Chapter One
At the Window
It arrives without announcing itself. A small pale shape fastens to the outside of a window while the room is occupied with more urgent things: a pot on the stove, a late message, a child looking for a shoe. When somebody finally sees it, the moth seems to have appeared from nowhere. Its wings are held against the glass. It does not know that the room behind the glass is asking what it is.
Imagine the view from its side. The pane is only one surface among others, except that light makes it strange. The moth may have crossed a garden, a wall and a narrow strip of paving before it reached this place. It may have spent its earlier life on a plant nobody in the house can name. There is no need to invent a heroic journey for it. The real journey from leaf to wing is enough.
We often meet moths at the moment that least explains them. A lamp can gather a few species into a convenient little exhibition. We look at the insects that enter its glow and silently award the lamp credit for producing them. But light is not habitat. A moth needs the right food at the right stage, shelter while it changes shape, a route through the night and a chance to encounter others of its kind. The luminous circle can reveal an animal while concealing the system that made it possible.
