The Gentle Brush of Wings

by David Niall Wilson

Jeffrey placed the specimen case reverently on his desk. He’d carried it by hand from downtown, walking as softly as possible and agonizing over the heat of the day. He’d been unwilling to risk the banging about that a taxi ride might have caused, trusting instead to his instincts. He took a seat in front of his desk, waiting, relishing the moment.

All around him in glass fronted cases, the multi-colored wings of his companions lined the walls. Stately monarchs, Tiger Swallow-tails, exotic, large-winged marvels from the orient and the jungles of Africa. All lovingly preserved. All dead. Not judgmental. Not difficult to live with at all.

He couldn’t help letting his mind drift back to Deborah. She’d fooled him all along. Gentle, sweet, caring, and evil to the core. Jeffrey hadn’t had any experience to fall back on. He knew there’d been glaring signs of infidelity, duplicity, even scorn. All he’d seen were her eyes, living the lie, drawing him into their depths and binding him helplessly in coils of unrequited love.

Deborah had been a graduate student, thrilled with his work. Thrilled to be included in his life. He’d shown her his collection, told her his secrets. Then he’d shown her the keys to his heart and home, and she’d taken both without hesitation. He had, in fact, insisted. Upon reflection, a small sanctuary might have been advisable against the pain, some tiny place deep inside his soul where he was still in charge, that she hadn’t touched, where he could draw the folds of his life in around himself and recover. Of course, he’d not had the foresight for that.

Now Jeffrey was alone, as he had started, only his winged friends for company. After the intimacy, even the pain, his solitude was no longer enough. There had always been a void within him, but now it echoed with memories that would not be silent. It called to him with images of heat, and companionship, of her eyes and the scent of her hair, of her skin pressed tightly against his own, late in the night, of her lips. There had always been a void, but now that void had become his reality, and the safe, protected place that had been his life was relegated to the dark corners of his mind, out of reach.

With trembling fingers Jeffrey undid the clasps at the top of the case, careful not to jostle it. He had waited too long for this moment, worked too hard.

He lifted the lid and peered breathlessly over the rim to the interior. It was beautiful. Light gold wings working gently, tiger-eye spots gleaming with luminous beauty, long, soft antennae rippling over the surface of the single wooden branch that rose from the center of the specimen case. He knew he should replace the lid, open the sliding panels on the sides and watch her safely, but he couldn’t bring himself to end the moment. It was too precious, too perfect. The specimen was everything he’d been led to believe and more.

He had not dared to hope, until that moment, that what he’d read in the advertisement was true. A new breed, one of unsurpassed beauty, available to the highest bidder. It had taken some work, some juggling of mortgages and bills. The only thing that had aided him was the sure and certain disbelief of his colleagues. No one had believed there was a new species to be catalogued, not enough to risk money or reputation on it, and so no one had taken the time to check. No one but Jeffrey.

Now she was his. He watched a few moments more, then placed the lid gently back into place and stripped away the rest of the protective packaging. The case was glass on all sides, the only opening the screened lid. Inside there was the single branch upon which the moth was perched, a simple bottle system for dispensing sugared water, fresh leaves that he would have to replace regularly. A moth was certainly not going to provide a long term relationship, but it wasn’t very demanding, either. Darkness, warmth, food, all well within his means to provide, and his new house mate would be fine.

Jeffrey placed the case on the corner of his desk in the special area he’d cleared earlier that day, then flipped open his notebook and seated himself comfortably. He would need to take proper notes and get down every detail, before he could begin to prepare the paper that would finally lend credibility to his name. He might not be a success with the ladies, but he knew his Lepidoptera. This could even allow him to secure tenure at the University. The specimen was beautiful, but there was more to his initial interest than simple adoration.

Several hours later, a siren wailed outside his window, now draped in shadow, and Jeffrey started. He shook his head and looked about himself in disbelief. Dark? How could it be dark? He glanced down at the notebook. He’d filled nearly a dozen pages with notes, wing-span, coloring, body segmentation and motion. There had been a brief, breathless span where it had fed, a moment that allowed him to believe the moth had made the transition cleanly, that it would survive captivity in his home.

Now he was exhausted, and it was resting quietly. He watched for a few moments, then, without knowing exactly why, he reached out and lifted the lid. The moth didn’t move, and he leaned forward, watching more closely. Its soft wings flapped lazily, but not in an attempt to take off, merely a rhythmic flutter.

He leaned back and watched, drifting, dreaming of the academic glory to come and of the moments of triumph. With the multi-colored designs of the moth’s wings floating before his eyes, he slipped away, his head slumping to the desk. The case lay open before him, its lid forgotten. The moth’s wings continued to move slowly and dreamily. It made no move to leave its perch.

* * *

Jeffrey woke slowly and raised his head from his arms long before his eyes became accustomed to the dim light. He experienced a long moment of confused semi-consciousness before the world coalesced and reformed.

The first thing his mind registered was that the case was still open, and that the moth was nowhere to be seen. The second thing he registered was a long, slender leg that rested very near his own. It was more than he was prepared to deal with, and he nearly lowered his head and returned to the darkness. If that leg had not moved, brushing soft skin against the coarse material of his pants, sending a shiver up his spine and drawing his eyes in a slow arc upward to a face that would imprint itself forever in his psyche, Jeffrey might have let it happen.

She was breathtaking. Her skin was a light, golden brown, and she wore no clothing. Her hair was silver, brushed with highlights of gold, and that gold seemed to dust her shoulders as he stared, aware that he was being rude and absolutely without the ability to stop. Her hair, and the surface of her skin, was iridescent. She stared at him, her eyes wide pools of innocence - without guile.

Moving slowly, Jeffrey sat up, unconsciously adjusting his rumpled jacket and smoothing his tie. She showed no sign of alarm, and he breathed a bit easier. Though he had no idea how she had gotten into his apartment with the doors locked and the windows latched, she didn’t appear to be threatening him. It had been a long time since he’d seen a woman naked, and never one so lovely.

“Who are you?” he breathed. “How did you get here?”

She only smiled at him. He saw her gaze stray to the case on his desk, but then she returned her attention to Jeffrey’s own captivated visage, her lips pouting slightly.

“Don’t you have a name?” He knew the question sounded inane, but he wasn’t recovered from the initial shock of her presence. He also knew that he should be calling security, or the police, that he should be worried, if not for his life, then at the very least for his possessions. He felt none of this. What he felt, besides an obvious curiosity, was hot. He reached up and loosened his tie again. Her gaze never wavered.

Apparently she found him as intriguing as he did her, though how that could be possible was beyond Jeffrey’s comprehension.

“Let me get you a shirt, something to cover up with.” He said.

He lurched clumsily to his feet, more focused with a definite purpose in mind. She rose behind him and followed as he made his way into his bedroom and drew open the door to his closet. He sensed her behind him, but he didn’t turn. He was afraid he’d be unable to hide the erection that was threatening to press its way through the front of his pants.

There was a whiff of musk, a slight shifting, like silk brushing against itself, (her hair?), and she pressed against him. Her arms circled his waist, and he dropped the hanger he’d pulled free of the closet in shock. And desire.

She still didn’t speak, but she brushed her lips against the back of his neck and he felt her hair trailing down over his shoulder. She was soft against him, frail and willowy, yet with a strength, an urgency he couldn’t comprehend.

“I . . .”

He tried to speak as he turned in her arms, but the instant he faced her, her lips covered his hungrily. She tasted slightly sweet, sugar water and subtle musk. Her eyes were closed, her hands ripping at the fabric of his shirt, urgently trying to remove it from his flesh, but clumsily. Without thought he guided her hands, slipped free of the constraining garment and pulled her tightly against him.

Things began to blur then, sensations blending one with another, sliding to reality and back to the edge. Not a word was spoken. Not a moment was wasted. Darkness swallowed them both, in warmth and passion. Jeffrey never knew when he slipped away completely. He knew nothing, in fact, until the morning sun, peeking through the half-closed blinds of his bedroom window, slanted across his eyes and dragged him, groggy and confused, to consciousness.

He was alone. There was no sign of her, nothing but a slight dusting of gold (was that his imagination?) on the bed sheets. He slid off the side of the bed and padded across the room to the doorway. No one.

He checked the front door. It was locked, as it had been the night before, as it must have been when she — he didn’t even know here name — had made her way into the apartment.

He turned his gaze to his desk. That was where he’d first seen her. He saw that the case was still open, and his heart sank. The last bits of memory clicked into place, and he remembered the loss of the moth. Guilt washed over him. He hadn’t even looked for it. After all he’d done, his dreams of fame, he hadn’t even tried to see where it might have gone.

Sickened, he made his way to the case and glanced inside with little hope. He stopped cold. It was there, golden wings flapping slowly, undisturbed. The moth looked as it had looked when he’d first opened the case. It might never have moved, for all the difference there was in its position. Her position.

“Her?” he thought out loud. Where had that come from? He hadn’t even begun to catalogue the vagaries of this new species. There was no way he was ready to make a call on the specimen’s gender.

He gently closed the lid on the case and returned to the matter truly at hand. The woman. Where had she gone? Who had she been? Most curious of all, what in the world would convince a beauty like that to come to Jeffrey, and could he get her to come again?

He picked up the phone and called work. He wasn’t ready to face a classroom full of students with yammering questions and minds more focused on the next can of beer than on Biology in any form that didn’t involve sexual intercourse. Jeffrey smiled, then, and was surprised to find that he could smile. The night’s adventure had brought him closer to those kids. He hadn’t realized just how out of touch he’d become. He also felt drained, but that was nothing a quick cup of coffee couldn’t cure - or a pot, if it came to that.

He would, he decided, spend the day catching up on the work he’d ignored the night before. He’d been granted a reprieve with his subject, and the near miss of losing the specimen lent an added urgency to his desire to get back to the work at hand. It would give him time to sort out his thoughts, as well.

He needed a plan of action. No name. No address or phone number. No idea where she’d come from, or where she’d gone, and yet he had to have her back. Deborah, in all the months/years of their relationship, had never had this profound an effect on him. He found himself glancing at the pillows on his bed, running his fingers over the sheets and bringing them up to his face to search for her scent, to trace the tiny film of gold dust that seemed to have sloughed from her as they’d made love. His memories were fuzzy, but it had not been sex. Making love had never seemed a more comfortable expression than when applied to - her.

He sat through the morning, the self-promised coffee at his side, and filled half a spiral notebook, noting coloration, subtleties of form and design. He cross-referenced with known species, speculated on inter-breeding and tossed each theory aside as it arose. Here a vagary in wing formation, there a problem with tint and pigment. The reported location of the specimen’s capture was factored in, eliminating some possibilities and illuminating others.

Hours passed him by, and he was startled, at last, by the lack of light as the sun’s ray’s faded and he was forced to blink, squint, and then turn on the light above his desk.

Throughout this, the moth sat quietly, as if posing. At some point he’d opened the case again, and he’d never closed it. There wasn’t much danger while he was present. If it were to rise into flight, he could merely follow, wait until it lit, and carry it gently back. He told himself all of this, and yet he sensed it was pointless. There was no agitation in the gentle motion of its wings, no desire to flee, or to be free.As he had the previous evening, Jeffrey worked until his head slid down to rest on his arms. His hand moved the pen one last time, a sliding, jagged line across the page as he passed into darkness. In its case, the moth sat still, wings flapping slowly.

She woke him with a kiss. He was groggy, uncertain, but she pulled him from his chair, drew him against her and held him tightly, insinuating her desire into his thoughts before he could clear them. He fought the sensations that were claiming him weakly. He wanted to talk to her, to ask who she was, where she had gone. He wanted to know her name.

He made love to her instead, and she shuddered in his arms, wrapping him in long, slender legs and sliding herself softly over him, her tongue long and fluttering, teasing his flesh, bringing him again and again to the edge and toppling him over. He was weakened from lack of food, from too-long hours in front of the spiral notebooks, from too many thoughts of her and too many questions.

She drew every ounce of what he had to offer from his weary frame, drew more, and then left him to darkness again. When he woke in the late hours of the morning, too late, even, to call his excuses in to work, he was alone. The case was open on his desk, the golden wings flapping slowly - hypnotically - over the small branch. It seemed, almost, as if he were being mocked. The task was laid out before him - his future. His mind was a fog of images and memories, desires and questions. He hadn’t gotten enough sleep, and he’d had nothing but coffee since the previous morning. He made his way to the kitchen, set the pot to brew, and returned to his desk.

When the coffee was ready, he poured his first cup, and he stared at it. On a whim, he grabbed the sugar and poured a generous helping into the cup. He normally drank his coffee black, but the memory of her kiss reminded him of sugar and it made her seem closer. Whoever she was. He took the coffee to his desk and settled in for another day. There were a few angles he’d meant to check, cross-referencing mixed strains, searching for discrepancies in patterns of yellows, browns and gold that might explain, might deny his theory of new-species. It took longer than usual, but the magic of the hunt drew him in slowly, and he lost himself in his work once more. Lunch was never a consideration.

The phone rang about 4:30 in the afternoon. It had been ringing for a while, six, seven rings? More? He fumbled the receiver from its cradle and mumbled an answer.

“Jeffrey?”

The voice at the other end of the line - Matt? Concerned, urgent.

“Yes?” he managed, knowing it was inadequate but hardly able to make himself care.

“My God, man, where are you?” Matt erupted. “I’ve been trying to call you for nearly three hours. I must’ve let it ring two dozen times before you picked up. You never called in. Your classes were in an uproar, not to mention Dean Rosenman…”

With a great effort, Jeffrey sorted his thoughts and answered. “Give my apologies to the Dean,” he said slowly. “I’m onto something big, Matt, something important. I’m afraid I’m a bit distracted.”

“Distracted? You miss school, don’t call in, don’t answer your phone, and you tell me you’re distracted?

“Yes. That’s what I’m telling you. I’ll explain when I’m finished, Matt, but tell them I won’t be in tomorrow morning, and maybe not this week. I’m not certain how long this will take me.”

There was a momentary silence, and then Matt replied. “I don’t know what’s up with you, Jeffy-boy, but I’ll tell you this. You don’t come in until next week, you’d better bring Rosenman a golden egg, the formula to transmute lead to gold, or your resignation.”

“Fine,” Jeffrey answered, dropping the receiver back onto its cradle and rubbing his eyes. He thought briefly about the conversation. What had Matt said about the phone, two dozen rings? No way. The question slipped from his thoughts and he drifted back toward the desk. Time had been lost. He turned to the kitchen doorway again, hurried in and started another pot of coffee.

His stomach ached, but he ignored it. He didn’t have much food in the house, anyway, and no way was he going out now; not so close to the time she’d been arriving. Not so close to proving his theories, though he suddenly wondered why it seemed so important that he do so. If she came to him, nothing else mattered. He filled his cup and returned to his desk.

There was so much to do, so many details to be catalogued. He sat, sipped the hot coffee and admired the play of her wings against the backdrop of leaves and twigs that lined the case. He absently drew out another spiral notebook, this one blank, and began to write.

He did not inscribe color patterns, or measure the wingspan, nor did he examine the thorax for markings, or the antennae for function or form. He wrote to her. She might come, she might not. Jeffrey sat and wrote. Years sloughed away. Deborah returned to haunt him, and yet the memory was bittersweet, faded and weak. Deborah had taught him the dark side of love; he was just beginning to suspect the light. If only he were granted the time. If only he were able to let her know how he felt.

If his suspicions proved true, then it would make no difference to her what he wrote. It would make no difference to anyone in a sane world, but it helped him to put things in perspective, warped as it might be, and it helped to calm his nerves. Nerves that coffee, lack of food, and her image were beginning to fray and tweak in a manner that was more disturbing than the possibility that she might read what he wrote.

“I feel your touch,” he inscribed, “though you are not here, not in any physical manner. I can sense your presence, your emotion.”

It was true. There was a heaviness hovering near him, and warmth. Though the windows were closed, he thought perhaps he felt a breeze, and that he had caught the scent of some wonderful flower, though his jumbled senses couldn’t put a name to the fragrance.

“You fill my thoughts. I want to know you, your name, your past and future. I want to know your name.”

It tugged at him, this intimacy that was denied. His phone rang again, but he just stared at it. After a few moments, he reached out purposefully and disconnected the line coming from the wall. The phone sat, silent and dead, and he returned to his journal. It drew him in and held him. It held him until darkness claimed him, and his last thought, his last scrawl before his weakened fingers lost control of the pen, was, “She hasn’t come.”

And yet when next he thought clearly it was to put a name to the scent that had pervaded his apartment, to the touch of that warmth that had hovered so near, to her breath on his neck. Sighing, he lifted his head from the desk and leaned back against her. She pillowed his head against the silky softness of her breasts and held him closely.

He tried to speak, but his throat was dry and scratchy, and he couldn’t quite get the words to come. It didn’t matter. She brought him a glass of water and he turned slightly to watch her move, to watch the sinuous grace of her long legs, the swing of slender, shapely hips. Her hair slid over her shoulders and down across her breasts like a cascade of spun gold.

She held the glass gently to his lips, and he sipped, and then gulped, draining the glass greedily. The water seethed like acid in the emptiness of his stomach. Hunger ate at his insides, but he had no time or concentration to spare it. She set the glass aside and poured herself into his lap, pressing against him, sliding her tongue between his now damp lips.This time she nearly carried him to the bed. Her eyes drank in the sight of him, as though she could never get enough, or she was etching every detail of him into her memory. This last frightened him. What if she was going to leave? What if she was taking a last, fond look, and would disappear, just as she had appeared, leaving him with nothing but the mystery of her existence, and his question.

“What is your name?”

He managed the words, pushing them feebly past the desire that was flooding him, prodding them between the pulsing beats of his heart as the blood rushed through his veins, slave to his passion as he was to hers.

She only shook her head.

“No, I must know . . . who - who are you?”

She slid over him like a wave of honey and his mind blanked. He couldn’t focus on the question, couldn’t be certain if she’d answered or not. Couldn’t remember, even, if it mattered. It was an obsession. Naming, categorizing, all of his life he’d been doing it. Collecting. His world was a museum of collected beauty and until she’d come, it had been as dry and frail as the wings of one of his mounted specimens, ready to crumble and fall to dust at the slightest provocation.

She took what he could offer, never protesting his weakened efforts, not complaining, but molding herself to his need, arranging their more subdued motions to the best advantage, urging him to completion and then beginning again with infinite patience. His mind disintegrated into darkness.

When he woke, of course, he was alone. He thought of coffee. He wondered what her name was. He couldn’t rise. He could almost smell the coffee, could definitely smell her, but he had no strength left at all, and what little he possessed, he would save for her. If she came again. Maybe she would tell him her name.

He dozed fitfully. About noon, as close as he could estimate it, there was an insistent knocking at his door. He didn’t answer. The pounding continued for quite some time, but then it ceased, and he was returned to his solitude, her scent, and his questions. They lured him once more into darkness, and he dreamed.

In his dreams, she came to him as he stood in a flowering field. Her hair danced around her in the breeze, and she wore a gown of gossamer that floated up like wings. She danced nearer, and he saw that her feet did not touch the ground, and the gown fluttered slowly, transformed until it was not a gown at all, and she hovered just out of reach, wings beating gently and wafting her scent to him.

When he woke, she was there, but he couldn’t even raise his head. Somewhere buried within the bliss that was the moment, a voice screamed at him. He ignored it. What was his was hers. He gave it freely. He felt her sliding down his torso, felt his body’s impossible response, shuddered, and nearly passed out from the effort. Only the urgency of her touch held him. Devoured him.

When the shadows claimed him at last, he felt light, like a third sheet on the bed, a feather tossed in a gentle breeze. He drifted off. Letters mixed themselves in patches before his dreaming eyes, forming for short moments into words, into her name, and then jumbling before he could grasp their pattern. They turned into a swarm of insects, drifting away, and he slipped free, let loose of himself, and followed. All he wanted was her name.

* * *

They battered down the door two days later. Matt dashed through, despite the warning of the Police Officer who’d come with him to wait. He took in the room, the soiled coffee cups on the desk, the open case, the journals askew on the writing surface, the pen still lying across the paper where Jeffrey’s dazed fingers had left it. But where was Jeffrey?

Matt stormed through the doorway to the bedroom and stopped. He didn’t speak, but the Officer heard the strangled gasp of his indrawn breath and pushed past him. Then he, too stopped.

The thin, wasted thing on the bed resembled a skeleton more than a man. Skin lay in dry folds, like paper, across his bones. His arms lay at his side, what had been arms, and his mouth seemed, even in hideous transformation, to be twisted into the memory of a smile. Both men backed from the room, gagging. No words were spoken. The officer went straight to the phone. He saw the cord lying impotently on the floor and re-connected it.

Matt reeled about the room in search of his sanity. He found himself at the desk, staring down into the case that lay open there.

The moth was beautiful. It had long, graceful wings and intricate patterns in varied shades of gold played across the wings. He turned to the journals. The last few pages were an incoherent scrawl of love notes and scribbled questions. Written to a woman.

Deborah? Had Jeffrey finally gone over the edge in his loss? It didn’t seem like him, but nothing was out of the question in the face of what he’d just witnessed.

Matt moved backward through the notes, and he found the coding, the listing and research. A new species. That was it, then. Somehow his friend had been caught up in this research, and something had triggered, whatever that was in the other room. It made Matt’s stomach turn to believe that Deborah might have caused it, thin, bitchy, claw-up-the-ladder Deborah who had used Jeffrey and tossed him aside as Matt watched helplessly. She had to be the one, but it made no sense.

Matt gathered the notes together. When the police were done with them, he decided, he’d finish his friend’s work. It was the least he could do.

A question from the journal kept recurring in his mind, and he found himself staring more closely at the moth. The proboscis was jutting almost obscenely from the graceful curve of its body. Female, then, and about to lay eggs. An interesting turn.

“What is your name?”

He found himself asking the question out loud, though until that second he hadn’t been aware he’d been thinking it.

“Pretty,” the officer said, glancing over Matt’s shoulder and into the case.

Matt nodded. His mind whirled, too much input all at once, too many things to be sorted out.

“Officer,” he said at last, “this is a rare moth, very delicate, and the work my friend - colleague - was involved in is very important. I know there will be an investigation, but, do you suppose I could take it - and possibly the notes - back to the university? It would be a shame if it died and his last days were spent in vain.”

“Not up to me,” the officer replied, “but once the Detectives get here, I’ll put in a word for you. Sure is a pretty thing.”

The man was talking slowly, as though he were searching for something, anything, to focus his thoughts and bring him back to the world he’d walked out of and into the bedroom at their back. Though neither of them faced the doorway, they felt the presence of the thing on the bed, the thing that only days earlier had walked, written in the journals on the desk, and talked to Matt on the phone. It seemed like forever as they waited in silence, watching the moth’s wings flap slowly, each lost in their own world.

* * *

Matt put the case on the corner of his desk, much as Jeffrey had left it on his own, and sat back heavily. It had taken a lot of effort, a lot of bullshitting and pleading, and a call to Dean Rosenman, who had pulled a couple of bureaucratic strings, but he had her. He also had a week off, in the face of the job ahead of him, and the loss of his friend. He planned on doing something to clear his mind, and the only thing that had ever been successful at this was work.

The notebooks were in surprisingly coherent order, up until near the end. He put aside the last notebook altogether and took up where Jeffrey had left off in his study. One thing was certain, with the egg sack now hanging from the side of one of the large leaves he’d added to the cage, the gender of the specimen was no longer in question.

They’ll be like Jeffrey’s Children, he thought suddenly. He shook his head with a nervous laugh and returned to the pile of books he’d brought home from the library. No time for nonsense.

He poured over the journals and the cross-references that Jeffrey had plotted but not yet pursued for the entire morning, skipping lunch, and it was nearly seven PM when he finally set his pencil aside and snapped the book closed. He thought about eating, but he was suddenly so drowsy. What was that smell? Perfume? He let his face rest on his hands - ‘just for a moment’ - and it was hours later when he woke.

He noticed her long, slender fingers first. They were on the desk before him, and he let his gaze swivel up quickly, taking her in slowly. He knew he must still be asleep, but at the same time the sensations of his creaking, stiffened limbs arranging themselves and the stiffness in his pants made two truths painfully obvious. He was not alone, and she was beautiful.

He moved slowly, aware that people didn’t break into your house to pass the time of day, but something kept him calm.

“Who are you?” he asked?

She arched one golden eyebrow, a motion that sent her hair cascading over her right shoulder and down over her breasts, naked breasts, he realized with shock.

“I . . .” she spoke very hesitantly, as if trying out her tongue for the first time, “I am Deborah.”

“What a lovely name,” he said stupidly, watching as she rose, advancing on him slowly with her arms open wide. As the musky scent of her enfolded him and the dust spread from her skin to his, he heard a long, slow scream inside. She teased him away from it, and he couldn’t catch the words, couldn’t remember why he’d want to. All he made out before she parted his lips with her tongue and she took his mind completely, was a single word, ‘Jeffrey,’ spiraling down and away, growing more silent with each spinning pass.

In the case on the desk, as if in answer, a small shiver raced across the surface of the egg-sack. Then all was still.

© 2007 David Niall Wilson