Inktober 2025 - 23 - Firefly

Blessed be the firefly, holiest of all the bugs. It is to the night what the butterfly is to the day, and more. It is a bringer of light and colour even in the darkest places. And its aerial dance is a ballet quite unique among insects. It easily rivals the stars in the sky, effortlessly taking over for them when the clouds shield them from view.

As he laid on his back, dying, in that clearing, that was what he was choosing to focus on: the poetry of the fireflies buzzing above him.

He had managed to crawl here from where he had been struck down, in a desperate attempt to seek help, but the increasing pain and dizziness had made it pretty clear he was not going to get it in time to be saved. So, accepting his fate, he had rolled over in the damp grass, and started to stare up at the night sky, to pass the time until his demise.

He did not want to die face down in the dirt. It was not like anybody was ever going to find him, so it was not about avoiding any level of humiliation; he knew very well what was going to happen to his body after his soul had left it. It was going to rot right here, and be eaten, ideally scavenged by big predators, mammals and birds alike, and most definitely nibbled on by worms, before being swallowed by the Earth itself and processed by the fungus that inhabits it. He however took comfort in the idea that he would participate in the great food chain that nourished the very same wondrous luminous flying insects he was admiring now.

He felt lucky that this natural spectacle would be the last thing his eyes would see. His vision was too blurry to see beyond them anyway. As far as he could tell, they were just tiny dancing lights in the dark, but they were still beautiful to him.

He also liked the fact that they did not seem to care one bit about his presence. They carried on with their three-dimensional swirls and arabesques, without any change in direction or rhythm on his account, completely unfazed by the intrusion into their domain. This indifference helped him believe that what was happening to him was not important, that it did not matter, in the great scheme of things. The world would indeed go on after he was no longer a part of it. He could only hope he had managed to take the person who had done him in down with him, but even if he hadn't, they would get what was coming to them eventually, if not in this life, surely in the next. He wanted to place the same level of trust in the order of things that these tiny bugs seemed to have, only following their most primal instincts and basic needs, and somehow ending up being a sight to behold in the process.