“H– Hey… Ivy…”
“Hmm…?”
“W– Want me to… tell you a story about our queen? To… try and cheer you up?”
“S… Sure…” she faintly told Phido, holding each other in their tibiae, “It’s still there, in my mind, I… I just… want it gone already…”
Well, we were winning that war by a landslide, I’m sure you could clearly tell. Kelvin was a serious fuckin’ genius when it came to timing things just right. Phido, still underneath that burrow with his moth girlfriend, summed up Kelvin’s genius here better than I ever could, in a story that not even I had known about until I recorded it.
Ivy was still pretty sleepy by this point. In the comfort of such a dark space, the two of them had taken a small nap together while Dot and his capos were politicizing over virtually nothing. Waking up next to an ant like Phido felt much better for Ivy, better than trying to rationalize all those thoughts about that stupid ladybug ex. So now, with her holding Phido close, he prepared that story for her, in what’s probably the cutest, most adorable interaction I’ve ever recorded between insects yet.
I had to admit, even I got a little jealous.
“Well… I just remembered,” Phido began, “Slider… he told me about how Kelvin rose to power, it– it was pretty funny.”
“F… Funny?”
“Yeah, it was about the first time Kelvin ever ran a colony by herself, y’know what she did? It’s a pretty great, pretty amazing story.”
“Y… Yes… Tell me.”
She cuddled up closer to him once he began his story.
"So, she… Kelvin was searching, all by herself, for a colony she could… become the queen of. Y’know how queens become queens?”
“N– No,” she answered, starting to feel a little better already.
“It’s real funny,” Phido gave her a smile, “She waited outside this one colony, hiding, until she saw a worker ant.”
“Worker ant?”
“Yeah, then she took hold of that sap and rubbed his scent on her body,” Phido laughed a little, “Made herself one of them that way.”
She cracked a smile, and laughed a bit, prompting him to want to continue his story, but was then interrupted by Ivy, who started hugging him tighter while letting out more of those sweet pheromones of hers. Unsure what to say, Phido just laughed, “It’s… It’s a little like what you’re doing to me now. Just… more painful for that worker.”
Feeling a little tired, she smiled a bit, slowing down her little motions while taking in the pheromones herself, “I… Y-Yeah…”
“Yeah, s-s-so… after she does that,” Phido continued, adorably sounding a little nervous at Ivy’s touch, “She goes deep into the burrow and… tells the others that the current ant colony's queen is an intruder,” he laughed.
Her smile gradually built up as he kept talking, wanting to laugh with him.
“So you got all these ants, everybuggy in the entire colony, killin’ off their own queen, all ‘cause Kelvin got their scent!”
But by this point, Ivy was too overtaken by her pheromones to really pay attention to the story, but she could tell from how Phido spoke that this was kindof the punchline, so she laughed and trailed without thinking, “N– No way…”
“And then Kelvin becomes the new queen, just like that! That's exactly how it happened,” he told her, comforting her more with his tarsi.
Phido then smiled, not expecting to find that she was a little half-asleep. Tousling her fur, he gently asked her, “Isn't… Isn’t that crazy, Ivy?”
“…Yeah, it is, it's… It’s pretty funny,” she lethargically smiled back at him.
“Y– Yeah, I hear that's how all queen ants get their power.”
“Is that so…?”
“Yeah, it’s– it’s amazing how Kelvin was able to pull that off, all by herself…” Phido sighed, “I love my queen. All of us do.”
Ivy chuckled, getting sleepier, yawning a bit, “Well, I love her too, then…”
“She’s why we’re here.”
“Yeah…”
From there, Ivy drifted off to sleep again, underground with her ant friend, and the rest is history. Phido was even sweet enough to let her rest there while he crawled back up to speak to Kelvin about what she told him. That’s as far as all the relevant details went for her in this report. Pretty cute ending to Ivy’s story, I must say.
But for Dot and the rest of his capos? Don’t even ask.
Once Slider and Phido both told Kelvin about how Dot was treating his close friends, she had all the reason she needed to keep moving forward. After all the tears, all the deals, and all the other bugshit, it wasn’t very eventful. For Dot, sure, but not for us. Everything happened within what we reasonably expected as we were now seated around our burrow, now that we were left to feed on everything Kelvin gave us.
It all happened pretty fast: Once Checker gave out that signal to end the lockup, he noticed quickly that none of the other ladybug associates had responded to it. According to Ruby’s orders, you had to make sure those associates heard the signal, no matter what, so Checker left his post and let out that signal again. The ladybugs didn’t respond to his signal, but once he got there… the red ants sure did.
Basel was a bit of a different story. While in the gathering den by himself as the new keyholder, shivering like it was winter, he noticed the red ants crawling up to the tree, up from the roots. Shaking even more, he took to flying far away for safety, and not even seconds into his flight, he was immediately met with Blackjack, charging right at him like the fuckin’ giant steel canary, rumored to be under the humans’ control. Y’know, the one way up in the sky that they talk about in myth down here in the colony? Whatever. Point is, Blackjack had a ladybug for lunch that day.
That crow was probably the best enforcer we ever had. Even though he held himself back from going right toward him, he knew exactly where Dot was by this point: All alone, inside the room where his mom got murked. What else was there for that ladybug to do, or even say anymore? I didn’t know, but Dot seemed to have some ideas. With him all alone now, he finally had some room to speak, and that’s what he slowly began to do.
“…I feel pointless. I can’t lie about it. Sometimes I can’t help but feel pointless. There’s nothing my mom can say. Nothing she can really do anymore. She’s gone… I don’t know what I’m going to turn her empire into.”
He was delivering this whole dramatic spiel while inside his room: In typical Dot fashion, completely unaware of what was actually going on outside. He looked back at his leaf bed, gazing pretty carefully at the space he took up in it just the day before, during what made up the pointlessness of his larvahood and adult days. He only ever used it to sleep, never for business. But here, he just briefly sat down in it and kept on talking to himself.
“I don’t really know what’s going on anymore. I can’t lie. I’m still this same being. Unchanging and stagnant. That’s me. Unchanging, with a lot of expectations and changes I’ve had to be adaptive to. And I haven’t followed through. Food’s running out… and no one wants to cooperate. It’s almost like I… see no point in food anymore. If anything happens, I just want everyone in my colony to know… I tried… but I didn’t want this.”
From the edge of that bed, I remember he looked over at the fruit Sprout left him a few days ago while he was saying this part.
“…They probably won’t care. I don’t care. I don’t know. I don’t know if I should still cry… if I even deserve to cry. If, when I cry, I’ll earn something. Something that’ll get me out of all this. But I can’t ask anyone to cry for me.”
He looked across at the walls, finding it much darker now than when he saw it in that one early morning several days ago. Through the peeks of those walls, he could almost catch the sight of those dark, gaseous shapes in the sky, where the rain came down. He didn’t really notice it, but he couldn’t ignore the darkness of those walls. He might as well have absorbed himself in it.
“…Why should I fuckin’ care if no one cries? It’s all me. I’m the only one here. I’m an insect. That’s all I’ve ever been. But… my mom… wanted me to be something more. What left is there to do? What’s left for me to face? Every end I find slips away, nothing changes if I rise, nothing changes if I fall… No one else is here. What am I even supposed to fuckin’ ask for? …I can ask to be happy, I can ask for emptiness. Just like I can ask for something to fill me. But no matter what, I won't get a response… Never one that I like.”
He then took a look at the room’s entrance again.
“…This is stupid, let me see what Basel's up to…”
Dot then got up to leave, but trailed off to finish up his spiel, saying, “…Just sitting here, waiting for these feelings to change–”
But by the time he looked out below his tree after staying in his room for so long, he knew it himself; the rest of his life was as good as bugspray.
I mean, what? There were thousands of our red ants swarming up the tree from the very bottom, looking just for him, now that Checker and Basel were already murked.
Dot, as usual, just acted fuckin’ odd, even as he saw those fire ants. Flying to safety didn’t even cross his mind; he resorted to scampering. Still, even after his time with Ivy definitively came and went, he STILL had her in his mind. I don’t know why his head was still occupied with her and that bugshit about flying, as opposed to thoughts of, I don’t know, gettin’ the fuck outta there while he could?
That sentimental piece of shit even had the guts to signal to her from the top of that fuckin’ tree. Yeah! He actually signaled to her! What a fuckin’ sap, whispering to her with that same, pointless desperation…
“Ivy… I… P– Please… I’m– I’m Red Boy… Remember? I… I’m Red Boy…”
Pff, the fuck was she gonna do? Like, are you serious?
Well, while he was busy making that melodramatic display, the fire ants from down below had been quickly crawling their way up to him; Dot knew he was bound to be completely cornered at some point, so before they even got to the same leaf as Dot’s, he looked at them dead-on, and quickly scoured the top of the stump for a splinter.
Suddenly, Blackjack had flown up to the tree’s peak as well, with around a hundred other fire ants on his back. That sight really sent Dot into shock, looking for that splinter even faster. He finally nabbed it from the edge of that stump, tearing it out with so much force he nearly ruptured one of his limbs.
Now, with nowhere left to run, Dot emptied his head of all his prior thoughts; he knew this would be the end as he knew it, in one way or the other. But, though his head was moving a thousand inches a second, he truly wanted ownership: the right to say he took his life into his own tarsi, for the first real time.
So, outwardly and dramatically extending his limbs against our red ants, he gripped the splinter tight in his tarsus, and pointed it toward his underbelly, tears in his eyes and all while looking up at the sky.
“If this is weakness, then… fuck what you call strong…!”
Those were the last words the red ants remembered him saying. He then stabbed himself. Hard. Carved out the center of his underbelly, through a deep incision; looked even worse than what he did to Berry. The pain was immense; you could see it on his face. Our ants were left completely unsure what to do through that final act of his; they just watched him leak out, awkwardly and unceremoniously.
Finally, just as unceremoniously as his hemolymph dripped off his body, a drop of water fell down to the tree.
Then another.
And another after that.
It started raining.
The tree quickly got so slippery under that little drizzle of rain that Dot couldn’t keep his balance anymore. His tibia shook, under the weight of his own attempt on his life, and through the unease brought on by the rain. The red ants were just getting ready to head back down.
Until, finally, Dot slipped. Fell all the way down the entire tree: From the very top, falling past the higher branches, past the lower branches, and landing right into the water. There wasn’t even a splash. We didn’t expect that to happen, but hey. Guess he had more fortune in him than we thought.
While Dot’s body was now busy doing nothing but floating, motionless with his eyes closed, many of the scout ants from our colony left their burrows, crawling up to the surface to watch that ladybug float along that river’s dark, reflective waves under the night sky. Suddenly, our work was complete, and that was the fruit of it all.
But just because they had their eyes on him, didn’t mean they wanted to know anything more about him. In fact, the more everybuggy around him got to know him, the more reasons they saw to leave.
Well, except for me. I had actually noticed how Dot actually cracked his eyes open a bit, staring straight up into that light ball in the sky; normally, the longer you stared at it, the hotter it felt, but he just felt cold. I could tell. His compound eyes seemed to shiver, too, once he caught something, way off in the distance, flying around a little above him. It didn’t look like a bird, or a moth, or a giant steel canary, or anything; it was much smaller. It was a ladybug. Two ladybugs, and some smaller ladybugs following them along on their backs as they flew around; the smaller ones looked like larvae.
I saw a pain in Dot’s eyes in that moment that rivaled anything else I think he could’ve felt, probably more than even his underbelly wound hurt. His voice just wavered, into what almost sounded like a last breath.
“S… S– Sprout…”
Really, I dunno why the fuck he was whispering that ladybug’s name. What’d he think, he’d come down to save him? Whatever.
After his body passed me and the other scout ants by, then floating along the forest off into who-knows-where, each of us went back down to their own working burrows; we’d finished our reports on him by that point. Slider, Phido, and Torch didn’t even care to go back up to see where Dot was, but my curiosity had gotten the better of me; I had to know what to do next with that fuckin’ sap. So I quickly went over to the deepest burrow: The one where Kelvin was at, now darker than I had ever seen it before.
“…Kelvin?” I asked her.
She then turned over to me, soft in her behavior as she was.
“…What do we do now?” I continued, “Dot’s floating along the river, and… he’s still alive. He tried killing himself, but it didn’t work.”
Kelvin had kept herself in silence for around a solid minute then. I remember, I was too stressed to even wait.
“My queen, why… Why can’t we just kill him?” I remember begging her, “The amount of things those fuckin’ ladybugs’ve done… And we’re just gonna let him go along the river, l– like it’s nothing?” I asked her, my face almost filled with tears begging for a response.
Finally, turning towards me in the darkness of the burrow, she gave me an answer. Her voice sounded softer than I’d ever heard it before.
“Do you… know who Dot is?”
I… couldn’t answer her.
“Well, to understand why an insect ends, you need to understand how it begins,” she explained, “My scouts and I have observed Ruby and her organization for many, many days, from its inception to this very point. I was there when Ruby took down the dragonfly, when Elly gave us our miracle, when Dot first emerged from Ruby’s many eggs underground… and now, when he steers the grand ending of it all.”
I was a little confused, “Many eggs… Underground?”
“You see, Clover, when a ladybug mother gives birth, she gives birth to hundreds of offspring, and they all share the same experiences; they crawl away from the mother and never see her again, then they give themselves a name, eat their own aphids, form a pupa after seven days, and come out an adult, where they have the chance to build themselves into a creature worthy of respect,” she said sternly, then sighed, “…Dot wasn’t like that. All her other larvae went on with their lives, but on the day he was born, he clung very tightly to his mother. She was the one who gave him the name Dot, and he waited thirty whole days before he formed his pupa. Many further developmental problems formed from there as well; it was evident in how he handled his first kill.”
I sat there in disbelief. Thirty fuckin’ days…
“As you know, when I met with his mother to establish the peace deal, she brought her son along, and he acted like a fool. I had already sent my scouts long before then, to know how she was raising him; she only loved her son out of pity, or distraction. And we went along with our deal out of pity, too. He didn’t follow what she asked of her, and deviated from her wishes multiple times. For longer than he’s been alive, I made sure none of us in the burrow had his problems.”
“Yes, my queen, and you’ve been wise in doing that… But with the ladybugs, it’s– it’s wasted potential.”
“…It’s lower than that,” Kelvin softly explained to me, “The breaking of the peace deal was proof of Ruby’s failure in raising her son.”
“Heh, and she’d been going on about how important family principles are…”
“Even then,” Kelvin added, “the family principles she valued bore no real efficiency. Dot cared for neither of those values. He never finished the job when he stabbed himself, and he now floats along the river, without any responsibility left to uphold. No one in the forest cares enough to save him, or steer him anywhere better. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s a form of death worthless enough for him to deserve.”
She took the words right out of my proboscis, as always.
“Clover,” Kelvin then turned to me, “You’ve done well scouting for me. Once you’re done with Dot, I want you to commit all of what you’ve seen to collective memory, at once… then bring it back to me, and I’ll go over it.”
“Right away, my queen,” I said with a smile before going back up to the surface. Dot made a mess of his life, and his mother’s, I knew that much was true. But even though Kelvin mostly spoke quietly and without visible emotion most of the time, I knew my mother was proud, and that’s all that mattered.
It was at this moment, once the next day had gone by, when Dot opened his eyes. Not saying a word, or even moving a muscle while atop the water’s surface.
Yeah, we didn’t really know it ‘til later, but in reality, insects are too used to pain to practically even feel it when they stab themselves. Sure, Dot lost a lot of hemolymph, and he was writhing in pain, but even then, it’s not like the wound encompassed his entire body or anything. You really needed to make a mess out of a bug’s entire system in order to really kill ‘em, anyhow.
I mean, look at poor Jammy; despite his attempt on himself, he pulled through and carried on with his life, like a strong bug should. Dot can’t say the same; he seemed to want ownership of his life, so, by all means, he tried, taking it, but couldn’t even succeed at that.
The biggest threat to his life now was something we call hypoxia. See, bugs can normally only stay on the water for around, say, a few minutes before they can’t move their limbs anymore; the fat in their bodies won’t let them back up, otherwise. He did have a few days left, though; those must’ve been what was on his mind while he was pathetically floating along like that. He was looking out at the dark leaves, the bits of soil surrounding him, with the shadowy, reflective waves gently carrying him off. Those waves were freezing cold, too, barely preserving his life only out of spite: The only things left to surround him now…
…All until something else came out of the water.
It was a tiny bug. Just popped out from the surface. It landed on a lilypad that was right next to where that half-dead Dot was floating. It didn’t even notice him, or know what kind of bug he was, but Dot recognized the bug, as he was looking at it.
Even though this was their first time ever meeting, it felt like Dot knew everything about it. It was just Dot and that bug now; no one else surrounding them, and nothing else going on.
Looking to his right, then at his left, down to the water and up at some of the leaves, then at the bug in front of him, Dot realized he could speak. Now, with all the scents of Dot’s past returning to him, and all his remaining strength in the forefront of his conscience, he finally began talking.
“You’re… You’re a mayfly. You only live for less than a day.”
The mayfly, freshly born from out of the water, just looked around, observing its surroundings, feeling motion reach its limbs, and understanding the sense of touch as it felt the lilypad it was on.
“L– Look, before you go off to find your mate, I…”
Then, Dot interrupted himself. The mayfly really didn’t even notice Dot speaking. Dot noticed the mayfly not noticing, and it was there when he ultimately realized his current position. He raised his voice and redirected what he wanted to say, so entrenched in his desperation that he spoke much more angrily.
“…Oh, fuck, your advice. Fuck your silence. I envy you. I’ve envied you all my life. I’m a fuckin’ waste of space next to you.”
The mayfly kept looking around at the darkened night sky above, then observing some of the flowing leaves, watching its steps for the water beneath his tarsi. Dot just kept staring, observing the mayfly’s lack of care for Dot, and apparent lack of care for anything else.
“You just get to fuck, and then die. I fuckin’ hate you.”
The more Dot stared into that mayfly, the less he saw anything that was worth liking.
“I hope you die. I hope you fuckin’ die alone.”
Dot kept staring directly at that mayfly, not bothering to follow where it was looking.
“…”
He then took a breath, the ripples of the cold water’s surface hitting the sides of his body, keeping him afloat while he felt the presence of the dark trees around him affecting the surrounding scent. The mayfly readjusted its position again.
“…No. I don’t. I hate myself,” Dot continued speaking, tears immediately flowing down his eyes, but not outwardly crying. “I don’t deserve to be alive. Not anymore.”
The mayfly kept looking out at the dim, shaded trees, each of them slowly passing both of them by from the direction Dot was floating in.
“I know it, they know it, the whole forest knows it. Even Mom knows it. But I never fuckin’ wanted this. None of this.”
The trees blew with the wind that carried along where Dot flowed with the river.
“Everybuggy could see it. They all want me dead.”
Then, the mayfly looked directly into Dot’s face. Dot’s expression started to change as he thought of what else to tell it.
“…N– Nobuggy ever tells you how much they want you dead. They just show it. And they’ve all got the chance to kill you. Especially now… The water’s cold, and I’ve eaten so much. I only have a few days left… My life isn’t my own anymore.”
The mayfly then looked away. Dot wasn’t even looking at it anymore.
“My life isn’t my own anymore, I–… I’ve tried not to care. But I owe the forest something I can only offer in death. I lost everything, and there’s still more they want. That’s all there is now.”
The mayfly twitched its tarsi a little, rubbing its face. Dot just kept staring, now keeping silent.
“…”
The mayfly then looked back at Dot.
“No, I… I know this is death,” Dot kept talking. “We’re both gonna face it.”
The mayfly looked out again, into the trees.
“…I wonder if it really is any better than being alive,” Dot finished.
The mayfly’s eye then caught onto something. Dot looked up at it as it began staring off.
“I wanna know what you have to say.”
What Dot didn’t realize was that mayflies were born without mouths, or ears.
After that, the mayfly flew off; it found a mate. And after it found it, and reproduced with it, its seed fell in the water, and then it beautifully died. Right in front of Dot.
Just like that.
Finally, Dot was left completely alone: All alone to think. All alone to float. All alone to dream, or whatever else there was to do in his waterborne, flightless, helpless solitude. Nothing else to look at anymore but the night sky above, all the flowers surrounding him at his death, each worth far more in life than he was, and all the white bugs.
And that’s where his story ends.
Y’know, I still remember those days pretty well; you could sometimes see those glowing white bugs at night, way up in the sky, but they were just too out of reach for any of us. No one knew where those white bugs were off to in their flight, but we all wished we could join them. I still remember, when everybuggy in the forest was done with all their business for the day, they’d sometimes look up at those white bugs, each with an envious thought. Everyone had it: “Why do they get the privilege of flying so high and I don’t? What makes them so much better than me?” Everybuggy’s had that thought at one point in their lives, and everybuggy responded to that question differently.
For the ladybugs, their tall cottonwood tree became their sort of answer.
And it was nice while it lasted. That cottonwood used to be a tree where ladybugs of all kinds would convene together, holding all their ambitions, dreams, and all their promises to build for the good of their empire; to us, it’s more like a skybridge. At least, that’s how we’ve made use of it since we took out those damn pests.
Abdomen-holes of the forest really was a fitting label, after all. I mean, why did the bugs who caused that much trouble deserve a place that nice?
And usually, when an insect dies, they don’t die thinkin’ about how hard they worked, or how much harder they could’ve worked; they usually die alone. Nobuggy cares; their biggest contributions in the forest are just to fulfill their grand purpose, anyway, which is mostly just to feed the stomach of the bug that killed it. In Dot’s case, there wasn’t a bug in the forest that cared to go into the water for their food; not even the birds wanted him.
And I think that’s why I hate Dot so much. He could’ve fulfilled his purpose, but he just ate and ate, doing nothing but consuming, all for himself. He already proved to us that the day he’d die, it’d hold no benefit to anyone. What a fuckin’ waste; he didn’t contribute a thing to this forest but more stress for us, and this insane, mindless headache of a story about some nobody that I’m only ever recording for the sake of preserving our colony. I could’ve done something better with all this time.
But, why should I bum myself out over it? He’s the one still floating across the water. Not me.
One less thing to worry about, right?