Star was a strange one, I’d always heard. The kind of people who stop their day right there on the sidewalk to crouch down and peer between the pavers, even when the rain was threatening to fall.
But I knew there was more to that. See, it was true that Star would stop and stare at the cracks and the cobbles and the crevices, but it wasn’t for the damage at all. Star had no joy in inspecting hurdles for little kids trying to run too quickly, or hiccoughs in a blind person’s commute. Star was looking for bugs. And sure, you may be thinking, “well, isn’t that strange too?” That’s fine. That’s what I thought, all that time ago.
It took me months to ask about it. That might make me a coward, I know, but there was something untouchable about Star’s rituals. Sometimes it was a crack, sometimes a patch of moss, and sometimes the thinning branches of a tree. Star would always take a moment to appreciate it.
When I asked, I felt stupid. In the end, all I should have done was look a bit closer— that’s what Star told me to do, a little more on guard than before I asked.
There was a bug there. Myself, I don’t quite like bugs. Star did. They explained to me what they saw in that little thing— it was a caterpillar, one of those fluffy venomous ones. Just the kind of bug I would recoil away from. But Star found it adorable, found it beautiful, found it worth the life it had.
I never thought of such a thing before. I never thought farther than the sizes I could make eye contact with. It made sense though, Star’s words that day.
It’s almost funny to look back and think on it even now. I had never taken such a joy from bugs as the joy Star took. That didn’t change, even when I learned to appreciate the intricate membranes of dragonfly wings or the mandibles on a mantis. But I did start looking at them a little differently. I’d look at them as if, maybe, in some impossible way, I could feel an echo of the joy Star would have.
It’s almost funny.
Anyways sorry this is kind of a weird as hell way to answer that ask game reblog yall did, I’ve been in an odd writing mood since reading a bit of and watching The Great Gatsby lmfao
BUGS MENTIONED OMGGGGG thank you,,,, 👀 eats this. thank you hyperrrrrr,,
