Content warnings

Ecological destruction. Insects.

A new moth has emerged from their cocoon today, but before we can begin reabsorbing the shreds of their cocoon into ourselves, we are interrupted. Everyone flutters, flaring with the strongest of yellows, a rich goldenrod-alarm.

At the edge of the trees waits a stranger, a human, the first we've encountered in so very long. Yet she isn't human in the way we remember. The skin on the insides of her lower arms gleams differently than the rest of her. After making sure the newest moth is protected by the others, I fly closer.

Intricate shapes are inlaid in the still-silent human's arms. Pieces, I realize, not unlike what the moth witch wove into the wings of our ancestors. Constructs to anchor her craft, which have survived these years even as we ourselves have altered.

These shapes emit a reverent green light, although laced with a silver that suggests worry. Slowly, the human rubs her wrists against one another, and from her skin a scent rises into the air. It's less complex than the ones we can generate, but it is… peaceful. She has done things to herself, or had them done, in order to be able to communicate with us.

She removes an item from the pack she carries, and steps closer only long enough to place it within our easy reach, before retreating. Then she tells us, in scent and color and sound, I come to bring you the spellbook of the moth witch, which we have finally discovered. You are the only ones it belongs to, and I am so sorry it took this long for us to bring it to you.

Memory charges throughout all of us, as the lessons we've absorbed through our cocoons grasp at this tether to our past.

We all possess memories of the moth witch.

Her work was a thing of flesh and code, magic and formulae, and all of it was secreted in her spellbook, which opened only in her presence. She was the first to find the secret of creating creatures equal parts organic and artifice.

We, they, moths as we once were, were her greatest creation. She altered our very selves, infusing the characteristics she desired, whether created by her or inspired by other creatures. Her modifications meant we could only grow in her lab, in the cocoons she built for us, but we could communicate with her through colors and scents, we could pollinate plants that were teetering on the edge of vanishing, we could survey more safely and in much finer detail…

But some of us were lost, or deemed failures, or simply took the chance to flee. However it happened, for it is so hard to remember when the memories are only somewhat ours, the spells she knit into us learned, given enough time. Until one day, the moths which came from her laboratory were able to reproduce with the moths that had none of the witch's artifice to them, and that is how we, moths as we are now, came to be.

Another moth, chromatophores still lemon-bright with wariness, darts forward to collect the book. The human's eyes widen. We are small, but the moth witch imbued us with both physical strength and a way of shaping the air to let us carry objects.

The human continues, Once we decided to approach you, I figured out how to do this. She raises her arms and turns from side to side so that we can all see the light pulsing from her skin. I have a request to make, if you wouldn't mind listening, please? She hesitates, as if expecting to be pushed away by a torrent of moths, then tells us, we want to make the waste habitable again. For all of us.

She tells us of plans to reintroduce plants to the waste, of spells and codes that should help new life to survive and beat back the forces of pollution. Of tests, theories, potential changes, a dozen branching paths all of which begin with these first vital plantings. But as they have been for so many moth-lives before this, the skies above the waste are too poisoned for humans to pass through.

We'll give you the seeds, and all our research. There are a few moths still near us, and they've helped us design mechanisms to help you transport the samples and equipment. If you're willing.

She backs up, holding out her arms. Thank you for listening to me. Scent and color and sound pulse with reverence and respect, all the shades of green that the emotion holds.

We can't do this! protests a moth beside me. He flares the blue which is the most blue, winding through enough variations of despair that his wings are hardly large enough to encompass it all.

Except, I know we could do this, if we chose to. We were built to move through toxic spaces the humans couldn't manage. But we've never gone to this waste, for what would we do once we got there? We were built to only answer specific questions, run specific diagnostics, capture more detailed images than humans ever could. All the rest of our skills we've had to develop ourselves, in the time since leaving the moth witch's laboratory.

The moth witch did all of this to us. With this very spellbook!

But she isn't the moth witch. She is… something else, I challenge. What if we try trust?

He shimmers, his scent hovering on a thin edge between the fear of fleeing a predator and the delight of finding rich hidden nectar.

I don't know what we should do with the spellbook. There might be lessons to be found in it, but…

I soothe, we don't have to decide today. I wonder what we would learn if we found a way to read it. If we should.

His scent and color shift, slowly, to trust.

I think of the discarded cocoon of the moth who gained their wings this very morning, the lines of code and magic wrapped amid the silken fibers. After the cracking-open of their emergence, the cocoon lies in uneven, translucent pieces, and I choose one of these to bring to the human.

We are not exactly like the moths you know, I tell her, and you won't ever be able to understand all of it. But this might help, if we are to live together again some day.

She accepts the piece carefully, with both hands. The cocoon fragment writhes at her touch, and she waits for it to settle, before gently guiding the silk into careful spirals around her arms. It splits apart, forming two bands that settle against the bones of her wrists. She stares at herself, then up at us.

Thank you.

And, then, we discuss renewal.

Devan Barlow

Devan Barlow is the author of the Curses & Curtains series, and the collection Foolish Hopes and Spilled Entrails: Retellings. Find her short fiction and poetry in various anthologies and magazines. She reads voraciously, and is usually hanging out with her dog.

This story originally appeared in the anthology Sunshine Superhighway: Solar Sailings, published by JayHenge Publishing in January 2024.