A Case of Time-Travelling Shorts

First Flight: An ant on a date.

This story is dedicated to MeBeingDifficult. Here is your story, featuring Reia: an ant on a date. Hope you have as much fun reading it, as I did writing it!

The nest was suffocatingly full. Worker ants wove in and around each other through the dark tunnels, carrying out their daily tasks like the tiny black gears of a massive engine. They scuttled with uniformity. With purpose: all working for the good of Madre. Life bringer. The colony was one machine, hissing with efficiency

Reia scuttled anxiously after Sachi into the food chamber, where the scavenged remnants of today's meal awaited them. Workers swarmed on and around her, their black bodies bristling with suppressed rage. Reia was much bigger than the workers, and she ebbed the flow of their efficient tunnels with her bulk.  She tucked her wings closer to her body, not wanting to lose them so close to being free. Most of the colony’s workers served Madre, and while Reia had a few followers of her own, she knew she could not stay for much longer. Trouble was brewing. After all, there could only be one Madre.

The food chamber was Reia's favorite place. The large, subterranean chamber was so close to the surface that she could practically smell the sunlight- something she had yet to experience. Sometimes, the room was dim enough to make out the shapes of ants around her. Today was one of those days.  Sachi led her to an empty table on the top-tunnel. It wasn't the most sought after spot, but it was discrete. Reia shifted her body underfoot, feet clinging to the soil above. I'm getting so big. Big enough to be an issue- there could only be one Madre. She shuddered to think what would happen if Madre sent her pheromone driven droves after her. I have to get out of here- soon. The colony that had once been her home was morphing more into a death trap with each passing day, baited with jealousy and  competition.

“Do you think today will be the day?” Reia asked.

Sachi gave her a harsh look. “Today is full of possibilities. I have hope that you will meet someone.” She moved her antennae encouragingly, using her mandibles to screw a forked twig into the ground above Reia’s feet. The stiff leaf, still attached to the twig, would keep food hammock-ed within eating reach. “You will like today’s suitor.”

“Yes, Sachi.”

What am I going to do without you when I take flight? Reia wondered idly. Sachi had raised her from a larvae. The worker ant had told her stories through her pupae-hood: of the ever-tunnel. "The top is blue.” Sachi had once told her. “It is so high that you could fly for a lifetime and never walk on its surface. And the bottom is green- you could walk for two lifetimes and never begin the ascent up the tunnel's sides. One day you will see it for yourself." Monsters also inhabited the ever-tunnel. Yellow-black winged beasts that ravaged nearby colonies; and death gas, which misted down from the high above, brought down by the wrath of giants. Sachi was smartest ant Reia had ever met. But her taste in men...

Operation: find a suitable mate for flight had been in progress for days now- but it was not going as well as Reia had envisaged: Yesterday's date had been a soldier. Dull, wingless, and uncouth: his bulbous head had swelled out from his body like a fat caterpillar’s. While Reia had struggled to make conversation with the monosyllabic soldier, his clumsy mandibles had upended their shared grasshopper platter, which had careened onto the diners below, crushing a worker's leg on impact.

Of all the brothers to choose from… a soldier? Surely Madre had created some more idealistic males for her to choose from. How else was she going to get out of this place? She hoped today’s suitor would be a better match. Sachi left to bring her suitor to her.

After what seemed like an eternity, with only hostile workers for company, Sachi approached her top-tunnel table to bring in the next potential. Reia felt her heart race in her thorax. Wings! The male had wings! That was a good start. Her stomach wriggled in anticipation. The winged male approached the table.