The One Where Moth Dies

[Ivan]

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— Бра́тья Карама́зовы

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Once it rained. And little Ivan stuck out a glass bottle to catch the raindrops in. He wore the largest smile any child could boast of as his black pelt darkened and thickened even more with the weight of star-water. He knew now that it came from the clouds, and that it was quite not something from space as he understood it, but Ivan would give anything to go back to a simpler time. It felt like he had already lived his life. The only things that burdened his pelt now were his own thoughts, and not rain.

Once it rained, but today a star fell. Ivan had always wanted to touch one.

Ivan was not home when it happened. He went with his father to look at his plants, thinking that he would return home to his mother's warm embrace and care. It always happened like that, and it would forever bear on his conscious — that he hadn't been there. What he would give to be able to tell his mother one last time that he loved her.

The earth quaked, and his body mimicked it, a dull reminder that he was mortal, flesh and blood. Ivan cried out for his father, but he could not hear his own voice. The ground shifted and he was thrown off balance, a strangled cry of confusion warbling from his chest. His shoulders slammed against a rock. Something snapped, but he wasn't sure what.

Now as pain filled his body and his mouth began to drool blood, Ivan felt, for the first time since the meteorite hit, the wild thumping of his heart and the wheezing of his lungs. Something terrible has happened, hasn't it? He lay for a moment and sneezed when a feather brushed his nose. It was the bird's feather. His heart sunk with terror. Where was she? She was usually able to find him anywhere in the territory now. She stayed home today since Ivan was spending some time with Selby.

It suddenly clicked that this was where his father was heading. Renewed by a sudden spirit, he got up and continued, limping his way back home.

It could hardly be called that now.

And Ivan ... Ivan's knees buckled underneath him, hardly ready to withstand reality.