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We take comfort in the song of the swarm now. I try to, at least, as they prise our mouths wide to empty their pap, then pump us empty for nest and young, leaving us in damp excess to sleep or die to the soft wing hum of them.
Not so at the start, that wet May when they stole some hundreds of us. We were in the car, Nicky and the children and me, off to I don't recall where, when Nicky said fruit flies don't do this; and they don't, bunching round her like that, raising her. They don't do that.
We shouted and flailed as their tornado rolled in through open windows and we, blinded, swatted at static interference, children screaming as these tiniest of things flecked them, crawling into us, we scraping their dead from our eyes and they lifted us so.
To wake in this lost forest place.
A thing like that can numb you, as it did me, as it did most of us. Those of us at least who lived. Those who fought on were dropped from the swarm as we flew those miles, Nicky with them. I heard her scream, falling away, fading to tinnital hum, as I learned to give in and stop, begging the children to do the same, to learn this way of things. Not that I know them now, but catch them occasionally, being filled or emptied, eyes glazed, no longer mine.
I am factory now. Factory and a few limp thoughts. Left for tomorrow, when they'll fill then pump then fill then pump. Wasted. Useful. For now.
And above, their wings, sonorous, familiar, soothing me.
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