Moths

The illumination from her lamp, a pure, comfortingly soft light source, attracted the local wildlife in a manner that she preferred to describe as "annoying".
    Which is to say, an absurd number of moths and other insects of similar fascination with light were flying around her head and landing on the short story she was trying to finish for the seventh time today. Not that she was skittish with insects or such, in fact she had a healthy relationship with them. She left them alone; they left her alone, nobody got hurt. Still, it was becoming sillier by the minute, they were landing on her hands, her hair, and clouding up the paragraphs like so much flotsam in her stream of consciousness.
    With a long-suffering sigh, she resigned herself to finishing tomorrow. I guess this is their turf, I'm just here on vacation... she mused as she brushed the bugs off her page and closed the book with a concise snap.
     She thought what to do next.
     No phone, no cable, no internet, no writing, and no conversation.
     She made a delicate grimace in showing her distaste. To sleep it is, then.
     She looked around herself, loathe to move; she was rather comfortable curled up as she was. Even with the decorations, she thought bemusedly at the apparent moth convention going on across her jeans. She tried to brush them off, but they just went up in a puff of butterfly-kisses and settled back down more or less the same as before. She rolled her eyes, and stretched, up, up, far as she could, to try and reach the lamp switch without actually getting up to turn it off. A few moths landed on her arm in the process, but the switch evaded her.
    She grumbled softly, then got up, displacing a number of silently outraged denizens from her legs and shoulders. She turned off the light. Relative darkness enveloped her and her companions.
    A whisper brushed her hand, and a few echoes batted against her bare arms and cheeks.
Butterfly kisses...


    The light next to her bed was on, but her closed room had not, thankfully, attracted the numerous audience that the porch lamp had. It was oddly quiet after the sound of the nearby sea so loud downstairs. She absently stifled a yawn, then looked at her hand, surprised.
    There was a butterfly resting on it.
    She looked at it curiously. It was quite pretty, almost delicate-looking, and pretty large. It had elegant, curved wings, a beautiful pale color. Like the train of Titania's dress...
    For a moment, she felt little again, looking at a fairy whispering secrets to her, and not just a lost insect. It was that kind of butterfly.
    She had never seen one like it, nor had she ever heard of butterflies going about at night. She shooed it off her knucles gently, but it only fluttered and landed on her again. She waved her arms about to scare it off properly. In a manner that might have been called rebellious, the odd specimen refused to be dispersed; instead landing on her lampshade, and from there no amount of scaring or brushing or moving could displace it. She gave it up as inconsequential; she'd just share her bedroom with it. Sadly she knew it would be dead by morning.
     She got ready for bed keeping an eye on the thing, that looked for all the world like an exquisitely detailed decoration on her lamp, except of course, that it also looked just about ready to take flight. And yet her colorful escort stayed. She got into bed with a mental shrug. Hey, dude, its your choice. Just don't climb in my bed, I roll around a lot. She turned off the lamp.


"Hey, dad!"
      He straightened from the fishing rod he was fixing for her cousin. "Yes?"
"A butterfly took up residence on my lampshade last night."
"They do that sometimes, you know." He smiled.
     She returned it.
"Yeah... but its pretty particular. I was wondering if you could tell me what kind it was."
"What did it look like?"
     She showed him the lamp in her room, where the specimen still sat beautifully, having quietly died there in the night, as butterflies are wont to do.
"That", he said, smiling quietly, "is a moth, Adelaide, not a butterfly. See the antenna? Dead giveaway." Her father turned around to leave. "They're pretty rare this early in the summer."
     With that concise diagnosis, he exited the room to return to his rod and reel repair.
"Very pretty, though, isn't it?" He remarked over his shoulder.
     Adelaide nodded thoughtfully.
"Yes..."



   Whoever told you moths weren't just as beautiful?