You have beautiful iridescent wings, and a shining, sea-green body. Your hair is thick and black, your limbs long and slender, your eyes large and tinged ruby. You are beautiful, and cannot help but dance through the dew-sprinkled, sun-kissed air with joy at the liberation of wings

Before, you were small and dingy-gray with stubby legs, a misshapen body, and no wings. No wings! How you ever endured your previous existence you no longer understand. Now, everything is more.

Whispers of other flying-creatures’ wings lilt by you: the great, slow, blue-and-brown wings; the small, lazy green ones; the rough, leather-brown ones; the swift clear ones defying the wind. Oh, how wonderful it is to fly!

Yet with all the buzzing of flight, flitting to-and-fro through the forest and gusts of balmy wind, even your new wings become weary. You are voraciously hungry.

And then you smell it.

Oh, heavenly smell! It is sweet, yet bitter; deep, yet light and all at once so alluring that your wings falter and you reel. What a delicious scent . . . where is coming from? Darting forth through the greenery, you hunt the elusive temptation.

Then you see her. With a tall, slender green stem, and two-petaled, green flower a-top, she waves her scent toward you, promising utter intoxication and then bliss. You stagger towards her, thinking how like a great crown her flower looks. Yes, she is a queen of flowers! More heavenly than all other blooming plants.

Carefully you flit around her petals, avoiding the long, tendril-like extensions of their green edges. These are the soft, pliant prongs of her crown. You rest on the longest, rubbing your hands together and cleansing them in preparation of the feast.

Then you are in her, the smell wrapping round your head and body like cords of silken ecstasy. You dabble in her luscious pools of sweet juices, thrusting yourself ever deeper into her into her succulent, rosy fold. You drink until you are drunk and can do naught but collapse within her. The day has grown dark. Thinking this, you look up, and see that her petals have nearly closed around you.

But would it not be true bliss to slumber in this succulent bed? Yes, it would. You give in to the intoxicating aromas, slowly falling asleep to the hum of her wind-shaken crown. You hear words through your daze: I give you a home. Let us be one with another – you and I forever. Sleep, and I will take care of you. You will know naught but bliss. Bliss so complete it seems like agony-

Like agony? A spasm shoots through you as you start awake.

Agony!

It burns you! It consumes you! You are melting from the inside out. Your wings! You try to fly, but they are gone. They are gone . . .

You – ah, the agony! – you are gone! You are melted into her. She consumes you. The agony . . .

Oh, short and cruel life!