In the Spider's Grip

A minuscule epic transpires inside a sun-bleached meadow where Aurélie, a velvet-winged house-fly with the swagger of a Parisian flapper, filches viscous gold from a gendarme of a bee whose thorax gleams like burnished brass. The heist collapses; wings tangle, antennae quiver, the sky tilts. From the shadows of a corncockle strides Capricorn, a horned beetle whose carapace carries the patina of forgotten samurai armor—he parries the stinger with a twig-rapier, wins the damsel, and slips a dew-drop ring upon her foreleg. Their betrothal is celebrated in the hollow of an oak, lit by fireflies who flicker like paparazzi flashbulbs, while Uncle Anatole—an oblong dung-beetle in a moth-eaten waistcoat—raises a thimble of mead, toasting the absurdity of love in a world where every petal conceals a guillotine.