Chapter Text
Dot didn’t remember getting out of bed.
She didn’t remember opening her eyes or scrambling out from beneath her patchwork petal quilt or climbing down from the edge of the hollowed-out acorn she slept in. She didn’t remember sprinting to the other side of her bedroom. She didn’t remember Aphie whining and pawing at her knees before finally scurrying away to alert someone else in the anthill.
She could hardly even remember the dream she’d had now, the one that had thrust her from her sleep for the third night this week. She could recall fragments of it: jagged teeth, jointed legs, a milky gray eye with a scar right through its middle. The roar of too many wings beating together all at once. A voice so gentle it was cruel.
What’s the matter?
All Dot knew was that one moment she’d been drifting asleep to her mother’s hums and the next she was wide awake and huddled in the corner of her room, arms wrapped tight around her chest like she was trying to keep her heart from jumping out of it. She opened her mouth to call for help and took a sharp gulp of air instead.
Then another.
And another.
Panic flared bright inside of her. She closed her eyes and tried to do the counting trick she’d watched Atta do once — one-two-three-four in, one-two-three-four out — but her mind wouldn’t hold still long enough for it to work. Her lungs were starting to throb.
You scared of grasshoppers?
Dot squeezed her eyes harder and hugged herself until it hurt, wings buzzing uselessly behind her. She wanted her mom but didn’t want her mom. She wanted her sister but didn’t want her sister.
Flik, she tried again to say, but his name was only a breath that scraped her throat on the way out.
“Dot?”
She didn’t remember him running down the tunnel behind Aphie or pushing past the leaf that hung over her doorway or crossing the room in five steps to get to her. She didn’t remember hearing his knees creak as he knelt down in front of her or feeling his shadow fall softly across her shaking body or sensing his antennae as they brushed against her own.
All Dot knew was that one moment she’d been alone and afraid without knowing why and the next she was wrapped up in a pair of arms that pulled her tight to someone else’s chest, her cheek pressed against the steady thrum of a heart she knew like her own.
“Flik,” she finally whispered, and suddenly she could breathe again.