the lamp-fly is drawn only to candle-coloured light and only to lamps that are read by. fluorescent tubes and screens do not attract it. an unread lamp will not gather it at all. a lamp lit beside a book gathers them by the half-dozen.
it does not bite. when it arrives it circles in a particular triangular figure — three turns clockwise, then one against — and settles on the dustier side of the shade. it is the colour of a comma in a long sentence, and not much bigger.
two lamp-flies in one room is uncommon; three is, in the opinion of one observer, an omen. it favours old novels read in solitude, and is sometimes confused with the hour-moth.
— the small ones came back when i opened the book i'd been pretending to read. — d.f., late.