Fire Moths

Juggling with torches in the dark last night, I felt a little brave. I'd managed to burn a few arm hairs, and gain a soot mark on one arm. Then came the moths, and I felt not quite so brave. They were flying around and between the columns of fire.

Imagine wearing a jet pack, and trying to avoid three flying spinning tubes, each 10 times your length, spouting a giant flame at one end. The flame is about 10 times your height, and will burn you to death if it hits you. This is possibly the ultimate extreme sport, comparable perhaps only to Douglas Adam's solar flare surfing.

Flare-riding is one of the most exotic and exhilarating sports in existence, and those who can dare and afford it are amongst the most lionized men in the Galaxy. It is also of course stupefyingly dangerous — those who don't die riding invariably die of sexual exhaustion at one of the Daedalus Club's Apres-Flare parties.

I'm sure a couple of moths got surprised by a flame and spiraled blackened to the floor, but I don't know what they got up to afterwards. I went for a good night's sleep.