Bug Catchers

It was strange to see Zara’s pale, slender fingers stained with soil and leftover grass, but Mercury thought he was slowly getting used to the sight. Zara had always been particular about his looks. He’d always worried about things that were meaningless to Mercury — the colour of his shirt, the style of a hairclip, the perfect shape of his coat. Mercury had learned to see through that, past the colourful feather boas and statement pieces. Maybe because they’d been friends for so long. Still, seeing Zara smiling so wide while he was out in the wild. The vast unknown, a place they were both a little unfamiliar with, but Zara more so than Mercury.

“What about this one?” Zara asked proudly, mismatched twinkling as he held a squirming bug aloft. Just a few days ago, when he and Mercury had arrived, he’d been appalled at the idea of holding a bug bare-handed. And Mercury wasn’t going to force him — not to hold them bare-handed, not to touch them or catch them at all. And yet, it was Zara who insisted, day after day, that he was fine with this.

“Good enough,” Mercury said, and then he remembered what they talked about, and how his curt sentences and answers could sound to others. Of course, Zara knew him, and he knew what Mercury meant whenever he was short and to the point. Zara was, however, the easiest person Mercury could practice with, so he cleared his throat and tried again: “That looks very good. To me, at least… I don’t think… I just think… The critter will think it’s fine, won’t it?”

It felt like Mercury had just repeated the same thing over and over. It felt awkward to his ears, but if Zara agreed, he didn’t indicate it. Instead, he just nodded, then stretched his arm towards Mercury. Ready for it, Mercury opened his palm so that the other man could deposit the bug on his open palm, and then he quickly scanned their surroundings for a glass jar he could put the bug in.

“I think it looks good too,” Zara said finally once the bug was out of his hands. “Do you think the little guy is picky? He didn’t seem so, right?”

Mercury made a dismissive sound which he knew Zara would take to mean “no”, when in fact it stood somewhere between “I don’t think so” and “I don’t care”. The little guy, as Zara generously called him, was truly a strange critter. So strange that Mercury suspected he wasn’t a critter at all — rather something else, something very intelligent that they shouldn’t underestimate — which they should even be a little wary of.

But Zara wasn’t wary. No, Zara was friendly with them, even. He collected bugs each day so that they’d be able to feed them every night, and he always did so using his best “Hey I’m your friend and we’re equal tones” and whatever the creatures were, they seemed like him. Perhaps these sympathies didn’t fully transfer onto Mercury as well, but he didn’t mind. They existed in a strange tolerance.

He placed the bug inside the jar he found in his backpack, then smiled a little. He had to admit that, against all odds, it wasn’t only Zara that had been charmed. The creatures started growing on him as well.