The moth effect

#53—A journey lasting thousands of years nears its end. A short story in three vignettes.

Welcome to Mind Flexing, your fortnightly thought expedition to everywhere and anywhere. Strap on your boots (or put your feet up), take a deep breath, and let’s get flexing.

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Today is Earth Day, and to mark the occasion, I’ve joined with a group of fiction writers to share stories about ‘The Future of Nature’—a community writing project that explores the human-nature relationship in a short story or poem. It was organised by Claudia Befu and Julie Gabrielli, and supported with brilliant advice from scientists Jonathan Tonkin and rebecca hooper. The story you’re about to read is from this project. You can find all the stories as a special Top In Fiction Disruption edition, with thanks to publisher Erica Drayton.

The Night Sun, by Alia Parker.

The man

The tea was too hot, so the man sat at the table staring at the steam as it rose from the cup. His wife, tired of the uncomfortable silence, had flicked on the radio and begun to wash the dishes, clamouring loudly to bring some reprieve. The radio played an old song, one she remembered from childhood, although never quite grasped; something about being a ‘fool for the Holy Grail’.

“We’ve got cutworms in the wheat crop,” the man said breaking his silence, eyes still fixed on the steam.

“Oh,” she said, unsurprised. But grateful for some conversation, continued, “Did they get much?”

“Nah,” he said, then picked up his tea.

The conversation was over, and the tea was still too hot.

She knew exactly where his mind was. Their crop yields were poor, probably because of the drought. But they had been irrigating heavily to compensate and it made no difference, so perhaps it was the soil. Prices were down. It was a cold winter.

The man sipped his tea, making a soft slurping sound as he dragged a thin stream over the lip of the cup so as not to burn his tongue. The cutworms came every year, although there had been less recently. They wriggled along the earth felling the crops like little beavers.

The song came to an end, a clock ticked, the dishwater gurgled down the drain, and the man finished his tea. Rising without a word, he pulled on his boots and left to spray the wheat.

The moth

Feeling that the ground was warm and his body pulsating with a desire to move, Moth pushed the dirt aside and wriggled to the surface. He squinted at the faint light of a farmhouse on the hill and the stars that clustered into a path leading south, then stretched his new wings of mottled brown that bore the mark of a black diamond. By the third flutter, he had it, rising above the ground to move with the spring breeze that rustled through the stiff crackling grass. After weeks incubating below the surface (for he had only been above as a young cutworm, scavenging on the stems of dandelions and cape weed and whatever else he could find within a squirm’s distance), the freedom of movement and flight was elating, though short lived. Perhaps he could sense that life is fleeting, or maybe he was just hungry. And so, with his attention turned to his rumbling belly, he took in the smells of the dry earth, scanning them for anything moist and sweet. An hour or so must have passed in this way. He searched the dry grasses, resting here and there, sometimes on a fencepost, but found nothing.

The light in the farmhouse had gone out by the time he reached its garden. It was here he found the silvery bush of purple potted lavender with an aroma as sweet as its nectar. He spent some time there, quite gladly because there was little else living from what he could tell, save for the kelpie chained to its doghouse, which was fortunate because the droplets that splattered from its water bowl were very refreshing.

The sky had begun to change to dark blue and grey near the horizon and it unsettled Moth’s sensitive eyes, driving him under the farmhouse with little red-brick legs to shelter in its darkest corners among stores of timber beams and corrugated iron. The sticky thread of a spiderweb tugged at his wing and, lucky to have barely brushed it, he broke free and crawled carefully away with the wisdom to not touch them again.

After two nights, Moth’s body was strong and he had an insatiable desire to soar high into the sky and follow the path of twinkling lights. So he did, beating his wings like the life pulsating through his body. Up high, the air was delightfully cool and the world was free and open. The landscape moved in patterns below, crescent shadows of rolling hills in silvery moonlight, dot paintings of clumped grass, flecks of trees, and sandy riverbeds that curved and snaked toward a dry inland sea. On the fifth night, a river glistened with water, which was a pale brown and moved slowly with barely a ripple. Nonetheless, life stuck to it like a magnet; trees, shrubbery, cattle, kangaroo, formed an unbroken line along its banks. Now and then, lights flickered like glow worms. But the milky stars shone brighter, showing the way. It was beautiful, this world, and looking down from above it seemed at peace. But as Moth gazed, something unsettling was wrapping its way around his heart. Something wasn’t right. And not knowing the source of his agitation, or why he was here or where he was going, he was all the more determined to continue south, night after night following the path in the stars.

Instinct is a mysterious thing. To know from somewhere within to do as millions have done before. To fly with the stars, little wings beating, for hundreds and hundreds of kilometres. But instinct can’t fill the present with the knowledge of its past. Moth didn’t know there should have been others.

After a week or so, Moth came across a golden orb of light radiating from an inland city of man. It sprawled with yellow veins along which filed streams of red and white in opposite directions. The orb spread across the night sky like an infection that washed across his path. It was nauseating, and Moth was overwhelmed with an urge to escape, flying away from the orb to seek out darker crannies of rock to shelter in. When he awoke the following night, a strange sun was bearing down from the heavens. It lit a field of shimmering black solar panels as if it were day and cast a haze across the night sky. Moth tried to fly through it, but the light captured him, twisting and turning his body in a trap of exhaustion until he felt his wings fail and the earth hit his body. He crawled beneath a panel and hid. When night fell again, he could barely lift his wings, but the night sun didn’t return, thankfully, and finding a good supply of dandelions and cat’s ears to feed on, he mustered enough strength to find a darker, cooler shelter. The next night it rained. When the sky cleared and the star path returned, Moth stretched his legs, bat his wings, and continued on his way.

The possum

The mountain pygmy possum stood on the rocky outcrop and looked to the horizon burning pink in the summer sunset. She was a tiny little thing, not much larger than a mouse, and one would not expect it took much to feed her. But the hibernation through the winter snows had sapped her body of its reserves, much like the little joey in her pouch had done in recent weeks. The alpine flowers were yet to fully bloom, although even when they covered the mountain tops they left her feeling ravenous. Small insects were only just keeping her alive.

Watching the horizon for signs of movement, she recalled the stories her mother had told her about the moths that came each year, and how she should feast on their rich, nutty bodies. They would make her babies strong and fat and able to last the winter. Her mother had eaten the moths, but said they were hard to find.

Long ago, her mother had said, the moths came in the millions, moving through the sky like clouds of dust, blanketing the cool dark caves and rock crevices with their bodies, heads tucked beneath the wings of others so that the walls looked like the breasts of giant birds. She had said how men would come and scrape the moths into nets by the hundreds to roast on the fire or form into cakes.

Staring at the horizon, she wondered if her mother’s stories were true. All she could see in the distance was a screen in the sky above the mountains, flashing images of young humans, laughing and drinking something red.

The possum hopped down to search the rock caverns below once more, mainly out of desperate agitation rather than expectation, because she knew she’d find nothing.

Sitting back, she exhaled deeply and rested her paws on her belly, pushing it to try and rouse her joey. There had been no movement nor suckling in days, and although she wasn’t ready to accept it, she knew the little body inside her was lifeless.

She had lost her baby, again. Again, the moths hadn’t come.

Notes

The Bogong Moth was listed as an endangered species in in 2021, with populations steadily declining since the 1980s. The mountain pygmy possum is the only marsupial to live exclusively above the snow line. It was listed as endangered in 2001.

The technology mentioned in this story is currently in development. California-based company Reflect Orbital expects to begin beaming nighttime sunlight reflected from satellite mirrors in the last quarter of this year. It plans to launch 55 satellites. Its first round of allocations reportedly closed with 30,000 applications.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Canadian company Geometric Energy Corporation had plans to launch a CubeSat-style satellite billboard into orbit in 2022. The plan was delayed and a launch date has not been announced.

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Etymology Monday

For those who missed it, this week’s word is something that means the opposite of what it once was.

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