Periwinkle Shadows

A Day in the Life

Dawn - The Birth of Awareness
Higher and higher into the air. I tested my legs, all six of them, hanging beneath me like forgotten anchors. Appendages that, while so crucial in my nymphal stage, seemed so unnecessary now. Below the river, a silver ribbon now, cut through the landscape – had once been my entire world. Air felt so different to water. It felt thinner, and yet more substantial as it caught beneath my wings. Each subtle air current requiring an adjustment. A tilt of my body. A change in the rhythm of wingbeats. For me flying was not learned, it was a dance already written into my being. Encoded knowledge, hardwired into every cell and sinew. Gone was the dull perception of my nymphal stage. My adult eyes revealing a spectrum of colours no human would ever see. Compound eyes, thousands of individual lenses all working together. Capture the world in a fractured mosaic of overlapping images that my brain convert into coherent vision. Awareness of the ultraviolet patterns on flowers, the polarised light reflected from the water, the virtually invisible pheromone trails left by other mayflies.

A vibration nearby ‘Beautiful isn’t it?’ a male like myself, eyes designed and adapted to spot females in the coming dance. We don’t communicate with sound. We communicate more subtly through vibrations in the air between us – movements and vibrations too fine for larger beings to detect. I replied ‘Overwhelming’. My senses continuing to expand with every passing moment. The sun climbing higher warmed my body and provided the energy for flight. There was no need to eat. Not that I could, as I had no functional mouthparts. All of the energy I would ever need had been stored during my nymphal existence. More of us rose from the river. In hundreds, then thousands. Some newly emerging clung to rocks or vegetation as their wings developed and dried in the strengthening light. Others, like myself, were already in the air. Learning the currents. Testing the boundaries of this new existence.

Suddenly there was this large shadow. A swallow with its beak open dived through our ranks. Many of my brethren disappeared in less than a second. Their very brief lives cut even shorter. I swerved sharply. Instinct driving me to avoid the predator. No one had told me what a bird was, or why it should be feared. That was pure instinct. More vibration ‘That’s why we emerge in such numbers’ – an older mayfly communicated. His wings were showing signs of wear that indicated he had emerged hours before me. Another vibration ‘Many will fall so that others may complete the dance’. This brought me the understanding of another truth, my existence was two things, uniquely precious and utterly precarious and expendable. I was an individual expression of a far greater purpose. I was just a single note written into an ancient symphony. I wasn’t diminished by this revelation. Rather my awareness expanded beyond me as an individual to encompass the collective breath of my species.

The morning light strengthened. An urge was building within me, pulling me towards something I couldn’t yet name. It was obvious that other males were feeling it too. We were gathering, forming patterns in the air. The preliminary movements that would define our all too brief lives. Even though the day was new I felt its passage. Not with dread. There was an exquisite awareness of each moment crystalline in its clarity. No yesterday to regret. No tomorrow to fear. Only this perfect now.

And it was enough.

Authors Note
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