply no answer other than my silence, we both smiled. Uneasily, I think. This time I didn�ft flinch away as he laid his cool fingers over the back of a hand that I held clenched in the covers. �gIf the moth is already dead, �g he whispered, �gthen he lives inside the flame.�h

�gEven the flame dies some time, �g I answered hoarsely, my throat dry, and he said nothing. I couldn�ft look away from his eyes; he had me spellbound. If I�fd been aware enough, I might have noticed that I was shaking when he took my hand completely in his, so small compared to my longer, coarser appendage, so pale. Finally I looked down, studied the pattern of pale grey spiderweb veins as though I was hypnotized. �gHow did you....?�h How many men wonder how a dead insect came to be so? How many would think to ask, what happened, to leave that small and sad and broken body there? But I had already stopped thinking of the boy and that pathetic little husk in the kitchen as the same in anything more than their final fate-and I had already stopped thinking of this as a dream. I was confused, and his touch was not helping; where our skin brushed, it felt as though a thick, cool numbness was spreading through me, turning my epidermis to a soft and tingling snow. Part of me feared that it would reach my brain, but that part took a second seat to the part that was caught by the faraway look upon his face as he gazed towards the Venetian-blind-shielded window, recalling the answer to my question. Recalling his own death.

�gIt is hard to see, �g he said softly. �gMy eyes were not as yours, not then. You must know that our world is different, our colors are different, and you are large and frightening, monoliths that move. Imagine if your great stone pillars had legs to walk among you, and did not even notice when their weight crushed your fragile limbs. They have not eyes to see you, because their eyes are not as yours. That was my world....a small thing among large things. I thought in....dust and sunlight and.....pheromones, is that your word? Yes, the scents that we listen to, that make our language. The scents said to avoid that great grey river that ran alongside the small green lands, because beasts that swallowed even the monoliths raced along it in bright flashes, brighter than even the sunlight on a stream. They were mad, the smells said, mad and mindless, and they killed our kind, rushed into us and destroyed us, carried our broken bodies along to their resting place. They smelled like we do when we die, when we touch the flame, and the scent made me curious.�h

He shrugged his slender shoulders, and it was only now that I saw that he was clothed, after a fashion. I had not imagined those wings before, but only imagined their nature; rather than the snow-white wings of moths, trapezoidal and large and divided four ways, instead gauzy things not unlike dragonfly�fs wings streamed down his back like panels of translucent silk, barely tinted with pearl and rainbow edges. Layers upon layers of them, until they were like an anemone�fs fronds, and I imagined that if they should straighten, if they could with such flimsy, flexible lengths, that they might fan and arc into something not unlike an angel�fs shining wingspan, broken into blades of many lengths and made out of milky, transparent clouds. Now, however, they were laid around him, wrapped again like strands of silk and then allowed to drape, until they made a strange tattered and hanging garment of wispy panels that concealed and revealed, gave him decency and mystery but little else. While I stared entranced, trying to count how many of these things there must be, he remained silent, I think amused by my fascination.

The cool, electric-snow tingle had moved to my chest now, after consuming my arm to the shoulder, and I never once thought of drawing back. But he startled me back to reality by removing his hand, and as the sensation receded in a single swift shock, I looked up to hear him resume his tale, however brief. �gThe...horn....of one of the racing beasts struck me. I call it a horn, but I do not know what it is, that long, slender, shining thing that thrusts up-�g he was referring to the antenna, �g-like a spear, like an angry unicorn, I think. Perhaps that is the only reason that I did not die immediately, but was flung past the small green lands, and into the smaller grey stream of stone where your kind walk and kill the little brothers that live underneath the grass.�h There was a bitter hint of recrimination, and I nearly cringed, but he smiled at me gently, as though to reassure me that he did not blame me for the deaths of the ants, the beetles, whatever else crawled the earth and fell beneath human shoes when it crossed the sidewalk. �gIt is the way of Nature to kill, I know. So my death was only natural; with my wings broken, I could not have survived even given the chance. I laid and felt the tremors of your kind passing for so very long, and waited for the crushing black of one to descend....but instead I merely slipped away, and all became dark, and cool. And then.....then you came.�h

�gThen I came, �g I repeated in a slow breath, and then leaned back, looking away from him. It grew harder every time; he was a lodestone, a curiosity, a puzzle that intrigued me. �gIf I hadn�ft picked you up, brought you here....what would have happened?�h

�gI don�ft know, �g he said, and then laughed brightly. �gHow would I know? I�fm only a moth.�h

�gA dead moth that didn�ft die.�h Chewing at my lower lip, I glanced at him, my thoughts worrisome. �gPerhaps if I put you outside, then?�h I thought of burying the little chitinous corpse, banishing the �gspirit�h with a proper burial as they do with humans, and nearly laughed. The idea was absolutely ludicrous, but his eyes grew large and serious, the curve of his mouth frightened.

�gYou musn�ft!�h he gasped, and laid both hands on my arm, gripping tightly. The touch was a jolt of feather-brush and ice-sizzle, but not unpleasant; he didn�ft feel like a dead thing or a spirit, despite the strangely moving coolness of his skin. He felt very much alive, and I noted this absently as I stared, confused, into his panicked face.

�gWhy not?�h

�gI....I don�ft want to go away.�h His eyes pleaded with me, and I wanted to comfort the frightened child that he appeared to be-but a sense of unease, that something wasn�ft right, held me in check. �gYou keep me here; without you I would fade away, I think. If you took me away from you.....I almost felt myself slipping when you left during the sun-hours, and if you put me outside....�h

�g...you�fll die completely, �g I finished for him; that unease was growing, sinking deeper, becoming more real, and I wasn�ft entirely sure that I didn�ft want this apparition gone. �gBut why me? Why am I what holds you here and not your....body...�h But his body was right here in front of me, a lithe, fey, beautiful thing, not that six-legged corpse in the kitchen.... �g....or some other factor?�h

�gBecause you had eyes to see me lying there, �g he said, and then his body was a soft weight against mine, his arms were around my neck, his voice was a light breeze in my ear. �gBecause you are the flame.�h He pressed insistently against me, pushing me back onto the pillows with his small, thin frame, and kissed my chest, my throat, leaving behind spreading ripples where he touched; but he stopped when I gripped his wrists, and removed his arms from around my neck, suddenly angry.

�gWhat are you doing?�h

�gYou must sleep, �g he whispered urgently, and then covered my mouth with his own. He kissed me long, hard, and deep, kissed me until my hands fell from his wrists, kissed me until I no longer had any desire to protest, until I could not have even if I wanted to, because inside the cool wildfire that he poured into me with his stroking, soft lips was a thick and heavy blackness, and against my will I found myself asleep, and not even aware of it.

The next morning I called in sick to work.

I had no choice; I had awakened in a condition that I would not let even a doctor see me in, let alone my gossiping coworkers, and it was with something akin to horror that I stared at my naked reflection in the mirror.

Where he had touched, and more, my skin had changed; its natural color was now injected with a subtle glitter that at once altered and enhanced, turned my flesh into something silken dusted with a patina of powdered crystal and the first riming frost of winter. It was like before, only more intense, and I knew that this time it would not fade. No, I found after several hours of aghast scrutiny, it was spreading.

It had begun on my left arm, my face, my chest; my entire arm was coated from fingertips to shoulder, and it crept up the side of my neck to the ethereal sculpture that had replaced my entire face with features at once familiar but not, painted in all the wrong colors and textures, this fey thing that stared back at me. Another spot on my chest, where his lips had touched, sending out tendrils like vines to seek out new soil in which to grow. When I touched it with the fingers of my still-normal hand, it had the same texture and temperature as his.

�gYou�fre doing this to me!�h I snarled to the empty air; I could no longer deny that this was real. But the dead eyes of the little insect on the counter only stared at me silently, emptily, and there was no answer. Of course there was no answer; moths were nocturnal creatures, and the sun still shone bright through the vertical blinds.

I wanted to throw the tiny, staring corpse away, wanted to crush it into powder right there in its little dish, and flush the crumbled bits down the toilet, never to be seen again. I glared at it with unbridled hatred, but even in my state I knew that that wasn�ft the answer. While he�fd seemed afraid that I might remove his insectoid body from my vicinity, he had said that it was my presence itself that allowed him to come, and not the actual physical shell-so destroying it would aid me little. Besides, I needed him to come to me. I needed him to make this, whatever it was, stop.

I had plenty of time to think about my dilemma, waiting for sunset. I paced, I ranted, I raved. Once I thought I felt cool hands on my brow, and a voice whispering, I�fm sorry, but it vanished when I lost my temper to fling a lamp across the room, its shattering cry nearly overpowering my own roar of rage.

In all truth, I was more afraid than anything. Afraid that whatever was happening to me was killing me, that it wasn�ft reversible, that it was and I wouldn�ft be able to talk some sense into my nightly visitor, stop him before he progressed any further. I didn�ft know how I would convince him, but threatening him was the only recourse that I could think of; in my frantic thoughts I surmised that while the tiny little moth-body was what actually held him to the physical world, I was what allowed him to manifest in a physical, humanoid form. I was the flame that drew him forth, as he had said; so if I threatened to destroy the body that had once housed that fluttering little spirit and remove the remains from the apartment, removing both his tether and the presence of his lure, perhaps fear of total extinguishment would force him to lift this malady from me. It was a risky gamble; if he was desperate enough, he could refuse to remove this pearl-dusted curse and leave us both to vanish from this earth entirely.

It was an hour before dawn before it began to hurt. I could feel the creeping shimmer sinking deeper beneath my skin, infiltrating my very flesh, and I swear to you now that I could pinpoint the motion of every tendril burrowing slowly towards my heart. The feeling is like watching a videotape of your own death played before your eyes even as it occurs, inch by inch. The first pain came when the first vein of stardust pierced my heart, and I could have sobbed with the futility of it all. It overwhelmed the needling agony, but did not damp it entirely, and then I heard his voice again, repeating words of the night before.

You must sleep, he whispered, a hollow echo inside my head, and again unseen hands touched me, stroked my hair back from a fevered brow, kissed coolness into my cheeks. You must sleep now.

And because I had no other choice, no other relief from the pain, I slept.

When I woke, it was well past dark, but I knew this only because I felt his hands again, and knew that he was there in �gflesh�h, kneeling upon the bed at my side. I could not have moved to look out the window even if I wanted to; my body was a cracked crystal of pain, and my limbs would not respond. Only my eyes would move, dully, slowly, and my parched, dry lips.

�gWhat....h-have....you done to me?�h My voice was alien even to myself, a rasping thing of multiple choruses, insectoid and chittering, and I would have started if I could at its very sound. But I remained frozen, and he gazed down at me, so sad, so worried as he stroked his hands over my body. They were cold-too cold, and it was the only way of knowing that I was hot-too hot. Fevered, being scorched alive inside my shining body. My skin was like old parchment, and it would crack at any second. It must.

�gSshh, �g he whispered, and soothed me with his fingers in splaying paths like the radiating petals of gardenias. �gYou�fre changing, that�fs all. The pain will stop soon, I promise, and you will sleep for some time.�h

�gI�fm dying.�h The words made me cough, and I felt something in my side split, horribly, but could feel no wet trickle of blood. I was coming out of my skin, and soon I would be nothing by a flayed hunk of skinless meat lying on bloodless sheets, surrounded by the husk of my dry and pearl-streaked epidermis.

�gI�fm dying, �g I repeated, more shakily now, and �gNo!�h he cried, flinging himself atop me. He still felt as though he weighed no more than a scrap of silk, and the drifting ribbons of his wings fell over me in an eddying cloak, a welcome embrace of coolness, like a still, green pool on a hot, hot day. I sighed, and closed my eyes, and let him hold me. �gI didn�ft mean to, �g he whispered apologetically, mouth against my burning flesh. �gI didn�ft....I don�ft think I can kill you, please don�ft die....�h He sounded as though he had no more idea of what was taking place than I, but rather than frighten me, the idea settled upon me a strange sort of lethargy, peace; I forgot all ideas of threatening him, of trying to save myself. I was dying, and the thought fell as calmly through my mind as spring leaves tumbling to the ground through winking shafts of sunlight.

When the raindrops touched my skin, it was only another piece of it, I thought, somewhere in my drifting haze. Death was leaves in my brain, and dying would be a hot wind slowly ebbing, and afterwards there would be cool rain, and this was only the beginning. But these drops were warm, and their salt stung the cracks in my skin; they were alive. I was foggily indignant at that for a moment, that something living should dare intrude on my acceptance of death, should force me to return to reality. This was meant to be a poetic moment, lost in ruminations of my life-that was what most did while they died, when given leisure, wasn�ft it? Waxed nostalgic, and remembered all those little moments that would never happen again. I tried to remember, but those stinging salt-drops kept chasing my thoughts away, forcing me to wake, to live.

It was the boy. The white moth. He still laid atop me, with his numbing body easing the pain, but it was his salt that pricked at me. His tears, pouring from his eyes to course down my chest and make rivers in the tiny canyons snaking over my brittle and ruined body. �gDon�ft die, �g he was whispering, over and over again, lips moving against my chest. It felt like bliss, those touches. Like angels�f hair. �gDon�ft die, don�ft die, don�ft die.....�h I found myself able to move again, if only barely; found myself able to lift an arm with a dry, papery sound that I knew was my skin falling away in translucent layers that would look like flakes of mother of pearl and break as easily as spun sugar. My hand found his hair, and my fingers stroked it, and my lips curved into a smile.

�gWhy do you fear?�h I whispered, and then breathed my last.

But I am not dead. I know this, now, an undefined length of time later, upon awakening from a thick and sudden blackness. I am not dead, but I cannot move, not yet. I cannot see, for my eyelids are no longer mine to control, and will not open. I am a prisoner inside the chrysalis of my own dormant body.....but I am very much alive, and only waiting. I am blind, but I can smell him nearby, hear the rustles of his movements. I can feel the touch of his lips as he kisses my brow ever-so-often, of his hands as he tends to my corpse. He knows that I live, somewhere inside, and sometimes he whispers, �gI�fm still here. I�fm waiting, for you.�h I can feel the sun on my husk in daylight hours when he is gone, and it is an uncomfortable thing.

But more than that, I can feel myself, my body, changing. I can feel my skin grow thin and translucent, my veins small and spidery, and know that soon I will be able to hold my hands up and see the light through them in beautiful patterns, as he can. Inside their widening sockets, my eyes shift and darken. It�fs as though my flesh is turning to eiderdown, and I am witness to the gradual transformation. A wet, itching feeling creeps down my spine, tickles at my shoulder blades. I can only imagine that it is sprouting wings. Soon I will crawl out of my old skin, and live again.

The moth eventually dies, and becomes the flame. But fire is nothing more than the burning essence of what it consumes.....and so in the end is it not, in turn, destined to become the moth as well?

It's dragged itself over into the shadow of my telephone to die, now. I've watched it rather sadly, but there was nothing I could do. Sense tells me that I should have crushed it, given it a quick, merciful death, but it seemed not to want that. I thought its black eyes watched me for a while, but now they�fve grown dull and dim. Nonetheless, I think I shall take it home, and find a special, safe place to keep it.

A faint touch of its dust still shines upon my fingertips. I've been listening to Garbage this whole time, while watching it, a single song. �gI am weak, but I am strong...." The song's with Tricky-"Milk", the Wicked Mix. Maybe it's what inspired me to write this, to turn a poor, dying insect into a bright-eyed and strange boy with wing-dust and feathered kisses.

"I'm waiting, I'm waiting for you....."

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