Outside, in the dark, the scorpion sat in the dust. Its mind was not, in fact, large enough to feel gratitude, but it understood death / not-death. It was not-dead. There had been large dark blurs and movement and at the end it was still not-dead. Insomuch as a scorpion could find anything interesting, that would have been it. Eventually, one leg at a time, it picked its way into the dark.
