"I am already dying," the moth said, "what is the worth in attempting to live?"
She was very small. She was gorgeous. She attempted to fly into the light of my fire with frantic, heavy swoops, the flicker of her wings slow enough to watch as they curved in the air. "What is the worth?" She asked me, gently coaxed from the flame by the back of my hand, careful. I couldn't tell her. I didn't know the answer myself. I just knew that, while old and dying, she didn't deserve to die like that. The flame would be swift and maybe even painless, but it wouldn't be fitting. Yet, who am I to define how another being will die? Who am I to decide this?
She curves, slow, and tries to drift into the gently swirling light of my flame. She is just slow enough that I can reach and cup her in my hands, hold her still, safe from the fire. Her small limbs scrabble at my skin in the attempt to squeeze out of my careful grip and into the flame which enraptures her so.
"What is the point of this," the moth asks me, to which I think of the countless other moths I've seen in my life. Each and every one was brief and fleeting—seen once and never again. I wondered about them, you know. I wondered if they lived to old age or got picked off by birds. An insect can have such a momentary life. Just because it was short doesn't mean it didn't have meaning.
I don't know how to tell her this. Little claws hook into my skin, trying to pull free. Light, the guide; a focal point, the ending. You venture through an eternal night and the light is your reward in the end. Sometimes I wonder if moths wish to live longer. They see so little compared to us, don't they?
She is small. She is gorgeous. I will never see anything like her ever again.
I lower my hands, gently unpin her fragile body, and allow her to crawl from my searing skin and into the cinder. There, in the dancing light, she becomes a star. The sharp whine of the fluid of her body evaporating rings like a cry of elation into the otherwise empty quiet.
She is there for the briefest of moments; I met her not that long ago, the moth scrabbling against my hands as I deflected each attempt to ignite. She is gone as quickly as she arrived.
Sometimes I wonder what it's like. To live as she did. Quick and fleeting and painfully beautiful. It must have been divine to take that last step into the incandescent tongues of flame. Was it an embrace? A release? A final going-away?
It didn't matter if a life lasted for only a month. It didn't matter. The scales upon her wings rubbed onto my skin. There for a moment, gone the next. It was beautiful.
