Chrysalis

Gweheheheheh. GWEHEHEHEHEHEHEH.

MUAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAAAA!

[OI! Think you can pin us to the ground?! Let me up and I’ll knock the snot out of ya!]

[That’s not flying! That’s floating at best! Eyyy? EYYYY!?!?]

[When I get off the ground, I’m gonna shirtfront ya! Even if you can’t wear a shirt!]

Yes. Yesssss. Grovel before me! You insignificant pigeons! Who’s laughing now? Who is soaring majestically through the air now?! It’s me. I’m doing that.

The gravity well pulses with power, holding my bulk aloft while pressing the annoying, irritating Magpei down into the ground where I can mock them at my leisure.

[Still chirping are you, little birdie?] I gloat, reaching down with one leg to poke a particularly persistent specimen on the cheek. [Shouldn’t you be trying to work out how to get off the ground rather than let your mouth write cheques your fists can’t cash?]

[I’ll show you a cheque, mate! I’ll knock your castle down! I’m nobody's pawn!]

[Well come along then! I’m waiting!]

I hover above as the Magpei makes a valiant effort to rise, managing to force himself up onto his hands and knees before I up the power and squash him down again.

[Oh, so close! Gweheheheheh. I’ll leave you there for a while and come back later to check on your progress.]

It fills me with such glee to see them struggling to get off the ground. How many times have they insulted my proud insect form for lacking wings since I arrived? FOUR-HUNDRED AND THIRTY SIX! Do they even know what they’re talking to? I’m an ant! A descendant of the wasp! You really think there aren’t any flying ants?!

But I’m something different, something new. I don’t even NEED them! I wiggle my antennae with glee as I float in glorious circles above the market.

Interestingly, the non-Magpei clientele continue about their shopping, speaking with the brathian merchants, asking questions of the ant carvers and generally enjoying themselves. I get the strong impression that visitors getting into… strenuous disagreements with the birdbrains isn’t that rare an event. These people have probably learned to tolerate it just as they have every other eccentricity of the feathered fiends they share the island with.

I myself have certainly not reached such a point of zen, so I continue to vent my frustrations upon

on, use them! Fly! You can fly, can’t you? I thought you were great at flying. Wasn’t being on the ground… let me think about how you put it… ‘the place where dung creatures wallow’? That’s what you said, isn’t it? Are you a dung creature? Enjoying your

This is my

story should be

you done up there?] Eran Thouris asks

frustration are rolling down their faces, when they cry out to their mothers and beg forgiveness, maybe I’ll let

like this?] she asks, including another in the

[It’s quite rare, but it does happen. Eldest! You’re disrupting the market! We need to trade with these people. That’s

I’m only

Magpei has almost managed to stand, better put a

going to have to let them go

them will kiss the

want to try and hold down ten thousand of them? Think of the

dirt, they haven’t let up. Understandably, their insult-swinging has only become more vigorous. The

come out in so long! I’m not

I’ll have had my fill by

a few minutes, you rats! Enjoy your last moments grinding your faces into the mud, and then you can fly, knowing you only

taste

an insect! EY?

fist! I’ll give you a fair dinkum

gonna regret this, cobba! You’ll be crying out of every lens by the

then come up here and show me right now! Come on! Come oooooon! What’s the matter?

Not even your mother could

is very proud of

a mum’s boy

ever want to fly again, you better not

….

[Fine. We respect mums.]

[Agreed. Mums are off-limits.]