Ribbon-Cutting Instadrabbling by Anne Wolfe

The Ants

Written during instadrabbling for the Silmarillion Writers' Guild's Site-Reopening Party. The prompt was William Blake's A Dream.

A great deal of my inspiration for this came from learning that William Blake, the author of the prompt, was the third of seven children.

(Tyelko is here meant as a Quenya nickname for Celegorm.)

Nobody else could hear the ants. But Tyelko could— he could hear cats and horses, too, but today he wanted to listen to the ants.

searching, murmured the ants; searching searching searching.

And then, from a distant grain of corn: food! food food food.

But another shouted from an unheard corner, lost! lost!

It made his stomach hurt. Carefully he scooped her up with the end of his fingernail, and returned her to her sisters. hello! they said, and not lost now! she said.

So they all gathered around the grain of corn, and together began to carry it home.