Flutter

Flutter

We always went out out to play when the sun began to set. Bob Johnson, Mary Angelo, Ann Roth, Karen Hess, Dean Irvin, and all the rest of us. The Michael family would arrive shortly after us, slender, tall, and full of pranks, then the Cadge clan, squatter, less brilliant, and full of food allergies, but possessing the ability to make anyone hum with contained (or uncontained) laughter.

Our parents would sometimes come, frequenting the edges of our field so that their children could not slip off the the city as easily. They told us stories of the Creatures that lived in the city, of black smog, cruelty, and family members who disappeared never to return. We didn't listen. We laughed, we hurried away, and we raced in the twilight glow, shrieking cries of exulatation until we had exhausted ourselves completely. Then it was beds of smooth green leaves under dark canopies.

We never expected the Creatures to find us.

They came one day as we dozed through the newly bright sunlit hours, all heavy boots and sticky warm food and "Isn't it lovely. How quaint."

Their voices reverberated through our small frames, shocking us from our slumber with their harsh stridency. We hid amidst the foliage with wide eyes and rapidly beating hearts.

The Creatures left our meadow a wreckage of beaten blades of grass and fragments of meat, bread, cheese, sharp pronged forks, napkins, and the echoes of shrill cries.

We waited until full dark to emerge and our play was restrained, stifled. We knew something new had begun.

In the days following the Creatures began to flock to our meadow. They came with the warmth and light, and they left us with a trail of destruction in their wake. We took to playing in the patches of beaten grass where the Creatures had stepped, ran, jumped, and slept. As the days grew longer, the Creatures stayed later into the day and night and we began to grow bolder.

As it grew dark I approached the edge of the meadow and carefully entered my playground. Bob Johnson, Mary Angelo, Ann Roth, Karen Hess and Dean Irvin followed me, and we cautiously moved about our meadow. The Michaels glided suddenly into view and we were soon laughing. A game of tag was begun and played with wild, rough happiness. The Cadges joined in and we delighted in their clumsiness.

The oldest of the Michaels was the first to attempt what soon became our favorite game. We rode upon the Creatures. We clambered easily up rough woven pant legs, found our way to shoulders, noses, tiptoed through hair, and our favorite, chanced hands. We loved the straight long fingers, hard joints, flat smooth nails, soft palms. WE adored the danger above all else. We might be ignored, usually were, but might instead be crushed by a particularly callous or (as we thought) stupid Creature.

Our parents hated the game, forbid us to go play, and we ignored them. The Creatures sometimes played along with us, trying to snatch us up. They usually freed us with squeals of delight that wracked our bodies with pain. It only made the game better.

There were occasional casualties, of course, but my group of young, free friends remained untouched. We were gods among our peers, and even the Cadges were viewed as suave, debonair pictures of manliness. We exulted in life.

At the end of a night the Creatures would sometimes attempt to capture us for good. We occasionally lost someone slow or stupid or naieve to their glass prisons. Prisoners of war, we said. Ambassadors to a new world.

The days grew cooler and shorter. Parents grew more strict and we found it more difficult to slip away for our game.

I had a feeling one night that our game had to be played one more time. My parents were pathetically easy to escape from and I made my way, trembling, to the meadow. We all knew. We had all assembled.

It was all over almost too quickly. The Creatures didn't stay nearly long enough and I perched on the expanse of a thumbnail willing the game to continue forever. The hand closed around me.

I felt dreamlike in my imprisonment. This was the end, I supposed. I felt myself rising. An enormous eye confronted me, an impossibly loud voice whispered thunderously "The last firefly of the summer."

The fingers extended then, releasing me. As I flitted away I thought wonderingly, Firefly. Yes, that's us.

The game could not begin again soon enough.