3105-07-03

The insects. So ever-present I often forget about them. They, their incessant, grating buzz, that is the other lone sound that will cross your ears in the twilight hours. When swarms of the jeweled-winged creatures gather, dwelling in the charcoal brush sprouting between jagged earth outside the forest, the keening swells to such heights that one must run to distances at which plugging one’s ears can bring effect, away from the fluttering of sapphire and amber and opal and amethyst that rides on the breezes like a sigh and cuts through one’s skull. My bird would dare to capture these pretty pests as a meal if freed from its cage, but I cannot trust it would not be overcome, outnumbered by beings infinitely fragile and small, more deadly in numbers for their size. They would rip into the clockwork, and drag that pitiful creation, clicking in pain, into the purgatory of their nests of the depths of the island.

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In the ground it must be, in that barren dirt that they live, for no one sees them in daylight, in that brush. No workman nor child do they flit before the eyes of. No husks they shed to be prized by collectors, or crushed unexpectedly underfoot. And the greedy forest, should they call it home, would never allow them escape.

Perhaps it would be a fine thing then, to make my bird a sacrifice, paint its gullet bright red and watch where the hue splashes when the scathing insects tear it apart, track their paths down below. One could imagine that those loathsome things know, better than anyone capable of reasoning, of speech, what and where those fabled blades lie, how to reach them, how they are. Though the precious winged toy would hurt to lose, think what knowledge could be gained for its loss…