The Mothling: Little Did He Know
Prologue -:- Of moths, butterflies and winged things...
So follows the dialogue of Lolo Moth, the last known Ovyrrakrúsk of Aphantasia, who survived the fall of the Orlantian Empire. Friend of the Magi of Korin and a disciple of Lord Aratarasu, he is often called the Rift-Moth, the Monk Moth, and the Last Grand Moth. This text was recorded by his cellmate, Azkazin, in the cruel jail of Aroondalesh during the snowy Great Sleep, about one million years before the so-called End of the World, which is the edge of a place as much as a bridge in time…
I am no moth. And I am no fairy. Little do I know, but that I do. From cocoons to aeries, we can walk on air. Gravity Angel, is what they once called me. Yet scary is what children once found me. How strange it is to be small or tall, from the ant to the Moon, vulnerable deep down we are all. A crystal dew drop inside a sea of blue, the inkblot mystery, the recognition that long ago everything flew, from meteorites to dragonflies to star-flights — this is you — a very simple truth.
So let me ask: where do you stop, and where do I not? My mustache is perhaps one place to start. Except I do not have a mustache. That is just my masking visage. It’s my fabulous flair that every winged warrior must declare, an independence and an irreverence for what moths should wear. Atlas Moth or Luna Moth, the moths do not articulate such swishing hair, nor do they have human-like hands or feet. My exoskeleton is armor I can don or disassemble, or dissemble. Even my bug-eyes are not my own, but the bejeweled oculi of my obsidian visor, with my two antennae jutting inside horned antlers, and my topknot, a green mohawk.
My spindly fingers grasp many things, but my mind is much more nimble. My hands most often hold my lightning-staff with stripes of black and yellow, like a bumblebee ribbon, silver-purple sparks igniting at both ends as both a weapon and a lantern. I play a flute that is also a blow-pipe for poison darts that bring dream fevers and visions of the future. And at my side is always my sword, a vorpal blade that cuts through the folds of time, finding waves to alight, and surges of flight, an edge that keeps waking the dead and the living.
Which brings us to wings, what strange and funny things. The butterfly reminds the winter weary of the colorful sparks of spring. Red and orange and yellow and blue — from the Monarch to the Morpho — they get all the glory, simply because we espy them in daylight, flitting among the flowers with their gentle pointed antennae; whereas the moths mostly love the night, and the Moon especially, following it on their many migrations, their feathery antennae catching the subtlest reverberations, the spiraling winds, and the tiniest spiky pollens.
Yet my people chose the Lolo Moth for their raiment, happy in the Sun and Moon alike, with green and red and yellow and indigo splotches on our wings, a tiger-striped archipelago of wonder and delight: See!? Azkazin, as you stare into their sparkling glare: the rims and reefs of islands, like water rippling across oceans. Does it not remind you of some distant youth in a paradise lost and lasting in buried recollections? We are the Ovyrrakrúsk — Dream Keepers! — and it is flames of hope and healing that we protect most of all. But even so, in cruel Aroondalesh, hot by the deserts, the cold sea winds of the Scrying Gulf do frustrate the grey pelage of my cloak and collar. As I cry freedom, be calm.
Look now at the kites hovering off the lighthouse, my friend! The Pharos of Raíyavek still call here many voyagers and mercenaries from around the world. I thank you for nursing me back to health, even if I awoke to a hell of iron bars and biting sandstorms. I did not expect to meet a humming bird here, yet that is the magic of Azkazin, and the nectar you coaxed from honeysuckle, blown from the dunes there, with their misty morning patches of green; the briny breeze pricks everything back into vibrance — the succulent grass and trees, the laughing of seabirds, and the dancing of dolphins in foaming waves thick with seaweeds.
And so that blue kite reminds me of a devilishly clever machine — Kymeraz — part animal, part nothing, both alive and dead in this world and in parallel worlds back and forth through time. To drift, is to wander, to let thoughts billowing on the horizon to carry onward. To weave what is, with what is not. Let the dragons disappear and drift, from the tales of yore to the bones in the earth to the phantasms high in the ether, teasing us with questions of impermanence.
The Drift Dragons — were they ever here!? — are hard to find. They seem like a dream to me now, fading in and out, like ships bobbing out at sea, sailing up and down with the swells. Humming birds are close to what they are. Yet they were as big as an orca and as graceful as a condor, humming between worlds. That’s how they leapt through the clouds, how they became leopards of the sky: they would disappear into the future and then come back, as the Earth turned, so fast that they hummed; or they would bank into the past, and zigzag over the compass, weaving time as fast as a shooting star, crackling in waves of brilliance.
Now, I’ve heard rumor of a girl named Kanvaly, who some say may find one of the mighty Kymeraz, off the coast between here and Unverant, perhaps washed along the ice-melt river that has fed the canals of Tiverask. It is said that she thought at first that it was a seal, but when it emerged from the ice in the bay, it had a mouth of gaping zeal: intake for all that has been or ever will! The Snow Dog, I believe, she calls it — “Ramakool” in the local Valmerian tongue and dialect.
That is why I am here. In a fortnight on a new moon when it is darkest, save for the stars and the fire in the lighthouse, I will continue my journey to find Kanvaly and her Ramakool. Then I hope to find the secret that will reopen the Gates of Aphantasia, to find the Magi of Korin and renew the wisdom of the ancients.
Harken to the Haiku of the Drift, which I compose for you now, my friend. Inside it is a koan that will keep this dream of hope akin. If I fail and never return, speak not, I pray, of these things, these winged things, to the slavers of Aroondalesh. Through any keyhole, keep watch for a dust mote in light of Sun and Moon:
Mists from tips of waves,
Wisps from snow peaks of fire —
Dragons drifting by
For dragons know the mountains and the atoms. They escape far into oblivion. Take this then with you, for I will leave a way out when I go. I am no moth. And I am no fairy. Call me what you will. But never forget. We are a very simple truth — the journey of light — and may it shine on your path through darkest night.
Thus concludes the Prologue to The Mothling: Little Did He Know, an adventure tale that is part of the Aphantasia myth cycle and precursor to the Aphantasia Trilogy: Where No Thoughts Go, original epic fantasy works by T.Q. Kelley. You can read about its mission and its musings here. We will be self-publishing future chapters (most will be free), and short stories (which will be for paying subscribers). The first chapter to Where No Thoughts Go is here, the second chapter is here, and the third chapter is here. The Mothology of the Moon short story is in three parts, starting here.
Copyright owned by T.Q. Kelley.
Tripple cool! Nice to get some roots to hold onto. Looking forward to more of the dance.