The Final Flight

Genew no longer joined them in the Ritual. The Congregation gathered every night to worship the Light’s devilish glow, to honor its great and terrible power and pay respects to those who had been swallowed, but he alone remained, trembling fitfully in the garden. The ghostly memory of his first and last solemn night of worship haunted him. He could still feel the horrid buzz that hung in the air, that sick triumphant cackle that always followed a sacrifice. It had very nearly been him. He had flown too close, enthralled by the glow, drunk on the ecstasy of dipping a hair into the mouth of oblivion without losing his breath. Next to him flew a male he had never seen before. Both were laughing, sharing the sensations of this strange and holy ritual, until suddenly, they weren’t. One escaped by the hair of a wing while the other met the blackness on the other side. Stunned with horror, Genew tumbled to the ground, but only he abandoned the ritual. The other moths shivered collectively in prayer, and their dance grew more ecstatic.

The Light had chosen another soul. The Light had not chosen them. 

This was his fifth night alone in the garden, hidden beneath the giant sunflower leaves hoping beyond hope the Congregation wouldn’t notice his prolonged absence. He watched them from the shadows, swaying in unison to the hypnotic rhythm bellowing from The Light’s throat. He watched and shivered until he could bear it no more, then lifted his eyes to the moon, wishing desperately for her rays to wash the boiling guilt of being alive from his twitching body. 

The moon’s soft, swollen belly floated freely in the watery black sky. He wanted to reach out and touch it, wrap himself in its pale light and hide. He had wished this many times, helpless beneath the sunflowers, but for the first time ever, much to his surprise, the moon reached back. At first, he thought his eyes had deceived him - a fragment of the moon, swelled and flittered toward him in a breath of feathery elegance. But as it drew nearer, this piece of the moon grew a body from which emerged a pair of lacy white wings.

It wasn’t the moon at all. It was her.

They called her Lesser, yet the name failed her. Her beauty and bravery outshined the rest of the females, yet not a single male dared choose her as a mate. She was far too strange, a creature wrapped in the forbidden scent of the great beyond, bound not to The Light but to the wild and unpredictable call of the moon. She had never, not once, joined in the ritual and remained, since birth, averse to the encouragements and proddings from the Congregation. Rumor had it that The Light had claimed her parents when she was but an egg, but no one knew if this was true, and even if it was, there was no compassion, no grace for defying what no one else could resist. Since she would not conform, they cast her out. 

In a way, Genew envied her. She wore ostracization like a badge of honor while he cowered shamefully in the dark. He wasn’t ready to be removed from the hollow safety of the garden, not yet willing to muster up the courage, if it existed, to pledge allegiance to an even greater light. The garden had its horrors, but at least they shone naked before his eyes, and he didn’t have to face them alone. There was comfort in the Congregation, even when there was death. Beyond all of this, there was no one.

No one, that was, but her. 

She returned every couple of days with the same mission - to convince The Congregation that whatever devils existed beyond the garden were miniscule in comparison, that their lives need not be dictated by the Light. She begged them to follow her to a place where the moonlight danced and asked for nothing in return, where they could perform their revered ritual, without losing a single life. On her first trip, she convinced a young moth, barely metamorphosed, to join her. On her second, Lesser claimed three more. On her third, The Congregation asked her what had become of her four followers. Where had they gone and why had they not returned? Her response wasn't exactly satisfactory.

I cannot tell you what you wish to hear. But come with me, and like the others, you shall find what the light drives you to seek.

Genew, like the others, imagined such horrific and brutal endings, that even the thought of Lesser made him shiver. Still, he couldn’t shake the haunting feeling that there really was something out there, and yet somehow, that terrified him even more. She was getting to him and she knew it, and he knew she knew it. It was only a matter of time before he would crumble and take flight.

The Ritual was almost over. Dawn was creeping over the horizon and tucking the stars one by one beneath a blushing blanket of gray. Lesser waited at the garden’s gate where the congregation would soon pass, weary and unkempt with the shock of life still beating through their veins. This was the perfect moment. They were broken, guilty, hungry for more and yet flagrant with exhaustion. Those with even an inkling of doubt would be vulnerable to conviction.

Genew watched from the shadows of his sunflower. The evangelizing was familiar to most of The Congregation. Some ignored her, others sneered and waggled hateful tongues in her direction. A newly hatched youngster paused briefly to listen before willingly surrendering to the sweeping crowd. It seemed Genew alone felt the fright of a fire building beneath his chest, but as the sun blinked its rosy eyelids, he too bent beneath his exhaustion. Before sleep could swallow him though, her last words struck the final match.

Once I leave the garden tonight, you have my word, I will not return. I have eggs to hatch and will not risk the flight. My fellow kin, I say to you one last time: Find the courage to fly with me into the dark and you will discover True Light.

~

When Genew awoke, the ritual had already begun again. The crackle of another life colliding into that electric mouth shook him from his slumber, and it took him several painfully long seconds to pant air back into his sharply constricted lungs. The moon, once again round bellied and full, drenched the garden in a halo, and in its bold glow, The Light seemed oddly dim. A few stragglers doddled to join the rest of the Congregation, and Genew nodded in their direction as if he meant to follow them. Instead he turned, loosed a heavy breath, and plunged into the belly of the garden.

He already knew where to find her. Deep in the weeds near the rotting cabbage, she made her perch and awaited any moth brave enough to enter. He wondered if she picked this dark and foul corner as a test, to see if one could truly embrace something repulsive and abhorrent over the Light’s sweet seduction in exchange for their freedom. The smell engulfed him, and he wavered, but only for a moment. She met him in his trembling doubt and smiled.

You have come.

It wasn’t an observation. It was a covenant. He had chosen his fate and there was no turning back. A billow of wind tickled the feathery underside of his wings as a cloud drifted across the moon, wrapping the garden in a blanket of darkness. All he could see was the ghostly glow of The Light in the distance, hear its menacing buzz and the breathy dance of the Congregation enslaved to its whim. For a moment, the pulsing orb hooked its sizzling tendrils in Genew’s chest and tugged. Then the cloud passed, the garden glistened, and as he turned to Lesser, he could see the moon itself singing in her eyes. He didn’t want to wait a second longer. It was time. 

Still, he felt bound by some primeval force to the sunflowers, the moths, the eggs waiting to hatch, and the unformed newborns encased in their cocoons. But as they rose into the starry sky, every bit of it fell away. The darkness claimed him, and he welcomed the wide-open air. His wings trembled as he followed Lesser over a grid of gardens that bled into gold-tipped cornfields and finally, a prairie so full of blooms, the air sang with the scent of nectar.

The shining moon caressed the flowers below with such tenderness that the fear gnawing in Genew's belly evaporated. Any remnant of loyalty to the garden's greedy glow - which now seemed so vile in comparison - vanished.

He had no idea what awaited him in the sea of blossoms below, but for the first time, he could feel with his whole body that this life now was entirely his own.

Lesser smiled, as if she could taste the revelation now flooding Genew's veins. She leapt higher into the sky, twirling round the moon with untethered ecstasy. Then together, drunk on wild freedom, they made their descent.