Snowflake

A Day in the Life

Dusk – The Fading Light
The sun was now hanging low at the horizon. The harsh midday light now transformed into a golden glow turning the landscape a warm amber. My return journey to the river was slower than my original rise from it had been. Now every beat of my wings required a conscious effort. The former effortless synchronicity of my four wings now demanded attention and will. This welcomed change, this awareness of effort, brought a heightened appreciation for flight. What, in the morning, had been automatic now became a deliberate, beautiful act in the evening. I savoured every single moment. The sensations of the currents of air flowing over my body. The subtle adjustments now required to maintain my altitude. The rhythm in muscles that would never know another day’s use. On my approach to the river I noticed that the mating swarm was somewhat diminished. Many of my brethren had long completed their dance and departed. Some going in exploration, as myself. Others having succumbed to the exhaustion. Many falling prey to predators, or the embrace of the water.For those who remained the dance was less vigorous, but perhaps more graceful, movements now reflecting acceptance rather than urgency.

I noticed below that a new generation of mayflies were emerging from the river surface. A separate hatch. As they rose into the air for the first time their translucent wings caught the evening light. I hovered and watched these inaugural flights. I felt a strange sense of elderly wisdom, even though our births were only separated by a few hours. A vibration ‘Beautiful isn’t it?’. This from a female who had completed her egg laying. She hovered nearby, her abdomen relieved of its burden, her purpose fulfilled. ‘To witness both sunrise and sunset in a single lifetime.’. ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘;Though I find myself wondering absolutely the night.’. ‘Few of us will ever see the stars,’ she commented with a degree of sadness ‘but perhaps that makes the twilight all the more precious.’. We flew together for a time or weakening wings somehow finding some strength in the synchronised rhythm. Now the sun, even lower, began to create long shadows that stretched out across the river’s surface.

Our compound eyes, so god at registering movement and light, adapted to the changing of the light, finding a different kind of beauty in the subdued palette of dusk.
‘Do you regret anything?’ I asked, curious about a different perspective.
She seemed to consider this for a few moments.
‘Regret requires alternatives’ she vibrated ‘Our lives follow a single path, perfectly designed. What would be the point of wishing foe something that could never be?’
‘But we made our choices’ I replied ‘to mate with one rather than another, to explore rather than stay, to spend our final hours in flight rather than rest.’
‘True,’ she conceded ‘perhaps then my only regret would be that I will not witness what comes after. See the nymphs that will hatch from my eggs. Witness the cycles that will continue. But that is not really regret, that is more like a curiosity about the story that continues beyond my personal chapter.’
The sun touched the horizon, its light shining through the trees, fragmenting into shafts penetrating the impending dusk. For a moment my wings caught in one such shaft and glowed a translucent gold, delicate membranes showing the intricate network of veins that had carried me through my single day of flight.

Then I noticed a small tear in one of my hindwings. Minor damage that in a longer lived being would heal completely, but which in me would only progress. Having now completed its evolutionary purpose my body had begun the slide into its gentle preprogrammed obsolescence. My body, optimised for a single day’s performance required no apparatus for repair or renewal. The female and I went our separate ways, each attracted by our own final explorations. For me there was a strange attraction to the medium of my birth, and I flew lower to the water’s surface. The river surface was playing with the light, playing with the colours, the rippling patterns of oranges, purples, and deepening blues reflected in an ever changing mosaic. I could see that other mayflies whose wings had failed more quickly than mine had already returned to the water. Some were floating, their wings spread like delicate sails, whilst others had been claimed by the river in the process of returning to the ecosystem that had nurtured them.

This was a scene that stuck me as profoundly beautiful rather than morbid. Life and death complimentary aspects of a single process rather than opposites. The mayflies on the river surface could be seen as not dying, but rather completing, the transformation of their materials and energy rather than an ending. Darkness was beginning to claim the sky. I saw no fear, only a quiet wonder. I had witnessed an entire day, seen it through from dawn’s first light to the glory of the fading sunset. I had danced, mated, explored and contemplated. Every aspect of my purposeful design had been accomplished, maybe even transcended through appreciation and awareness. Could any being ask more of existence, regardless of the length of its life?

Authors Note
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