the solstice moth flies only on the year's two longest days. it does not move in any other season. for the rest of the calendar it folds itself against the south side of an attic beam, pale as the dust there, and rehearses the wing-pattern by which the next solstice will be known.
twelve small marks ring each wing — the lay observer counts them and finds them satisfyingly correct. the central eye, a single warm disc, is rumoured to keep time with the actual sun. catch one at noon and the disc warms perceptibly in the palm; at midnight it cools.
it does not pair with the hour-moth, which it considers undignified, nor with the evening gnat, with which it shares only the family preference for the long blue slant of dusk.
— marked the date on the window and waited. woke to find the moth gone and the date wet with rain. — a.s.