7 Second Appearance of the Dragonfly

PART SEVEN
Second Appearance of the Dragonfly. Lucifer ex Machina.

And then, with the disquieting truth of a dream dissolving into wakefulness, the Dragonfly emerged stealthily from behind an innocent looking marsh marigold. He rose and hovered inches from the Gadfly’s nose, staring coldly into his face. There was an icy malevolence about him now and he seemed to brim with cruelty.

A silence descended abruptly upon the woodland. All that could be heard, and barely, was the rustle of six wings treading air. The moment seemed balanced on a leaf slowly bending under its own weight.

Beside the reed fringed edges of the pool, penetrated still by a few slanting beams of afternoon sunlight, the water, translucent, brown and succulent as clear onion soup, began to disgorge life in all the multitudinous and strangely sculpted manifestations that it nourished.

Ticks and water boatmen, amoebic glop with brains usually switched only to reproduction, mouths without bodies and bodies without mouths, a universe of sliding wriggling creeping floating piggybacking backbiting slurping things and thinglets began to range themselves slowly around the arena drawn to carnage like spectators at an accident. Simply, they smelled blood.

Those without teeth in mouths that hitherto could do little more than suck marvelled at the two gladiators’ huge and glittering fangs. Those as yet without wings shuddered in expectation of the coming aerodynamic fireworks and slime larvae with nothing more than buds on their shoulders, peered nervously rearwards, wondering if the excitement and example might suddenly cause their own wings to sprout, and whether or not it would hurt.

The Gadfly turned his eyes towards the Fly, and they sparkled with arrogant confidence.

-After I have won, he murmured, -I myself will kill and carry to your feet a whole colony of rats to suffice as the nursery for our progeny.

-Furthermore, he added, but before he could add anything either further or even more to this addendum a terrible rattling sound arose from the Dragonfly’s tessellated wings like a drum roll before an execution and cut him off abruptly.

The latter was indeed of monstrous proportions. The Gadfly hovered before it like a tiny buzzing moon held in place within the gravity of a massive celestial orb. Slowly the Dragonfly spread its wings out before it in the manner of an orator enfolding the attention of a vast public. They glistened with martial colours, with challenge and with threat. They seemed to embrace the whole battlefield.

Its body curved back and up and away like some great aerial scorpion, segmented, and moving jerkily in yellow and purple and black. Rays of sunlight seemed to stick to the poisonous looking plates, unable to continue on their way to the earth. The eyes were huge, cold and opaque, reflecting nothing, giving nothing away. They seemed to have no colour of their own and to be focussed on somewhere else. The massive jaws looked as if they could have crushed a tortoise. They slid backwards and forward and from side to side, as if, before the terrible coup de grace, there was still more sharpening to be done. They brought to mind the blades of a threshing machine.

The six legs, hairy and tapered, were armoured and half curled beneath a heavy thorax and each was tipped with a sharp black hook. They hung indolently, however, almost relaxed, as if utterly sure that this second deadly arsenal would never be needed.

The two began to circle each other.

The spectators stared upwards, watching and waiting, hoping for the utmost dental ferocity.