â€‹Maxson was an old ladybird. He was also alone, sitting his wide, red-shelled frame on his ramshackle, chestnut chair, four legs made from brittle twigs keeping it upright. In his uppermost, grasping pair of tarsal claws was a book he had read over at least a hundred times before. It was only sweet, never-aging nostalgia that kept him returning to re-witness the tale woven from the minuscule symbols written on every page.

   The time of the long autumn had come once more upon the small town in which he lived, and a small fire was burning in his fireplace, lighting the otherwise dark room with its red-orange tint. The hut of wood and mud he lived in, constructed by none other than himself in his younger years shortly after emerging from his pupa, was spacious and comfy, and built to house a family in appearance.

   And it was supposed to do just that. His wife, another ladybird by the name of Etna, had passed a great many seasons before; taken from him by a wasting disease before either could have larvae of their own. Solely out of heartbreak, Maxson never remarried, and spent the rest of his life so far alone, aside from the many friends he conversed with often who lived around town.

   The beetle could feel himself slowly nodding off, and felt as his focus on the story in front of him dwindled until his compound eyes began to lose sight. Maxson let out his first snore moments after his grip slipped on the book, and it dropped silently into his lap. Save for the crackling of the fire, everything went still as his mind drifted along the river of sleep and dreams, until...

   Bang-bang-bang!

   The brief series of loud noises woke Maxson up with a start. When his senses tuned in he realized it was the sound of someone rapping at his door. Leaving his chair with a grunt, accidentally knocking his book from his lap to the ground in the process, the aged ladybird made his way to the entranceway of his house with his four main feet quickly scuttling along the dirt ground. Upon reaching it, Maxson opened it up with a hollow creaking sound and peered his black head out into the dark outside.

   The only thing that greeted his eyes was cool air, and the sight of the empty, night-covered street and homes surrounding his house. Confused by , Maxson took a single step out, only to feel the sensation of his foot brushing against something soft, prompting him to look down. What greeted him was a peculiar shape.

   At first thinking it was an odd-shaped basket, when he got a closer look, Maxson realized, to his great surprise, that it was an infant caterpillar. Its long, brown body was wrapped in a dirty strand of thin, torn cloth, caked in filth and dried dirt, and made into a makeshift bundle. Stopping his gawking as the small thing began to stir, Maxson picked his head up and looked around, trying to spot who could have put it there while his short antennas swished around on his brow in vexation.

   "Hello?" he asked in a loud tone, looking ahead once more in an attempt to find the unfortunate bug's parents. The baby, now awake from the disturbance his unwitting foot had provided, had started to cry when he finished searching a minute later, all to no avail. He looked at the infant with an unsure expression, before deciding on how to act.

   "Shh... easy there, little one," Maxson whispered tenderly to the child, bending his rotund, red-shelled body over. He placed his claws around the bundle and lifted it up, getting a good look at it. As the caterpillar started to calm down a few moments later with his gentle rocking, its echoing cries slowly being replaced with cooing and other, mumbled gibberish, Maxson saw its pappy hide's brown coloration resembled leafy camouflage, complete with line patterns and spots of black covering it as well. Looking back to the empty streets a final time and seeing no one, Maxson turned into the house with the larva in his grasp, and lightly closed the door.

   "Oh... you poor, little thing..." he sighed, making his way back to the chair. "Whoever your parents were, they made the right decision to leave you with me. Some of my neighbors probably would have eaten you, heh..."

   As he gave off his small, anxious chuckle, the mandibles on the baby's seemingly eyeless, bulbous head opened and closed with a clicking noise, and it began to make more low, burbling, childlike noises. The old ladybird soon realized the infant was hungry when it started to nibble at the cloth it was wrapped in; fruitlessly attempting to chew off a piece, only to spit the coarse material back out.

   "D-don't worry, I'll be right back!" he spoke again, placing the bundle down onto the chair and rushing off to the pantry. When he came back into the room a few seconds later, he had a piece of a pea pod he found a few days ago in one of his claws. Maxson had originally been saving it as a gift for a friend, but a situation like this clearly meant that the piece of food would have a much different fate. Quickly picking the caterpillar up again, Maxson sat down and put the pod up to its head as he held its fragile form to his chest. Using its front six, tiny legs, the caterpillar instinctively brought the piece of food to its maw and started to unquestioningly devour it.

   As the baby quietly ate the piece of the pod, Maxson noticed a bump-like indent protruding on the cloth it was bundled in. Reaching a claw in, he pulled out a necklace made from a bit of thread and ending in a splintered piece of plain, dry wood. Carved onto the wood was a word. One, single word.

   Serendipity.

   "Hmm..." Maxson hummed to himself minutes later, watching the caterpillar finish its food and slow its movements in a drowsy manner. "I don't know if this is your name, or if it’s just the word describing what you may be, but I... I think I'll call you "Seren," if that's okay with you..."

   So by the fireplace, Maxson cradled the precious creature as it began to fall asleep in his arms. It was his new child. His new reason for living.

   His little Seren.

   â€‹Maxson was dead. His passing, peaceful and content, had occurred only ten days prior in his sleep, his age finally having caught up with him. What he left behind with his death was his dear foster daughter, Seren. But before he did pass into the afterlife, he made sure to spend many seasons with her, helping her out as a larva, caring for her when she was a cocoon, and using his last two seasons to guide her when she was a young, but full-grown, adult moth.

   Wandering inside the house, alone, was Seren's dusty brown form. Her pair of long wings, also a mottled brown color like the rest of her body, save for a faded white line that stretched across the pair, draped down like a ragged, yet fanciful cape from her back. Her two eyes, large and compound like most moths had, were of a grayish, clouded color, signifying her disability: blindness. It was something she had possessed since she was a mere caterpillar, and as she and her adopted father fully believed, was the reason she was abandoned on his doorstep to begin with. Maxson could care less about it though, and he loved her as deeply as she adored him.

   Seren was in deep thought, every second being focused on the time she spent with her father. Every second she spent with him was a  memory she would never forget, and her very soul ached every time she realized that this was indeed reality, as opposed to the cruel dream she thought and hoped it was instead. Seren made sure Maxson had a proper funeral, and buried the elderly ladybird next to his wife in the local cemetery, as per the last wishes of his will.

   A knocking on the door brought Seren out of her memories, and she ran her claws and antenna along the walls in her attempt to reach the door, opening it upon arrival. Seren may not have been able to see, but the sound of jingling chains and bags containing precious silver pieces and gold shards gave away the small, unpleasant individual she knew she was now having to meet.

   "Greetings, Constable Silas," she welcomed in a half-hearted tone, her words practically reeking of sarcasm. "What can I do for you today, I wonder?"

   "What indeed!" the weevil said in a cheery and affable voice as he tipped his gray helmet of thin metal, his tone nearly failing to betray what rotten thing Seren knew he was like on the inside. "May I step inside?"

   "No," Seren flatly replied. Silas grunted and coughed into his claw.

   "Ah well... I didn't plan to stay long anyhow," he said without despair. "I've come here to deliver a message to the new owner of this house."

   "And what message would that be?" Seren inquired as her claws tapped against the wood, half-tempted to just close the door in the bug's face.

   "A notice," he responded, handing out a piece of paper that Seren grabbed once she heard him purposefully scrunch it in the air in front of her face. "An eviction notice. For you."

   Seren's unseeing eyes widened in utter surprise. "What?"

   "You may be blind, but I know you're not deaf as well," Silas grumbled, leaving behind most of the friendliness his voice once held. "I said an eviction notice, courtesy of the inheritance tax imposed by our just lord, Shotel. A tax I've seen what little wealth you have is unable to pay, meaning this small estate now belongs to our lord until someone else decides they want it."

   "You can't do this! My father built this house with his bare claws!" she argued, throwing the paper away with one claw, and using the other to tightly squeeze the part of the door it held onto in anger.

   "And last I saw, your father was not really your own," the constable chuckled, flicking a piece of dust away from his long nose in a snobbish manner. "You should count yourself doubly lucky old Maxson even took a bug like you in. Blind, unable to care for yourself, a black witch as we later found out after you had pupated... Had you known anything about how to use that perverted magic the rest of your kind knew, I would bet my wing casings a mob would've taken you away and torn you apart by now."

   Seren shuddered at the gruesome thought he generously provided. "What's your point, Constable?"

   "My point is that you had better vacate this building's premises within the next three days, or you'll be physically evicted," the weevil said in an insistent tone. "I myself wouldn't be surprised if you lost a few limbs... maybe even a wing... in the process. You know how... rough our lord's police force can be."

   Lord Shotel Pickett, a fierce hawk wasp and savage knight in general, ruled the section of land where the village was located, given to him by the higher-ups of the kingdom that he was a part of. He wasn't a very pleasant individual from what Seren heard her father say, and what was spoken of by town gossipers whose mouths were too loud for their own good. He was also the reason why the tax in the town was so high, and his basis for doing such was most likely for self-centered and recreational reasons, as not very many major projects were known by anyone.

   "So, witch, do we understand?" Silas continued, snapping the moth out of her thoughts on the current situation. With a held-back growl, Seren answered him.

   "Yes, Constable. I understand."

   "Jolly good. You had best grab what you think is important, find a place to stay, and get ready to leave," he said in a mockingly simple voice as he turned his shelled back to her, readying himself to depart. "And remember, if you find yourself on the streets, don't let us catch you begging! You'll be arrested for vagrancy."

   Seren started to close the door as this heart-wrenching news set in on her like an approaching storm. “I understand that as well, Constable.”

*****

   "Like I told you before, we don't need you," the striped, orange-shelled potato beetle said from behind her door to Seren, who stood outside, wrapped in a dark cloak.

   "But... but are you sure?" Seren asked once more. The beetle mumbled grumpily.

   "To tell you the truth, it's not just that we don't need you, it's that we also don't want you," she replied. "Now moth, go away or I'll call the guards over."

   With a defeated mumble, Seren picked her cloth sack back up, turned from the doorstep, and left, quickly walking away. Almost a month had passed since she had been kicked out of her home, and she was desperately looking for someone to give her a job and place to properly stay, all to no avail.

   Judging from the lack of something warm shining off of her cloaked back, the sun had set, and night was nearing. Knowing what that meant, she picked up her pace and headed in the direction of a part of town she had been getting used to visiting.

   Using the long, straight twig in one of her claws like a cane, she felt around with it as she moved along the road. Once she recognized a familiar stretch, given away by the multiple sets of small, particular footprints indented into the ground below, she took a left and soon found her stick tapping against the side of a building made from dried dirt and clay, the abode itself sitting on the inside of a fence that led to the grassland countryside outside of the village. After setting her sack down, Seren herself sat against the rough outer wall of the dirt mound, taking in a deep breath as she pulled her hood down, fully revealing her face.

   Soon growing tired she couldn’t help but lower her head, until a familiar pitter-pattering of multiple feet on the ground sounded to the left of her. Her antenna moved rapidly about, before touching a long, dark shape that was about to pass by and enter the home.

   "Oh… Hello, Fure," she greeted the long-bodied millipede. Seren had known him for a while, first meeting him back when her foster father was still alive. He was perhaps one of the few people in the village that didn't mind who or what she was, and was the best of friends with her father when he still lived. "It’s… good to see you, after the day I had. I still can't thank you enough for letting me set up beside your house."

   "Hello to you, Seren. And like I said before, you don't have to thank me for that," Fure welcomed back with a sigh, his smaller antennae swishing around in circles in self-annoyance. "I'd let you inside, but I don't have enough room in there, and my toxin's rubbed off enough on the walls to leave a permanent stench. You would probably suffocate. Sorry."

   "Don't be..." she chuckled in a spirited voice, her sightless gaze held to the moonlit sky but attention focused on him completely. "What you've done is enough for me."

   "Well then... goodnight, my dear friend. Look out for the Nightwatchers..." he warned before entering his house, a few seconds passing before his entire shape disappeared. The Nightwatchers; guards that, what else, patrolled the streets at night for any bug actively attempting to break the lord's laws, never came this far to the borders of the village, giving the moth a much-needed feeling of safety.

   â€‹What she was truly worried about was her future. The long Autumn would be on its way in a few short months, and she would freeze during that time if she couldn't find a place to live. Every night she would curse herself for how her disability hindered her, but would then think of how her bigoted neighbors also made her life difficult. From all she had seen so far in her life, they seemed to live to antagonize her.

   Her thoughts soon turned from worry to sleep, and her head lowered again. Within the minute she was dreaming as contently as she could manage. That is, until...

   "Well, well, well... what have we here?" a sudden male voice calmly spoke up with the effect of a booming clap of thunder. The noise instantly jolted Seren awake, and her head spun around in startled surprise, hoping with all her might that it wasn't the Nightwatchers.

   "H-hello?" she asked cautiously, a hint of fear in her young voice. She fumbled a hand around until it gripped her walking stick, just in case it was a threat. "I-is someone there?"

   "...And blind too, I see," the voice continued, sounding like a young bug around her age, if not slightly older. "Trust me when I say that there is no need to be frightened, my friend. You're in the presence of a fellow moth, or to be more specific, kin."

   "’Kin’?" Seren asked again, confused, and still trying to fully awaken. "Wait, what are you trying to say? Wouldn't that mean that... are you a black witch too?"

   "Indeed," the voice replied. "I am Striga Witchweed; full-blooded black witch moth at your unsighted service. I was wondering if I could accrue some information as to where I may find a suitable place to rest for the night, such as a tavern or inn. You're the first inhabitant I've come across since I flew in from over the main gate."

   "Oh, well... there's one tavern. The Crawdad's Claw, located in the center of town near the guard barracks," she answered. "And you may want to be wary. I've lived here all my life, and if I know anything about this place, the bugs here aren't very fond of black witches like us. If you're one that practices magic... be very careful, don't speak to anyone, and be prepared to leave immediately. That's the best advice I can give, I’m afraid."

   "Hmm... I shall take your words into consideration. Thank you," Striga replied, gratefully. The sound of him fumbling through his attire then went out, and the loud, chiming noise of a bag filled with a bunch of some sort of metal objects landing on the ground in front of Seren came just after.

   "Here," he cheerfully spoke again in a way practically radiating mirth, following the metallic commotion. "For your trouble, twenty pieces of gold."

   "Wha-?" Seren asked, practically shocked by what he said. "By Aphis... did you say twenty pieces of gold?"

   "Yes," he replied in a friendly tone. "I've earned a fair amount of the shards in my travels. I go from place to place performing various acts you see, so I have plenty to spare. Besides, you appear to need it more than I."

   The sound of scraping dirt that slowly became more distant told Seren that Striga was leaving. Placing an arm out in front of herself, she felt around for the bag before grabbing it by its cloth tip, and bringing it up to her lap. When she opened the purse top, she pulled out a shard and rubbed a claw on its slightly jagged, but solid surface, extremely joyful for her luck. She hadn't had a good meal since she was evicted, and with this small fortune she could easily acquire one, and still have enough left over for the next whole month.

   Putting it in her sack for safekeeping, Seren folded her arms over her chest and quickly fell asleep, drifting away with a clear mind she had not possessed since the day before Maxson had passed.

*****

   Striga walked through the darkness-covered town with a medium pace, and it wasn't too long before he located the tavern he was told he could find. The Crawdad's Claw was a medium-sized building, and the sign telling the name of the establishment dangled from a pair of small chains attached to a plank of bark that hung over its front.

   â€‹Striga entered the Crawdad's Claw with a casual maneuver, pushing the door open with two of his arms and revealing what lied inside. He walked past the several tables that were between him and the bar counter, and each seemed to be filled by an insect. Every bug that was once talking, dining, or drinking went silent upon the realization of what character was now in their presence, and immediately set their eyes on him.

   Approaching the counter, Striga placed his belongings beside a stool and pulled himself into it. The bartender, a grasshopper with a greenish tint to his brown complexion, turned to him from another customer with a look of disdain.

   "What do you want, witch?" he asked in a grunt, his antenna swishing about in annoyance. Striga chuckled to himself before looking back up.

   "The slur is unnecessary, my friend. I would just like a room for the night, but before that I humbly request a cup of nectar, please," he asked politely.

   "Hrm," the grasshopper mumbled, turning about to get the drink in a purposefully slow procedure. "I'm not your friend..."

   A few seconds later he had brought forward a small cup made of wood, and carried with him a glass bottle filled with the sugary substance most insects enjoyed, freshly plucked from a cabinet. Undoing the cork, he poured the red-golden liquid it contained into the cup until it was just over half-full. After exchanging a gold shard from his bag as payment and letting his proboscis unravel, Striga placed his elongated feeding mouthpart into the cup and began to drink. Unbeknownst to the black witch - or perhaps ignored by him - the grasshopper, as well as several of the patrons in the tavern were still eyeing him with contempt. Most of their ire was focused toward the intricate rune-like scars that adorned Striga's entire body, from his arms and legs, to his face, to his wings themselves in a seemingly ritualistic fashion; apparently carved in by a knife, brand, or something similar.

   "Another black witch," whispered a wasp in the back whose chitin was jet-black, scratching the wood that made up the wall next to him in an ill-tempered way. "Something we don't need I’d wager."

   "I'll get one of the nightwatchers," a yellow-colored hornet beside him spoke in an equally hushed tone, before turning about and leaving through the entrance of the tavern, into the night-covered street.

   Finishing the drink, Striga pushed the wooden cup forward before extending his forearm toward the bartender. "May I have have the key to my room, please?" he asked in a most courteous fashion. With what looked like reluctance, the grasshopper sifted a claw through a nearby drawer and grabbed a key; one made of a thin sliver of iron, and promptly placed it front of the moth. "It's for room four," he muttered in a more guttural voice. Scooping the object into his claw and standing up from his seat, Striga picked his pack up off of the ground and gave a final glance at the bartender before tipping his small, brimmed hat in a courteous fashion, allowing the feather vane that poked out of it to wag about in the air briefly.

   Striga walked past the other customers and toward the steps on the other side of the tavern that lead upstairs. With quiet surrounding him, he paced up the steps and found himself inside of an empty corridor, lined with many doors along its bark walls, a number on each to designate them. After locating his room, room number four, he opened the door and entered it before closing and locking it behind him. He placed his pack down again by the cotton bedside and promptly hopped into it, happy to be able to lie in such a comfortable piece of furniture after traveling the road for so long. Within a short time he had settled his body down, went still, and soon was asleep.

   Striga's peaceful rest didn't last long however, when near-silent creaking noise went through the room as the door started to reopen. The shape of a gaunt insect with a thin build, cloaked by the shadow of the room's darkness, entered slowly with silence to mask its ominous approach. Had anyone conscious been in the room, they could see the intruder was holding a rather large wooden club in one of its claws. With a predatory lightness in its steps, it slipped closer and closer to the sleeping moth until it loomed over him like a statue, raising the weapon up, ready to strike.

   Before Striga could awaken to see the intruder, the club was brought down upon his head with a loud thud.

   "A witch was caught last night! A black witch! And a studier of black magic no less!" The sound of Silas's voice was loud and echoing heavily that early morning, as Seren could hear from where she wandered through the town. Upon awakening a short time earlier, Seren felt her hooded, sack-bearing form through in an effort to reach the local tavern and buy something to eat with the gold shards she had gotten the night before, until she heard the weevil begin his pontificating from atop a large stone in the square. With worried thoughts, she stopped dead in her tracks and turned her attention to him as he went on with his ramble.

   "He is alive, but of no threat to you fine townsfolk. We have him held up in the jailhouse, cast in pure iron shackles, where he cannot use any of his dark sorcery, and he is under heavy guard!"

   The young moth feared of who he was speaking of, yet at the same time knew exactly who it was. Just in case, she desperately wanted confirmation. "Who is it?" she whispered to a bug she heard walking in front of her.

   "A black witch moth the nightwatchers nabbed at the tavern," the insect whom she spoke to, a brown-colored cricket, whispered back over his shoulder. "They saw what he was and decided to arrest him before he could try anything. I was there when it happened."

   "The bail for this wretch is set at nineteen gold pieces!" Silas continued to spout pompously as the crowd watched and listened on. "If left unpaid before this week's end, he will be given over to our lord Shotel for punishment at his claws. That is all, and may each of you carry on with your day peacefully knowing the law-carrying officials are keeping you safe."

   Seren could hear the crowd around her disperse in a cloud of footsteps and murmurs, but she remained where she stood, holding the base of her cloak in a tight grip with one of her four sets of claws. Her thoughts were muddled and torn, and it caused her long antenna to flick about in a way that reflected the goings on in her mind. Seren was hungry, more than she had ever been in a while, and a meal that would have been enough to sate her appetite would cost around three gold pieces. But Striga, that kindly fellow black witch moth that had given her the means to acquire a meal, was imprisoned, and the cost to get him out as a deserved remittance would leave her with one piece left - worth hardly a meal at all.

   Finally, and with a long, trailing sigh, she made her choice. Placing a claw through the sack and rummaging through it for a few seconds, she pulled out the small bag full of the precious currency. Jingling the gold inside after a small shake, she started for the jailhouse, feeling around with her walking stick but keeping a sense of urgency in her stride.

*****

   "This entire case against me is a sham! A crock! I demand my rights!" Striga continued to cry out from the dank cell he was currently chained by the ankle inside of. The last thing he could remember before waking up in this dingy place was sleeping in a bed, and then a sharp pain hitting him. The back of his head still stung with a fair soreness, but what really hurt him was not the pain, nor the outrageous lie that he heard was the reason he was now here, but the fact that all of his belongings were now gone. Even his hat and the clothes off of his back were missing!

   He was not alone in this dark room. Guards were positioned on either side of the front of his cell and the crossed iron bars making it up, one of whom was a small-looking cockroach, and the other was a plump spider beetle of a brownish tint. Striga could tell they were having almost as much of a picnic being here as he was, judging from the grumbling, mumbling, and under-the-breath cursing he heard with every complaint or outcry he made. Their annoyance brought a small token of satisfaction to Striga's mind, but it was not enough to quell his upstart rage.

   With all the time spent here, Striga accrued enough information just by looking around to know he was situated somewhere underground. The only real thing that caught his bored attention from outside of his prison was the spindly roots from weeds and other assorted plants that hung from the earthen ceiling like some natural parody of a series of fancy chandeliers. There was also the fact that the cell he was in bore a complexion of clamminess and ill-condition. It was small and narrow, with the only piece of furniture being a chair with a missing leg. Either way, the chain around his leg held him down too far to be comfortable, and the chair was far too rotted to sit on anyway. Even the ground below his feet bore the taste of dankness and filth! Had he been in the position to make one, Striga may have bet that the security stationed here never cleaned out this cell since first building it.

   He continued with his tirade. "Just wait until I speak to the leader of this establishment! I swear if I get his attention, all of you petulant, self-righteous peons will be punished properly for this injustice!"

   "Shut up," one of them, the cockroach, finally said in a cold and angered tone as he cast a sharp glance in the moth's way. His mandibles twitched as he spoke again. "Make one more sound, and you'll wish you hadn't, I'll promise you that much."

   Quietly, Striga decided to concede to the demand and folded his four arms, sitting down. Not a moment into this newfound tranquility, the only door that lead to this room gently swung open, and a rather large character, a firefly with a dark brown complexion to its body, entered.

   "He has a visitor," he spoke in a gravelly, abrupt voice. "As per regulation, we must give them some alone time to discuss things. Men, you may leave."

   The cockroach grunted in understanding while the spider beetle remained in an indifferent state. They began to march out, and after the pair had left with the firefly, a new shape, much taller and thinner than any of them were, began to slowly walk in, bearing a stick that stretched out from a form covered in a brown cloak and felt around. As the shape grew closer, Striga was able to make out what kind of insect it was, and soon also realized who she was, much to his sheer astonishment.

   "I remember you..." he started as she drew nearer to his location. "You're the blind beggar I encountered yesterday."

   "Indeed I am," Seren replied as her stick tapped against the bars of his cell, sending out a sharp chime. "I heard you came into... quite the predicament."

    "Sorry I didn't take your advice about the locals..." he apologized in a sullen tone, running a claw along the cold chain that stuck to his leg. "I've been to many villages with problems dealing with our kind, but none of them reacted this badly to my presence. By the way, if you might be the one to sate my curiosity, what are you doing here?"

   Kneeling down on her knees to his level, Seren pulled her hood down and let out a long huff of air before relaying a response. "Getting you out," she finally said. "It's the only way I can repay you for the kindness you showed me last night, even if it leaves me with just a fraction of what you gave me in the first place. I can't let them punish you."

   "You're willing to do such a feat for one you barely even know? That is extraordinarily selfless of you." Striga noted. "If you do free me, I'll make sure to reimburse you for this deed threefold."

   A thought suddenly came to Seren's head not a second after he said that. She had let her mind become so consumed by her decision that she never once took into account the possibility that he would repay her. After letting the gears turn in her head for a second longer, a new idea possessed her like a phantasmal shade of the long past. "After I let you out, could you... repay me in another way?" she asked.

   "But of course I can do that," Striga said, as he started to move his antenna about in the air in a rapid way that gave off his interest in what she had to say. "Just ask for it, my newest, unseeing friend. Whether it be more gold or something of another nature, if it is within my power I promise you that it will be yours."

   Seren let out a small, unsure laugh before letting her tone drop to the solemn way it was once more. "In that case Mr. Witchweed, I... I want you to take me with you when you leave."

   The sound of his antenna no longer swishing about in the air indicated to Seren that Striga was caught off guard by her request. "Take you... with me?" he asked in a now-perplexed voice.

   "That is what I said, is it not? When I let you out of here, I want you to get me out of this town. And I don't care in the slightest where we go."

   Striga scoffed. "Oh, I travel constantly, my dear. The roads are perilous and wrought with beasts that devour the insects traveling upon it as regularly as the wind flows and sun shines. A blind moth like you wouldn't last very long if you were to trail behind me."

   "You think I don't know that?" Seren said with a much higher, but no less serious volume in her tone, reaching through the bars and grabbing ahold of what she presumed was one of his arms in an effort to reinforce her plea. "Listen to my words, Striga, I have no life here. Everything has been taken from me. My father, my home... anything I could consider a valuable possession, save for the rags I wear on my back. Even with gold I fear I'm not going to last much longer, and if it means that I meet an untimely demise at the hands of some bird, lizard, or other insect, then yes. I will gladly take that risk over rotting here."

   Striga appeared to be stricken into silence by her speech. Unbeknownst to her however, it wasn't her words that drove him to such a hushed state. The second she had clamped her claws around his forearm, he experienced a peculiar, powerful jolt of something he had spent nearly his entire life familiarizing himself with. It took him by complete surprise, but his calm expression didn't falter.

   "Hmm..." he hummed in an odd manner, tapping his lower pair of claws together as he tried to process what he was currently feeling in his upper limb. "I... sense something about you. Your touch... I can feel that there is a latent energy lying deep within you, my friend."

   "'Latent energy'?" Seren questioned, confused. "What on earth do you mean?"

   "Well, 'magic', of course," he chuckled in response, provoking Seren to give a sarcastic look of disbelief. "All creatures have it, but only few possess a naturally significant power in their being. You have... much potential, to say in the very least."

   "How would someone like you even know something like that? Wait... Do you actually... practice it?" she whispered curiously. "I heard you got yourself locked in here for it, but I thought that was just a lie."

   Striga tittered again, but much more silently than before. "It may not be what got me locked up, but it is the truth my stubborn acquaintance. I've been trained in the arts of the mystical since I was but a feeble larva, and I've known to wield and manipulate the unstable currents of its fickle nature since the day I pupated. And to let you in on a little secret, I've been looking for an apprentice to teach these lessons to, myself."

   "What in the name of Aphis do you mean by that?" Seren asked, invoking the name of the insect all-god in her surprise. Grabbing ahold of the arm Seren was still using to hold onto his own, Striga pulled her slightly closer until her head was almost to the bars of his cell. She almost winced back in revulsion as she felt the great many indenting scars adorning both the appendages, trying to picture how he looked with them as he spoke.

   â€‹"Would someone like you, a fellow black witch from this rather dreadfully unpleasant little flytown, like to become my apprentice?" he offered in a strait-to-the-point tone, his speech lacking any form of humor or hints of sarcasm, telling Seren that his words were true and genuine. "Do you wish to learn the most secret and wondrous arts of sorcery and magic? To find out about the powers inherent to nearly all our kind? To become a true black witch moth? Just feeling your arm tells me you easily have the ability to learn it, blind or not, and it would be my utmost honor to be the one to teach you."

   Seren tried to take in and make sense of what he said, but the sound of footsteps crunching over dirt from behind interrupted her before she could relay a proper response. She was still trying to find the words when the gruff and voice of the firefly from before went out.

   "Time’s up," he grumbled coarsely. "You may visit again tomorrow. Get out until then."

   Seren did as she was told and slowly let go of Striga's arm as he did the same, getting to her feet before the order could be repeated. Standing still for a second, many thoughts overwhelming her mind, she finally pulled her hood back over her head and turned about, using her stick to feel her way to the exit as Striga watched from where he sat. Seren soon disappeared through the doorway and the firefly went up to it in a following motion.

   The bug shot his typical unwelcoming glare at Striga before exiting the room as well and allowing the cockroach and spider beetle to re-enter, and they both resumed their previous positions by either side of his cell. With silence quickly overtaking the environment, Striga decided not to harass the pair with another round of declaiming, and instead turned his thoughts to what he had said to that young, blind moth. Now that he had time to think, he used it to do just that. Over the next few minutes he wondered to himself if what he spoke to her was the proper thing to say, and he dragged his claw over the rotted surface of the chair beside him in his angst. For all he knew, she was as apparently terrified of magic as the rest of the locals here. Only what lay in the near future would answer his question...

   Then, with an eerie creaking noise of small iron hinges, the door ahead suddenly reopened and light flashed once more into the room. The firefly, for the third time now, entered with heavy, dragging steps. With a flick of the wrist from one of his upper claws, he silently motioned for the two guards to leave. They each looked at each other for a brief instant of confusion before doing as they were beckoned, and walked out. The firefly had now turned his attention to Striga, lifting one of the claws he had been keeping folded behind his back, revealing a set of keys he held in a ring.

   "Your bail's been paid," he said in a low tone Striga noted was full of reluctance that had been driven by his sense of protocol. "After I let you out... go collect your things and leave."

*****

   After Striga fitted his silk vest back around his arms and wings, he sifted through the jailer's sack and pulled out a small bottle containing fragments of an herb's seed, examining it for but a second before hooking it up to a dry vine belt that twisted between the base of his thorax and abdomen, and then reaching for another object that he proceeded to place into his nearby pack. Watching him as he spent a long while putting on and checking through his returned possessions were a pair of ground beetles; no doubt the ones who had watched over his items during his imprisonment.

   Striga was still heavily incensed for his incarceration by these bugs, but right now he was more angered by the fact that they had not only taken his things away from him originally, but had also visibly rummaged through his belongings. But to the moth's relief, nothing had been damaged and all was accounted for, save for a few pieces of gold. To him, currency mattered very little though. Placing his hat over his head, which he noticed had been slightly mangled by the ones who had held it last, Striga looked to the two ground beetles who had been eyeing him in the corner. Upon wrapping up his reclamation and with a sarcastic motion, he flapped his large forewings, scattering some of the dust and stray flecks of dirt on the ground beneath him.

   "Though I must admit it was no treat being held here, I bid you fine folks a good day," he said in an affable tone, hiding what vulgar language he wished to truly use with them. Tipping his hat half-heartedly, he flicked his antenna upward in as disdainful of a manner as he could convey and made his way unabashedly toward the exit. Once he was free from the building at last, he witnessed the busy streets that now lied before him and all the bugs moving on it or setting up and selling their wares at small stands; the mid-noon sun shining upon the ground through a cloudless blue sky. He didn't take more than a single step before spotting the familiar figure he hoped to see.

   The young moth's shape stood still with her back facing Striga's direction, still draped in her dirty rag-of-a-cloak. With silent steps, he decided to circle around her clearly-waiting shape, getting a better look at her as she ever-patiently waited for him, her clouded, compound eyes staring off into nothingness. Clutched in between her arms was a rather small satchel, and one he remembered seeing her sleeping beside the night before. Finishing his observations, Striga paced back to where he began and cleared his throat before speaking.

   "Greetings once again, my newest acquaintance."

   "Oh! Mr. Witchweed, I didn't think they would let you out so quickly," Seren commented, spinning around to face him as best as she could manage in a startled manner. Striga let out a laugh, noticing how the 'quickly' she was thinking of lasted more than an hour-or-two for him.

   "Please, you can remain calling me Striga," he spoke in a friendly manner. "And I never asked yet, but might I learn what your name is, my dear?"

   "My name is Seren," she responded. "I don't mean to sound so hasty, but when do we... leave?"

   "Well, now, of course. Assuming that you have all you require." His answer was faster than Seren anticipated, but she wasn't shocked or surprised by it. "And I hope you do, because those bugs were very specific about what they'll do if they see me around here ever again."

   â€‹"I already said my goodbyes to the only friend I've known, and I have all I need right here," she said back, motioning to the sack still resting in her claws.

   "Fantastic. Can you fly?" Striga asked next. After a few seconds, she nodded her head in confirmation.

   "Yes, I can fly. I haven't done it much, but I can."

   "Good!" Striga clasped his upper pair of claws together with apparent glee. "When we take off, try your best to stay behind me and listen to the sound of my voice as we go. I'll make sure to keep an eye on you."

   "And... if we see any danger?" Seren anxiously took the liberty to inquire. "I've heard that birds make the sky their home."

   "I'll keep an eye out for that as well," he replied. "If I do so happen to spot something that poses a threat, just remember to do exactly as I say. Now come. Let us take to the air, Seren!"

   Extending his wide, brown, dusty wings, Striga leapt up and began to move them in a vigorous flapping movement. Taking in a deep breath, the deepest one of her life, Seren began to follow his example and ousted herself from the ground with a powerful motion from her own back appendages. Once she had achieved flight and knew she was at a good altitude, Seren continued to beat her wings in place, still holding her bag in a fiercely tight grip as she did so.

   "Striga, are you there?" she called out.

   â€‹"I am over here," the sound of Striga's voice answered swiftly from just to the side of her. She turned about and faced his direction as best as she could muster as he continued; "Fly in my current direction as best as you can. I'll be just ahead of you."

   "Alright," the young moth agreed obediently. Upon seeing her heading toward him, Striga began to lead from where he flew, occasionally shifting a look behind him to make sure his new charge was in soft pursuit. As a thought rolled through her mind, Seren's head turned upon the true realization that she was actually leaving the town she had spent most of her life in behind. With a happy, but also very ill-prepared sigh, she focused forward once more, her heart racing and still feeling very much giddy over the new life she was about to start.