To Be Taught, If Fortunate

by Becky Chambers

I want you to picture the following creatures: a bat, a bird, and a bee. Specifically, picture their wings. All of these limbs serve the same purpose, but structurally, they’re quite different. Their wings, to put it simply, are not related to each other. In biology, this is called convergent evolution – two or more species independently developing similar features that weren’t present in their most recent common ancestor. Bats and bees can both fly, but this doesn’t mean they’re cousins. These creatures did not branch off from one airborne great-grandparent.

A moth was a caterpillar, once, but it no longer is a caterpillar. It cannot break itself back down, cannot metamorphose in reverse. To try to eat leaves again would mean starvation. Crawling back into the husk would provide no shelter. It is a paradox – the impossibility of reclaiming that which lies behind, housed within a form comprised entirely of the repurposed pieces of that same past. We exist where we begin, yet to remain there is death.

We tread lightly in this sanctuary. But it is also a place I’ve come to inhabit fully. For the moment, the cave is home. I think, to answer the question I asked myself on Opera, a home can only exist in a moment. Something both found and made. Always temporary, in the grand scheme of things, but vital all the same.