A Wish Fulfilled

You are small.

Your body is your world, a perfect machine, made of hard edges and delicate mechanisms.

Your head is your compass. It swivels with purpose, seeking the faint vibrations of the world. Your antennae are your eyes, your hands, your whispers to the air. They twitch and sway, tasting the unseen, feeling the untouchable.

Your legs are six pistons, clicking and locking, lifting and pressing. Each step is a miracle of balance, your body a bridge between surfaces—stone, soil, wood. Your feet grip like the jaws of a predator, pulling you upward, forward, onward.

Your exoskeleton gleams faintly in the lightless dark of the mines. It is armor, it is skin. It protects you from the weight of the world, from the falling dust, the slick edges of jagged stone.

Your mandibles are your tools, your voice, your teeth. They carve, they carry, they cut. They are strong, sharp, tireless. You use them to pull a crumb from the cold ground, to move a pebble that blocks your path.

And yet, within you, there is something else.

A memory, sharp and out of place, like a thorn lodged in the soft tissue of your mind.

You remember the weight of your body, the heaviness of flesh and bone. You remember the roughness of calloused hands, the sensation of wind pressing against your skin.

You remember walking upright. Striding, not scuttling. Seeing the horizon with two forward-facing eyes, not fragmented into countless tiny images.

You remember hunger, a gnawing ache in your stomach. It was different then—larger, all-encompassing. It was not the constant need that drives you now, but a sharp, insistent demand. You remember wishing for food, for water, for warmth.

You remember love.

Or do you?

The memory is slippery, like dew on your antennae, evaporating as soon as you try to hold it. You remember the warmth of another body, the soft weight of a hand on your shoulder, the sound of laughter.

But the details are gone.

Your body is instinct. It knows what to do. It knows how to move, how to survive.

You are a single piece of something vast, a fragment of a greater whole. You do not question your place, your purpose among the many. You know the scent of your sisters, the hum of their movements, the rhythm of their work.

The tunnels twist and stretch infinitely, each path leading nowhere and everywhere. You walk, your legs tapping on slick rock, leaving no trace of your passage.

You think of sunlight, though you cannot remember what it feels like.

You are in the mines, and the air is strange. It is empty, cold, silent.

Your legs move, but you do not know where they are taking you.

Your antennae twitch, but they find no familiar signals.

Your mandibles clench, but there is nothing to hold, nothing to carry.

It comes in flashes, fragmented and strange, like light fractured through a crystal. You see walls of stone, slick with moisture. You feel the press of the tunnels around you, the weight of the mountain above.

You remember the ache in your stomach, the dryness in your throat. You were lost.

You were so hungry.

You remember stumbling through the darkness, your hands scraping against jagged rock. Your breath came in shallow gasps, each one carrying a whispered plea:

Food. Just a little something sweet. Please.

The world is vast, and you are small.

Your compound eyes catch faint glimmers of light, fractured and multiplied. Each fragment is a mystery, a question your body cannot answer.

You climb over a ridge of stone, your legs finding the smallest holds. Your body leans forward, and your feet grip the smooth surface.

You breathe, though you do not have lungs. Air moves through the spiracles along your body, a rhythm of life so quiet you do not notice it.

You were a man, alone in the mines, and you wished for sugar.

Now you are an ant.

You are small.

A shadow falls over you, vast and incomprehensible. You do not understand it, but your body does. Your legs freeze, your antennae fold close to your head.

You are lifted.

The world moves in ways you cannot control. The air shifts, the ground is gone, and you dangle in the grasp of something greater than you can imagine.

You are an ant.

You are small.

And you are no longer in control of your body.

The air moves around you, a rush of warmth and scent. You feel the ridges of fingers pressing against your tiny body, the rough pads of skin.

You remember hands.

Not these hands. Your hands.

The memory sharpens, cutting through the haze of instinct. You remember holding a shard of rock, scraping it against the wall in desperation. You remember the faintest trace of sweetness, the ghost of sugar embedded in the stone. You licked it, over and over, until your tongue bled.

You breathe.

Or you think you do.

The hands that hold you now are not your own. They are vast, cradling you like a treasure, turning you this way and that. You see fragments of the world: a face, wrinkled and kind; a shawl draped over narrow shoulders; the glow of firelight.

You are placed on a surface, smooth and cold.

And then it comes.

The golden liquid, thick and warm, pours over you. It clings to your body, seeping into the cracks of your exoskeleton. It smells sweet. So sweet.

The memory stirs again, vivid and sharp. You remember the tunnels, the hunger, the endless wishing for sugar.

And now, here it is.

You are drowning in it.

The warmth spreads, and your body begins to harden. The movement of your legs slows. The twitching of your antennae ceases.

You remember being a man.

You remember wishing for sugar.

And now, you are sugar.

You are candy, sweet and perfect, suspended in amber light.

The memory fades, leaving only a faint echo of sweetness, a faint sense of relief.

You do not breathe.

You do not move.

You are no longer an ant.

You are a wish fulfilled.