Dot actually woke up much earlier than the others that day, but only to be met with his spacious, dark, empty room in the tree: A room he knew all too well.
He and his mom shared the room in separate leaf beds, but not getting up; he just sat there, staring blankly at Ruby’s bed, then staring out at the hole that made his entrance out of those oak walls. He wasn’t tired; he was free to leave, or get up and do whatever he wanted, but he decided to just stay there, motionless and without a plan for his day. His thoughts seemed to drift, not to the lockdown that took place the day before, not even to how Ruby and the others must’ve been sleeping, but instead, to his larvahood memories.
All within his head, he kept on returning to the past: His first hesitant encounter with a mite larva when he was only a few days old, his first ever honeydew drink, and his first real day with his mother, when he had to carry himself well during his mother’s peace deal negotiations. In that early morning, he pondered on; his comfortable life was known well among the ladybugs, but never for a moment was it comfortable for him. After that repartee with his headbug mother, he knew that his life had to change; more than anything, that notion was at the forefront of his head. Now was the time to make moves the way his mother always wanted him to, to have those bugs finally view him with the respect he felt he deserved. But was he ready to take it on? To face exactly what he and his mom knew he had to do, and what it all entailed for his future?
He couldn’t say.
Of course he couldn’t; whether he was completely by himself, or surrounded at the honeydew bar with all the other saps, he was still as pedantic, pining, and immature as ever.
“She had the f… fuckin’ nerve to worry more about her s-son than the crow that nearly got us! And Kelvin’s got us in a fuckin’ chokehold! W-What the fuck is all this shit?!” whispered one drunk ladybug to another as he sipped his honeydew, lashing out at the whole forest; truthfully, it was less like a whisper and more like a yelp through hot air.
“I’m t-tellin’ ya, there’s a war goin’ on! It’s gonna be hemolymph-shed all the fuck-way ‘round the forest!” semi-whispered the other. In their helpless catastrophizing and lashing out, they looked around, hushed in quiet paranoia, “I even hear Ruby’s gonna ban aphid consumption soon, c-can ‘ya believe that shit?!”
“Shh– Shut up, her son’s right there! ‘Ya want him to murk you next?!” the first drunkard loudly hushed.
“Do you bugs always have to be like this when I’m trying to have my drink?” Dot mocked, seated in the honeydew bar’s isolated corner, where he aimed to spend his morning. Despite the waiters and some other morning bugs, Dot and around three or four other ladybugs, drunk on honeydew, were the only ones talkin’ in that tiny little building. It looked pretty worn down after the celebration the night before.
Adding to Dot’s discomfort, those drunkies each had some aphids on their shoulder: One with two, another with three. Each one there sat by those ladybugs all quietly. Those ladybugs were clearly foodwhoring, and their mating pheromones stunk up the place, much to Dot’s dignified-looking disgust. They immediately got hostile in their responses to Dot as well.
“W-What, is your mom gonna report us for scoring more aphids than you? Huh?” drunkenly jeered the other ladybug, feeling brave. “Lil mama’s boy always gotta kill the fun j-just ‘cuz we got m-… more than he does all the time…?”
“You bugs’re disgusting, I bet those aphids aren’t even mature yet.”
“F-Fuck off, mama’s boy,” the other one shouted, “The fuck do you know about what we do?!”
Dot hesitated before making a comeback, internally questioning whether their demeanor was even worth insulting. He eventually gave in.
“N-Nah, I know plenty. They teach me well enough in the higher branches, s-somewhere you’ll never be,” he confidently stuttered.
“Y-Yeah, ‘cause I wasn’t born into that shit, not like you were! Wh-Whatever I got, I actually earned. So fuckin spoiled, wh… what do you even do?!” he wobblingly shouted.
Those words hit Dot a little deeper than he liked to admit; comfortable as he seemed on the outside, the expression on his face practically gave away that he was getting tired of the same routine. It was always ‘stay out of the business, go out in nature, pollinate a flower when he could, go back to the cottonwood for his favorite drinks, and quietly yearn for something better while the more fulfilled, contented saps had their way with him and the nepotism label.’
Despite such a harmless, pointless lifestyle, you had to be careful around Dot’s temper, and these drunkards hit him right where it hurt.
“Well, I don’t go keeping aphids around just to use ‘em as death traps, alright?!” yelled Dot, emotionally charged. “You foodwhorers are all the SAME!”
Every insect in the room stopped to stare at Dot’s outburst, even the waiters. He quickly lowered his tone to a tearful, whimpering surrender,
“…Yeah, I’m out.”
In an embarrassed fit, he scampered over to the outdoor area of the bar, his head down, while the other ladybugs there hesitantly hurled their garbled remarks: Those jeers being those unnoticeable kinds, remembered by no one else but the recipient, maybe for days on end. The drunkards cuddled their aphid partners close by in an attempt to make him jealous; Dot just shielded his eyes from those saps as he crawled out of the bar.
With a long sigh, he scampered over to the edge of a branch, as far away from the bar as he could get, sitting there in contemplation. He didn’t know what to do with himself, but given his low spirits, he dreaded the thought of climbing up to the gathering den with his mom and her keyholders, where they were having their business talks (but we’ve already gone over that conversation.)
Looking out at the bar again, he had some more concerning thoughts about him and those drunkards. Thoughts were pretty much the only thing he ever concerned himself with, over the long minutes of his vapid life, only briefly interrupted by the rushing scampers of some other bugs overhead. What did Dot do in response? Have more thoughts.
Those overhead steps sounded like they were on their way to the bar, as that was normally the path they went in, but they were well outside his line of sight; he had no way of knowing who those scampers belonged to without trying to fly back up there (the last thing he wanted to do.) So, he just stayed put, sulking in sadness again, hoping that those scampers were our fire ants, coming to take those drunkards away. It could’ve been that, or it could’ve been more bugs coming in to talk about how poorly Dot tended to his responsibilities. All he could do was think about it.
And all I could think about was how much of a sap he was for not having any fuckin’ agency in his life.
If only it were nighttime, he thought to himself, Then I could see the fireflies. At least those fireflies were always there to cheer him up. Whenever the large light ball in the sky went down, the fireflies would show up and begin their slow, natural “J” dance. It was the males’ signature dance for finding mates, in the hopes that any female takers would follow their path with their own light. Regardless whether or not those lady fireflies showed up, Dot would look on at those lights with a smile.
Or try to. Dot was a fan of the bright lights, but at this point, even if it were nighttime and they were shining in front of him, they wouldn’t do anything to help him feel better. He seemed to want some kind of light of his own.
“…Are you okay?”
Dot turned over to an unfamiliar voice, which came from a moth. She looked a little snowy and fuzzy, quite a lot taller than he was, and she seemed to move with a gentle sense of care in pretty much everything she did. The more he noticed her stare, the more noticeably he changed his tone.
“Just some… abdomen-holes,” he muttered with disdain, then stopped himself. “…Sorry for my language.”
“Oh, no worries, I… I just saw you looking all droopy. I wanted to see what was goin’ on. Sorry if I’m bothering you.”
“…No, it’s okay,” he warmly told her. “I don’t see how you could bother me… unless ‘ya wanted to…”
She lightly laughed. Suddenly, they both found themselves past the threshold for ignoring each other. She looked him up and down, and found many qualities about him she couldn’t ignore, but out of everything that Dot couldn’t ignore about her, there was her scent. It was deeply subtle, but Dot could catch it on his antennae, and he was hooked. They figured they’d share some conversation; after a while, Dot spoke.
“I… I, uh–” he stuttered like an idiot. She just smiled.
“I’m… Dot,” he finally said, his eyes locked on hers. “How did you… know I was here? I haven’t seen you before.”
“Oh, m-my name’s Ivy,” she replied. “I saw you outside as I was flying around my willow tree, just over there,” Ivy pointed to the isolated tree off in the distance, and his eyes followed. “I saw you from there. You looked kinda sad.”
He noticed the willow tree’s drooping, damp leaves; the slightly paler, more refined greens; and the much more slender arrays of its branches, compared to the cottonwood. It looked quite empty, with hardly as many bugs in there as the cottonwood had.
“It’s a… very pretty-looking tree,” he told her, both of them now holding onto a mix of feelings.
“Is it?” she asked. “I’ve just known it as my home.”
“…That makes enough sense to me,” he slipped, noticing what he implied only a moment after.
Ivy smiled at his remark, and Dot cracked a little smile himself. Dot hadn’t seen that tree before, but he knew he was gonna take more notice of it from then on.
He clearly couldn’t believe this interaction was happening, and I couldn’t either when I first reported it. He seemed afraid enough of subjecting her to his weakness had they gotten more used to each other; if you ask me, he should’ve been more afraid.
Overcome with shyness, he initially tried to find a natural out from the conversation. Major parts of him felt really tempted to break away.
“Well,” he introduced, “I… should probably head back to the cafe. I think I’ve still got a drink waiting for me there.”
Yeah, the ladybugs called it a cafe instead of a bar… Typical.
“Oh, nice,” she said, “I could go for some nectar myself, would you… care if I joined you?” she politely asked him.
And suddenly, there went his temptations.
“Y-Yeah, absolutely,” he assured her. Shortly after, they lifted themselves off the ground and flew over there together.
“You okay?” Ivy asked.
“I’m n-not… the best at flying,” he said, and he’s definitely right about that. There was no way Dot could’ve flown straight with someone like her right next to him, so he sometimes paused mid-sentence to readjust himself. “I-I’ve got it though, don’t worry,” he said, despite his body still trembling the higher off the ground it went.
“There are some, uh… drunkies in there sometimes, I should… warn ‘ya.”
“Well, I’m sure it’ll be alright,” Ivy laughed. “I’m kind of an outsider when it comes to the ladybugs, though. I just see bees and butterflies there, early in the day.”
“Yeah, the ladybugs mainly come out at night. Some of them drink more honeydew than they should… It’s… It’s weird, I saw two of them, and they were drunk off their abdomens… this early in the day, could you believe it?”
“That’s strange, I usually go during the day, and I’ve never seen anything like that.”
He was pretty impressed by how she was smart enough to follow along in how they talked; glad she wasn’t like a fly, he thought.
“I usually go at night,” Dot continued, “D-Despite the drunkies there, the ladybugs–” he then tilted mid-flight and nearly lost his mid-air balance. Ivy quickly intercepted it, holding his whole body in her tibiae as she flew him there. His speech got much shakier, “…The– The normal ones are… pretty alright, once you know them long enough,” he gently continued.
“I guess I’ll… have to change the times I go, then,” she shyly slipped, the remark clearly making his heart race a slight more than it already was.
He paused in his talking to digest the scenery of the moment; the dew-soaked leaves and rosy pine-scent around them formed a warm, breathtaking feeling for him, made even warmer by being held in the tibiae of the sweetest bug he’d known. They flew along the branches in a shared, warm silence. For him, the feeling was gorgeous; it did a lot to cheer him up, but what would happen at the bar? The closer they got to its steps, the less Dot looked forward to knowing.
They both stepped inside, and to his surprise (and luck), it was completely empty, save for the grasshopper waiters workin’ the oak tables, and the bar’s signature pine scent Dot knew and loved. Ivy looked back at Dot with a curious smile.
“Dot, what happened to those drunkies?”
“I don’t know, I… I swear I was just talkin’ with ‘em. Guess they left?” he said, with genuine surprise. He looked back at her smile, which made him smile too. “C’mon, let’s sit down,” she said with eagerness.
The two walked over to the isolated corner where he was sittin’ earlier and took their tree-stump seats, both of them trying their absolute best to ignore how excited they were to get to know each other. They failed spectacularly; they spent the whole day together, yammerin’ about nothing.
“So, what do ladybugs normally do in their day-to-day?” she asked him.
“Ehh, it… really depends on their role,” he responded.
“How so?”
“Well, some of us have jobs in foraging and hunting, others make deals with other bugs. It really depends on what Ruby wants each of us to do.”
“Ruby? Who’s Ruby?” she asked curiously.
Dot was taken aback; Ivy really was an outsider to his whole thing.
“Oh, she basically runs this entire business. She’s the best leader in the forest; everybuggy in the cottonwood looks up to her,” he answered with some reverence.
“Wow… have you ever met her?” she asked.
Dot noticeably paused.
“She… uh…”
“Well…?” she continued, smiling.
“…She’s my mom.”
“Oh!” Ivy’s tone changed, hard to tell if it was for better or worse. “…Well, what do you do in the… cottonwood?” she sensitively asked him.
Picking up on her tone change, he responded, feeling disappointed in himself, “…Whatever she tells me, just like everybuggy else.”
She watched him with caring eyes hearing his answer, knowing he wasn’t too proud, not realizing that nobuggy else (nor myself) was proud of him either.
“It’s alright, Dotty, no need to get all embarrassed,” she warmly told him.
Dotty? Nobuggy’s ever called him something like that before. He didn’t know what to say, so he just kept talking about his mother.
“…We all pretty much work for her, I just wanna make sure I’m good enough to be next in line,” he told her nervously. “It’s– It’s a long-stretching business we run. In the past, we’d all do our jobs separately. It’s kind of a long story… You… You wanna hear about it?”
“Yes, of course,” she answered, adjusting her seat to try investing herself more in his anecdotes. Dot felt better, ready to tell his story, just as a grasshopper recognized him and passed him a glass of honeydew. He took a confident swig of it, put it down on the oak table, and began.
“So, the business started like this,” he explained. “There’s just a clump of ladybugs, all scrambling to find food. It was raining, and there was this dragonfly who was eating everything we could find, he– he was a real abdomen-hole,” he laughed, “This was around… way back when, I think it was two, three-hundred days ago… Just after the winter diapause, I think– I–I think that’s when it was. Ruby, my mother, was part of that first ladybug clump, and I– I wasn’t born yet, of course…”
Dot was pretty all over the place while telling his whole spiel. He was like that a lot when he spoke, and for that reason, nobuggy else in the upper or lower branches ever bothered to really listen to Dot when he spoke… Back in the glory days when he was quieter.
But now, socially, he was starting to break out of his pupa; Ivy somehow never broke her concentration on him for even a second.
“…Anyhow, they all decided they had enough of that fuckin’ dragonfly,” Dot kept explaining, with a fond smile to Ivy, “So Ruby pieced together a solution: To start using pheromones to organize each of our responsibilities, and communicate together as a team. It was on this very cottonwood where it all began.”
“Wow…” she whispered.
“Yeah, it’s… it’s pretty incredible how Mom was able to do all that.”
“What happened with that dragonfly?”
“Ah, that’s the best part!” he smiled even more, “After forming the group, Ruby brought it down to the bottom of the tree and drowned that fuckin’ thing in the river!”
“Wh– By herself?!”
“No…!” Dot laughed, and she did too. He then clarified, “…Nah, really it was the group; there’s no way anybuggy could take on a dragonfly on their own. It was thanks to Ruby’s idea, though, that we were able to kill that thing. It could’ve only been done by a team, a team she assembled all herself.”
“That’s… so cool…”
“Mhm. She’s been running our operations as a team ever since.”
Talking about the history of the enterprise began to calm Dot’s worries quite a lot. He felt like he was doing something meaningful going over it with his new moth friend, and given how receptive she’d been toward everything about him thus far, he started feeling much more secure.
“And here I am, talking to the boss’s son!” she said in admiration.
…And back into insecurity he went, with that comment.
“…Yeah,” he dejectedly said. “Just gotta… do my part like her, one of these days.”
“Well, what kind of business is it? Maybe I could help?” she suggested.
Dot took another sip of his honeydew before he kept talking, “It’s… It’s kind of a killin’ business, I guess,” he casually said.
“Oh,” she answered, her tone shifting with a tinge of concern. “Why… killing?”
Fuck.
His nerves suddenly caught up to his confidence fast, “Well, w-we don’t go killing around just for the fun of it,” he carefully clarified, “We eat to survive. All the bugs in the forest do it, I mean, look at the ants, or some of the beetles, they bite the heads off some bugs…”
“Well…” she trailed, Dot scared for his life, “…That all sounds pretty brutal, Dotty…”
“I– I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t take part in the killings myself, or any of that carnivore stuff. Makes me feel really weird. I just like the drinks, like, uh… honeydew.” he awkwardly explained. After a pause, she looked back at him.
“…That makes sense,” Ivy nodded with gentle understanding. “I’m the same when it comes to nectar, I– I can’t get enough of that stuff… I really love the drinks here, too,” she warmly said, readjusting herself to feel more comfortable around him, knowing they found something in common here.
Phew.
“There was a… big thing about aphids not too long ago,” he continued, looking around at the dewy, leaf-padded walls, “Aphids are our signature meal, and that pisses off the ants… a lot,” he laughed, getting back into that confident spell from before.
“Really?”
“Yeah, especially their queen, Kelvin,” he smiled. He was really just reciting information as it came up in his head; he wasn’t really in the present moment.
“Oh yeah,” Ivy remembers. “I know Kelvin, she ain’t so bad.”
“Really?” he asked, not really paying attention: Just eager to get to his story. “Well, back in the day, even before we had the keyholders we got now, before I was born, we’d always take whatever aphids weren’t under Kelvin’s protection. Those were the glory days, Mom says… Turns out, the ants didn’t play around when it came to protectin’ ‘em, though. Just last diapause, they upped their defenses and some freak accident took place. We– We nearly starved to death,” he laughed.
“Oh, wow,” Ivy said, taking in what he had to say, and how he said it.
“Yeah, so–”
But just as Dot was about to continue, the door suddenly opened, and a ladybug made her way across the room. Her face looked deeply angry as she scampered over to the center of the place; she then stopped to look around at the walls, not necessarily looking in Dot and Ivy’s direction. Dot knew that face without mistake; it was Libelle. She then left the building, lookin’ all angry, all without sayin’ a word to anybuggy.
“…What was all that about?” Ivy asked.
“No idea, but I know who that was,” Dot answered with uncertainty in his voice. He then remembered the drunk ladybug he was speaking with moments before, and he then got much more relaxed, and even sounded a little excited, “And I’ll tell ‘ya, I think that was somethin’ pretty good…”
Later on, I recorded what could only be described as a loud slamming sound.
“You ready to fuckin’ die, HUH?! You wanna get us all killed?! You piece of SHIT?!” Libelle shouted while slamming another ladybug’s face against an oak table with full force. That ladybug’s name was Cedar, and he was actually the drunkard Dot was talking to earlier that day.
“I– I swear, I–” Cedar pleaded, his face leaking a little hemolymph on the table.
“You swear what, you didn’t fuckin’ mean it?! I saw you in the cafe last night, don’t you fuckin’ LIE to us!” she kept shouting while ramming his face on the oak.
“I s-swear, I didn’t m-m-mean–”
“Yeah, yeah, you wanna tell that to Ruby, or to Kelvin?!” Libelle shouted at him, continuing those beatings. Ruby, Libelle, and Cedar were the only bugs in the gathering den where this was going down; Sprout was out foraging, Checker was scouting on top of that tree as always, and I already reported what Lucky and Berry were doing that day.
“I… I–” Cedar kept pleading.
“And you listen good, you fuckin’ shill,” she shouted, holding his face up from the table by the antennae. “I don’t give a fuck what else you do, you don’t talk to Dot that way.”
“Wh-What are you talkin’ about, I–”
Slam!
“You DON’T fuckin’ talk to Dot that way.”
“I– I– I’m sorry–!” he was sobbing, blubbering to the point where he couldn’t take it.
"…That’s enough. Stand him up," a bored, difficult-looking Ruby told Libelle after having watched them from across the room. Libelle angrily pushed Cedar’s head out of her tarsal claw; he coughed more hemolymph, sitting himself up straight as Ruby crawled over to him. It wasn’t hard to tell from Ruby’s walk; this first instance of foodwhoring actually messed her up to watch a little bit.
See, the thing is, back in the day, Ruby had no problem killing and eating a plethora of other insects from smaller colonies, but at the same time, no matter what, she never let anything happen to her own ladybugs. Not for a second.
And that’s something we actually respected. See, one of the most strict rules we could’ve ever enforced was the killing of your own kind; if a bee or some other eusocial insect killed one of its own, for any reason, then it could kill anybuggy else for no reason at all. That was one of the rules we made sure the forest had to go by, without negotiation. So, to comply, Ruby fiercely protected her ladybugs with all she had, regardless of what the reason was.
But sometimes, she’d take things a bit too far.
She’d always make excuses for ‘em in front of the rest of the forest when they fucked up; if they’re unfortunate, they’ll walk away with a demotion. Oh, a ladybug associate overpollinated the chrysanthemums? Fizzled out their population? That’s cute; go see Ruby, she’ll make ‘em her next handler.
Ruby loved her ladybugs so much, she had to cringe when she saw Cedar’s disfigured face, after Libelle fucked him up. But I guess, Ruby knew it well enough herself; something this bad couldn’t be given the let-bygones-be-bygones treatment anymore.
“I– I just–”
“Cedar, let me stop you right there. You look pretty fuckin’ terrible, so here’s what we’re gonna do. You made your decision to do what you did, right? You chose to go against us. It’s all a fuckin’ matter of choice with bugs like you.”
Cedar nodded, not really listening but just desperate to get the fuck out of there.
“So I’m gonna let you choose between two outcomes,” she continued, “Either Libelle keeps this going, or we send you to the ants, and they can finish you off themselves. Pick whatever one you want.”
Cedar, taking in all the unease let out in that room, looked over at Libelle; his expression was more mortified than I think I had ever seen before from a bug on the brink of crossing over, and I’ve seen plenty of those in my days. He paid close attention to Libelle’s tarsal claws, trembling, staring at the residue of his own hemolymph left on them.
“I… I want the ants. I want the ants to take me. I choose the ants…”
Once he made his choice, Ruby paused for a second, then looked over at Libelle, then at a little piece of paper on the oak table. Staring at it for what felt like an eternity, Ruby’s look turned from contemplative, to concerned, to almost completely sunken. She looked at Libelle again, donning a face that showewd one thought, and one thought only:
You’re… You’re just gonna let him get what he wants?
She was almost moments away from outwardly saying that herself. She figured he needed worse than that.
Ruby then looked into Cedar’s face again, and spoke in that same disappointed tone, but with a noticeable change in her feelings, “…Well, Cedar, you did the opposite of what we wanted. So y’know what we’re gonna do? We’re giving you the opposite of what you want.”
“N-No–”
“That’s how it goes,” Ruby told him frankly as he trembled more, moments away from falling and hitting himself on the table, holding his beating wounds tightly.
“Wh– What, so my life’s just over now?!”
“Shut up, you threw it away the moment you fucked with us,” Libelle answered with a hushed voice.
“I d-didn’t even eat that f-f-fuckin’ aphid–”
“What the FUCK are you talking about?!” Libelle shrieked, closer into his face. This moment was much more Libelle’s moment than Ruby’s. “What, you think Kelvin’s gonna give a shit?! You still fucked up, I don’t care how you wanna fuckin’ justify it!”
“Libelle, I… I fucked up, but…” Cedar said, his body absolutely trembling, but his words ready to be his only defense, in whatever weakness he had left to use up, “You’re just… p-praising yourselves by… killing me… Y– You don’t care about Kelvin, y-you’re just letting her c-c-crawl all over you… You want–”
By this point, Libelle was already so pissed off listening to him, whether or not he talked made no difference. Ruby, worried enough to pass as disturbed, had already tuned out.
“You w– wanna take my life?” Cedar weakly continued, but with his trademark deviance, “Wh– While it’s still trying to be… worth something…?”
“…Alright, you convinced us, your life’s worth something now. Want an aphid egg for it?” Libelle joked in his face, her quick wit even forcing an unwelcome laugh out of Ruby.
But after all those rough beatings, Cedar didn’t have the strength to snap back; even still, their headbug kept staring at Cedar’s face throughout that whole exchange, knowing his look well enough. Her face turned similarly difficult. But really, what could she do? Cedar was a jealous fuck. If Libelle knew anything, it’s that there’s no fixing jealousy, except only with a beating.
“…I can’t sympathize with you, Cedar,” Ruby calmly concluded, “I can’t do anything to fix what you started. You had your luxury of choice, and this was what you did with it.”
After saying that to him, she geared up to fly out of the den and let Libelle finish the job.
“Real fuckin’ shame…”
Libelle looked over to her headbug, noticing her face.
“Wait, Miss Ruby,” she interrupted, Ruby looking over to her. “How… How do you want me to do this?”
After a long, stressful pause, the headbug answered, “…Break his limbs, but k– keep him alive. Use a tool if you want. Then… Bury him underground and let him stay down there, I don’t know. If Checker or an associate asks, tell ‘em you’re planting a seed; just don’t put the tree on its first lockup. Please.”
Ruby then left the den, exhausted, and suddenly it was just Cedar and Libelle. She promptly tore away a splinter from under the gathering den’s leaf-covered oak walls and slowly approached him with it. Knowing this was the end of their drama as handlers together, Libelle wanted to make this moment as satisfying for her as she could.
"No, n-no, Libelle, d-don’t do thi–"
"Shut the fuck up, I know why you picked the ants; you didn’t want a beating that fucked you up. Well, you fucked us up; you fucked me up. You were jealous of me, the moment I set up the cafe, right? You knew everybuggy loved me more as a handler for it, you knew you wouldn’t amount to shit, and guess what? You finally fuckin’ proved yourself right."
With those words (and those beatings) hurting him bad, Cedar began to break down crying. "N– N-No, Libelle, no– P-Please–”
Libelle began holding the top of his head gently with her claw, almost patting it a little, “You wanted Ruby’s respect, you wanted the cottonwood’s approval, yeah?”
“P-PLEASE–!” he shook with his life.
“Well, they’ll definitely approve of this.”
She quickly pulled his head by the antennae, dragged it underneath the table, cornering him in there, and beat his limbs in with that splinter until he couldn’t move them anymore; he was in so much fuckin’ pain, his body couldn’t even leak it out. Horrified by the fact that he could no longer crawl, plus his body wincing from those deep splinter stabs, his choked, hemolymph-curdling screams were audible by pretty much anybuggy near the upper branches; I still remember, even Ruby was shuddering a little inside, hearing one of her own ladybugs like this while on her way out.
“So anyway, Mom made that peace deal with the ants,” Dot continued his story, in a much more confident mood than before. “I was there for that, and it went really well.”
“Ah…” Ivy said, listening intently, being as supportive as she could, “It’s cool how you got involved like that, Dotty.”
“…Y-Yeah,” he said, feeling warmer, “My mom tells me it was ‘cause of me that we got out of that starvation period.”
She laughed, “Well, that’s a really noble thing to do,” Ivy cheered, then thought for a moment, “Honestly… you bugs have such an interesting history. I think it’s so nice that you’re really… passionate about your morals, y’know? It lets me know that the ladybugs are… good bugs,” she says with an adorable confidence. “It’s really nice knowing a ladybug like you.”
Dot dearly hung on to every careful word Ivy said to him, feeling his entire mood shift with just the sound of her voice.
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah. Absolutely.”
Dot couldn’t tell if, maybe, they both knew what the other was thinking in this moment together, but as much as he’d like to dream, he couldn’t be sure. All Ivy could tell was that this moment meant a lot to him. He felt warm in her presence, and she wasn’t sure what to do knowing that, but she admired the morals that these ladybugs upheld (or at least, seemed to), so she didn’t see a problem getting to know him.
After around half a minute, she broke the intimate mood a little with a laugh, “…I’m thirsty, when’s the grasshopper gettin’ here?”
“Have you… tried honeydew?” he shyly asked her, looking down at his filled glass.
Her eyes slowly followed his line of sight, then she slowly asked him a question in a lower voice.
“Do you… want me to… drink from your glass?”
Whatever other sounds, events, or horrific beatings were surrounding their environment, they slowly drowned out from that corner of the bar; the silence was all theirs from that point on.
Dot didn’t say a word in answering her question, but judging by the gentle and polite way he held his head down, it was clear to her that his answer was yes.
He didn’t know what feeling had come over him, but she knew what it meant. Ivy’s antennae twitched a little; she held his glass of honeydew with both of her tarsi, holding it up to her proboscis, and took a calm sip of it, slowly drinking the entire thing in front of him. He watched her down that drink, in the gentle way she did, and he suddenly looked much more nervous than he did before. Once she was done, she put the glass on the table and sat in silence for a soft amount of time, sighing from the taste.
“That was… really good,” she softly said, “I gotta try more honeydew sometime.”
“…Glad you liked it,” he whimpered, sounding a little faint.
Ivy just smiled, probably wondering what the big deal of their exchange was.
The two of them finished their time at the bar and sat together where Dot was previously sitting alone, and both of them felt really satisfied.
“I had such a great time,” Ivy said with a contented smile. “I’m glad I got to know you more, Dotty.”
“Do you… always gotta call me that?” Dot joked with an embarrassed, light smile on his face, despite his racing heart.
“Well, I could call you something else, like… Red Boy!”
He paused immediately. What kind of name was that?
“…Actually, I like Dotty better, let’s just stick with that,” he smiled, making her laugh. They both looked on as the sky grew a tad darker. She then asked him,
“…What do you say we fly to the willow tree together?”
“I– I’d like that,” he told her, trying his best to sound soft and cute, like her.
She just smiled and softly told him, “Alright… See you there…”
Standing, she turned her back to Dot and opened up her wings, slowly, almost giving him a full view of them. In seconds, she gracefully flew high up into that blue sky, blocking the large ball of light in the sky, almost shielding Dot perfectly with the shadow she cast.
Dot looked up at her with pure wonder and amazement; this was among the most beautiful sights he had ever seen in his life. Nothing could disrupt what he felt, except maybe a splinter, covered with hemolymph, that also came from the sky. It landed right in front of his tarsi.
“You comin’ with?” she shouted a little from above.
Before gearing himself up to follow her, he noticed the scent of the leaf he was standing on; it was her pheromones.
Dot gently hesitated before he could really respond, taken aback by the beauty of their experience together, combined with her unforgettable scent, and even her raised voice. Recognizing his newfound ambition to be a better bug for the tree, he picked up the splinter without a second thought, shook off some of the hemolymph on it, and took it with him. He looked up at her again, thinking deep in his heart that this was a bug he had to protect in case anything happened to her.
But one problem: he took too fuckin’ long to go back up. So in a playful fly back down, Ivy grabbed him by the tarsi and told him, “C’mon, Red Boy, I’ll teach you how to fly!”