Moth Ch. 007

Posted on literotica.com with permission of author: Nanna Marker; literotica ID ellynei.

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Kokata usually liked winter, especially when there was snow. Cold had never harmed him.

One night, years earlier, he had crawled up high and laid himself in the snow on the treetops. Kokata had expected the pale man to eventually come. He hadn't. Instead the world had slowly sped up.

Day had come far sooner than he had believed a night could pass. And the sun of day had moved so swiftly he had almost been able to see the movement, and the occasional winter-birds had sped across the sky like shooting stars. It had been like a dream.

Eventually, he had risen. Moving about in the snow, he had realised that it wasn't the world that had sped up. It was he who had slowed. Cold made him slow.

During his childhood, he had often allowed himself the full of winter's chill, had allowed the winter's to fly past. But, he was no longer a child. He hadn't kept exact track but guessed that maybe four years had passed since he had stopped growing. Nowadays he cherished the peace of winter, and did his best to stay warm not to waste it.

This winter wasn't peaceful though, not for him. This winter he carried a fright inside him. Some days it kept him locked inside his warm hole.

This was one of those.

He had woken sometime around noon and had realised his hole was colder than usual, and had put a web over the hole's opening to keep the heat inside and the cold out. In normal winters, that wouldn't have bothered him. By shivering he could easily generate enough heat inside himself to return time to normal. But this winter was different. This winter the cold could disrupt more than time.

Kokata forced himself to shiver even harder. He could still see his breath as white fog.

"You're an idiot," he scolded himself.

Since he woke and discovered the cold, he had pressed himself against the tall oval thing that had no business being in his lair. He had hugged it and he had shivered trying to generate enough heat to protect it from the cold.

If he had covered the opening before going to sleep, the cold wouldn't have made it inside.

Why had the stupid girl cocooned herself in his lair?

He had watched her spending countless hours preparing a hole of her own.

Why had she snuck into his instead?

"You're an idiot too," he scolded the cocoon.

If she expected him to protect her cocoon she could have at least told him how. He didn't know anything about cocoons. He wasn't a moth.

What if the cold had killed her?

"Stupid, scrawny, creature," complained Kokata and turned his face further from the cocoon. He wasn't sure what tears would do to the construction.

Submitted to literotica.com by the author.

He wished his lair was smaller. A smaller space would be easier to heat.

Then something occurred to him.

"You really are an idiot," he scolded himself and started weaving behind his back.

He had spent so many years not worrying about cold that he had practically forgotten what others with mind did about it.

Soon, he had completed an insulating blanket. With that he covered himself and the cocoon.

"There you go," said Kokata. "Soon we'll have you as warm as summer."

With the aid of a cover it didn't take long to shiver the cocoon warm and Kokata could finally rest. He had never known shivering could be that exhausting.

"Are you still alive in there?" he asked the cocoon, pressing his ear against it.

As usual there was no sound from inside. No tell-tale sign. For all he knew she could have been dead since the day she webbed herself in. He hadn't seen Death, but he hadn't been looking either. Her web had come out of her mouth of all places. Some might have got stuck and strangled her.

His web came out of its own place on the tail end of his body.

He raised a leg, stiffened the clingers on its underside, and aligned them. Her web was thinner than his. It would be so easy to... Kokata closed his eyes and resisted the temptation. He could rip a cocoon open, but he couldn't put it back together again.

"It's allright, Lei," he whispered. "I'll wait."

He had never used her name to her face. Not even once.

He shouldn't have nick-named her scrawny. There was nothing wrong with her being scrawny. In a way it was nice that she was so ugly, it made her seem more like someone... someone who... It lessened the distance between them and made her more like someone who could maybe be his friend.

Kokata had never had a friend. This winter he was realising that even just having someone who might one day become a friend was... invaluable.

He was glad he hadn't told her his name though. He hated his name. He couldn't think of anyone who would have liked to be named after a legendary snail monster.

So smelly that even the hardiest of heroes would faint if not for mud up his nose.

So ugly that none could behold him without puking even his intestines up.

Kokata grimaced. He had been right to leave the place where people knew his name.

The scrawny moth in the cocoon was the first person to ever make him a nickname that wasn't nasty.

Black.

Of all the people he had ever met, apparently she was the first who had noticed something about him that wasn't appalling.

He was black. Every part of him. And there was absolutely nothing wrong with being black.

Kokata smiled against the cocoon.

"I'm Black," he whispered.

If she should ever again ask his name, he would say, "I'm Black."

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Copyright of Nanna Marker 2010.

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