Alex Neason

She carries on, gliding effortlessly across the jagged debris that covers the forest floor, until she comes across a small hole in the soft, muddy soil.

She pauses, looking both ways, making sure the coast is clear, before dropping the Utica inside.

She stares down at her children, or maybe past them.

One by one, she oscillates her antennae up towards the sky and back down again, slow and considered, as if reciting a prayer.

And then she scurries away.

A month passes.

The eggs inside become tiny translucent larvae, each the size of a grain of rice.

They've grown long, thin, and tenny, which are folded forward into a tangle of their six stringy legs.

The larvae have no lungs, so they breathe through 10 little holes along the sides of their bellies.

They're getting hungry and thirsty.

And one day, as if responding in perfect time to an invisible conductor, all 16 babies flex the muscles in their abdomens and in unison, take a giant collective breath.

Their slender bodies swell with air, growing and growing and growing until the Utica pops.

cutting the last tie to their mother that they've got.

And together, they scatter.

Some towards the river.

Some towards a wall of underbrush.

Some up the thick trunks of hundred-year-old trees.

Out into the forest.

To begin...

their lives.