Disclaimer: I wish it was mine, but it's not.

.lights out.

Its birth is a simple matter of breaking the soft elastic shell of the egg and taking a first breath in the cold darkness.

The first days it does not eat, sustained by nutrients stocked during its development, and travels up, up and up, drawn to the soft pale light filtering through the trees.

There it slinks between shadows, watching and waiting, until its wandering eyes stop upon a flicker of gold dancing over the water. It coils, then springs, still clumsy but fast enough to catch the firefly, tasting the light on its tongue and in its mind, before sinking back to its domain.

It grows this way, year after year and firefly after firefly, until none remain to illuminate the cool currents of the lake. Then, hungering, it starts turning its gaze over the stars reflected, candle-like, in the mirror of the water, and one day it opens its mouth wide and swallows one of them. It is pure and burning into its stomach, but it sates its hunger for a while.

Later it does it again, and grows larger and hungrier as the stars go out one by one, its eyes dark and glittering feverishly through the shade.

It is a long, long time, more than ten times a man's lifespan, before the heavens stop shining and become as dark as the place it was born in.

Then it grows restless, deprived of food, until one night the moon shines, silvery and cold enough to freeze, right over its head, shifting with the tide and the wind.

It is drawn to it, to the light and the frost that will soothe the fire burning within it, and with a mere whisper of parting water and a crest of white foam riding away to die over the sand, the Whopper rises over Agata Lake and devours the moon whole.

.fin.