The air was thick and humid. An intoxicatingly sweet smell clung to each and every molecule of water vapour, smothering the colony with its fumes. Our antennae trembled as the scent of pheromones resonated in viscous waves through our trembling bodies and restless legs. My mandibles tightened around the large lump of white fungus that I had torn off from the gardens a just a few minutes earlier.

The hour was drawing closer. How much longer do we need to wait? The thought repeated like a broken record. The smell around me thickened, and my sisters scurried around, unable to keep themselves still. It was so close, so very close.

Suddenly, the forest erupted in a flurry of wings and explosions of pheromones soaked the air with adrenaline. In every direction ants were flying, the princess ants of all the colonies in the area playing an exhilarating game of tag with their suitors. The nuptial flight had begun.

I was also a princess, and I was delighted to find that at least six males were already on my pheromone trail, beating their wings furiously to catch up to me.

I smirked (well not really, because ants can’t smirk, but you get the idea). We’ll see how many of you can actually keep up!

I increased my speed, soaring away from the nest faster than any of the other alates. I shot through the air, gracefully weaving between the folds of foliage before precisely landing on the edge of a wide leaf. To my surprise, four of them were still following me. I very carefully put down the fungus I was holding between my mandibles. If I lost this fungus, my dreams of a colony would be over.

“You boys are pretty fast for a bunch of lazy gluttons,” I said, as they approached me. And yes, by ‘said’, I mean that I released a specific combination of pheromones which communicated more or less the same idea. “I assume you’ve all prepared an offering?”

“Of course we have, your majesty,” one of them answered, who I mentally named ‘Unus’. “I have prepared a portion from the very best of our colony’s farm. Please try it.” Unus approached me confidently and pressed his mouth against mine, regurgitating the liquefied food he had stored in his social stomach. A bitter, viscous soup flowed into my mouth, and I cringed.

“Your colony’s fungus tastes like rotting frogs!” I cried. Unus shrunk back, his earlier confidence gone without a trace.

“I-I’m sorry...I’ll dismiss myself right away—”

“Wait. Although your offering tasted gross, it does guarantee that you came from a different colony than I do. Besides, you have already proven your speed and strength in our little game of tag. I shall allow you to mate with me.”

Mating with a male of your own colony was terrible for genetic diversity. That was why I needed to fly far from my own nest before mating.

After I mated with all four males, who were thankfully all from different colonies, I picked up my ball of fungus, and launched myself back into the air. Compared to before, my flight was slow and leisurely. All of the males had left after mating was complete, except for Unus, who trailed behind me.

“Where are you headed, your majesty?” he asked.

“Never mind that, why are you still following me? Shouldn’t you be spending the last bit of your short life with your colony?”

Unus chuckled awkwardly. “You said it yourself, your majesty. I’m but a lazy glutton—my sisters bring me my food and I don’t do any work for the colony...But now that I have completed my duty, I do not wish to burden my colony any longer. I will die out here.”

I scoffed. “If I were you, I’d go back anyway.” He didn’t reply.

Although I had not noticed it earlier, the feeling of flying was truly amazing. The wind washed over my exoskeleton and scattered the dirt and dust that had accumulated and clung to my body over my entire lifetime. It felt revealing, as if I had shed a layer of skin. It was amazing to be clean. I felt a pang of sadness knowing that I would soon shed these wings. I wondered if Unus felt the same.

We landed on the petal of a large, orange-red flower. Around us, alates buzzed loudly, the girls playing hard-to-get, and the boys earnestly chasing. Below them, on the ground, a festival was going on. Workers poured out from the anthills, their social stomachs filled to the brim with fungus to share. They danced about, playing celebratory songs with hearty stridulation. Guards dutifully patrolled the area, keeping predators away from the partying ants and alates.

“This is my family,” I said, pointing an antenna down towards the mass of ants. “My mother, sisters, and brothers are down there. The small and kind nurses who raised me from when I was a helpless, legless larva, the grumpy garbage-duty ladies who always complained about my picky eating habits, and the tough soldiers who I looked up to—they’re all down there. But I’m not gonna see them anymore, even though I really, really want to.”

I turned towards Unus. “I’m sure it’s the same for you, right?”

He was silent for a moment, but then shook his head. “Even so, I still do not wish to go back. Your majesty, I implore you to allow me to remain by your side until I die.”

I sighed. “Suit yourself.”

“My thanks.” Unus bowed his head towards me, though I had already turned away from him.

I took off, flying away from home, with nothing but fungus between my mandibles and Unus close behind me. I looked back one last time at my sisters frolicking on the ground, and for a moment I thought I caught a glimpse of one of them waving its antennae at me.

I waved back.

The moon’s glare slipped through the thick foliage of the canopy and scattered across the dark forest floor. Occasionally the rays of light would glance off the ghostly strands of a spider web, reminding me that one small misstep could end my life here. I glanced back, but I had long lost sight of my home colony.

“Fly far, far away,” the queen had told us. “Otherwise your new colony will eventually become competition for us.”

I tightened my hold around the ball of fungus between my mandibles. It was a parting gift, a coming-of-age token, a memento of my family, and the lifeblood of my new colony. I could not lose it, no matter what. Even if I would never see my old colony again I would have this fungus to remember them by.

“This area is dangerous, your majesty. Some Eciton army ants are passing through,” Unus announced, pointing an antenna downwards. Of course, I didn't need Unus to tell me that. Even in the darkness, their alien presence wrapped around me as if it were trying to drag me down. A fierce, dark river of legs and jaws flowed across the forest ground, tearing apart every living being sight. I watched as the charging Eciton split the disorganized defence of a colony of smaller ants, with the pale-headed soldiers quickly stationing themselves to guard the flanks of the main force. This formation was the key to the relentless momentum which had led to the collapse of millions of colonies.

Were this my home nest, our soldiers likely would have been able to put up a strong defence, but for me, starting a colony in army ant territory would be suicide.

“Let us try this direction,” I whispered.

A few minutes later, we landed at the base of a tall plant with large, round leaves. The ground was sprawling with organic material, a perfect place for fungus to grow. With the help of Unus, I began to burrow into the ground and hollow out the first chamber of my new colony.

Abruptly, Unus, who was dutifully excavating chunks of dirt, turned and left the shallow burrow.

“Where are you headed?” I asked him.

Without turning around, he replied, “I will go collect some leaf litter to feed the fungus.”

“Really? Do you have enough strength to do that?”

“Yes, of course.” Unus scurried off with a strange limp in his step. Should I follow him? He was no doubt near the end of his lifespan, but I was expecting him to live a few more hours at least.

After a moment, I left the burrow. There was no way Unus had the energy to gather leaf litter. He was nowhere in sight, but he had left a faint pheromone trail, so faint that the lightest wind would scatter it. I needed to be fast.

I leapt off the ground—and fell back down. I felt the tear of my wing as it broke off my body, fell to the ground, and I was struck with the grim realization that my wings would no longer be of any use to me.

“Unus?” I called out. I scattered my own pheromones into the air, hoping he would notice them and return to me. I quickly crawled forward, trying to catch the last of Unus’ pheromone trail, but there was nothing left.

There was one more thing I could do. With quick, successive motions, I raised and lowered my gaster, scraping my post-petiole against my first gastric tergite, creating a high-pitched screeching sound that resonated through the earth around me. It was a trick I had picked up from the foragers in my colony—stridulation.

Only a few moments passed before Unus was right before me. “Your majesty! Is everything alright?” His movements were sluggish, his limp was more pronounced, and he was horrifyingly emaciated. “You’ve begun to shed your wings! Is it painf—”

“I was looking for you,” I interrupted. “What happened to your body? You look like you’re about to roll over.”

Unus relaxed. “I am relieved that you seem to be fine. Don’t worry about me, your majesty.”

“You’re starving. Have some fungus.” I set the fungus ball down before him. “Didn’t you eat before the nuptial flight?”

Unus turned his head away. “No, quite the opposite in fact. I emptied out my stomach so that I could fly faster.” Unus slowly dragged himself away from me. He managed a weak grin. “There’s no way I would’ve been able to keep up with you otherwise.”

“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” I demanded. “Surely you’re not just leaving after all that desperate begging to stay by my side?”

He shook his head. “I might attract predators, or cause disease, so I can’t die near the nest. I don’t want to be a burden—”

I grabbed Unus by his leg and dragged him back towards the nest.

“Wha—”

“Fool. You irredeemable fool! Cease your cowardly actions and keep your mouth shut.”

“But—”

“What kind of servant starts his sentence with ‘but’? You don't want to eat? Fine. You want to die? I couldn’t care less. But you’re an ant, and ants don’t die alone.” I dragged him into the burrow. “Keep digging till you’re dead,” I commanded, perhaps a bit harsher than I intended to be.

“—You left the fungus back there.”

“...Dammit.” I stormed off angrily.

A few minutes later I was back inside my new home. We had carved out a spacious and secure cavern, and the fungus lay against the wall. At last, I began to lay fertilized eggs around the fungus. Within about two weeks these eggs would hatch into larvae and would feed upon the fungus.

Unus stood at one side of the cavern, unmoving. I was wondering if he had already died—often deaths went unnoticed until the body began to rot—when he began to speak.

“Your majesty...thank you. I’m glad you were my queen.”

I laid my first egg, shone a soft translucent white. I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by its cuteness.

Unus continued. “Maybe I should’ve been more selfish. Perhaps I should’ve returned to my colony to die with my family. One extra dead ant would not have been much of a burden.”

I laid my second and third eggs, each as cute as the first. These would become my first daughters. Emotion welled up from within me.

“But, your majesty...please, be less selfish in the future.”

At last, my second wing broke off and fell to the ground. I was no longer a princess, but a queen.“Yeah, I know. I don’t need you to tell me,” I retorted. Unus, however, was no longer listening, resting motionless beside the rows of eggs lined up against the cavern wall.

A powerful and wild sense of wonder rippled through me as the wind slid across my exoskeleton. My limbs immediately began to burst with energy as oxygen poured into my spiracles.

"Woah…!" I breathed, awestruck. I had only heard stories about the ridged behemoths which protruded from the earth, holding up the magnificent green sky far above us.

"It's awesome, right? Way better than babysitting or gardening!" Ada exclaimed beside me.

“How long are you two going to stand there for? Start marching!” Sedan growled, her enormous, armoured bulk looming over us. Sedan’s enormous, muscled head and large, serrated mandibles exuded raw strength, characteristic of the many soldiers which guarded the colony and foraging trails.

“Aw, you’re such a bore, sis! Need me to loosen up your gaster?” Ada sneered. I shrunk back, hoping Ada’s provocations wouldn’t get her into a fight she wouldn’t win.

“If you touch my gaster, you’ll be getting a really painful shot of formic acid for lunch, if you’re not dead.”

“Your threats go on way too long,” Ada retorted.

“Start moving, I’m not going to guard useless ants.” Sedan skittered away, into a stream of ants leaving the nest, clearly expecting us to follow. We did.

Following the thick pheromone trail, we scurried along the dark soil. A few steps away was another column of ants returning to the nest, with wide, freshly cut leaves in their mouths, which were often much larger than their own bodies, all the while reinforcing the pheromone trail, a promise that there were still more leaves at the site they just harvested.

At last, Ada, Sedan, and I reached the base of a brown ridged behemoth, upon which many of my older sisters were already biting away at its spade-shaped foliage.

"Alright Anna, show me whatcha got!" Ada gestured enthusiastically towards a large leaf relatively close to the ground. “I bet you could lift more than Sedan over here.”

Sedan sent an acidic glare, and I thought I caught a slight whiff of something acrid. I really wished Ada would stop teasing Sedan.

"Ah, I don’t know about that..." I sheepishly replied. I had only practiced on the smaller pre-cut leaves during gardening duty.

"S'okay, just try! I'll give you pointers if you're having trouble!"

Spurred on by Ada's enthusiasm, I climbed onto the leaf, and awkwardly got into position, firmly planting my posterior legs on the outer edge of the leaf and primed my mandibles, holding them against the edge of the leaf. I glanced at Ada, who nodded excitedly at me to start cutting.

Using my right mandible to pull my left mandible through the leaf, I began to drag my sharp appendages in a semi-circle across the surface of the leaf. The durability of the thin leaf, the sweet liquid which shimmered on the green, the familiar sensations gave me confidence in myself. I had practiced cutting up these leaves many times before—the only difference was that these ones were larger.

I used my front leg to pull the edge of the leaf in, stiffening the surface and giving me more control. My jaw muscles began to ache, I lapped up the sugary water leaf’s xylems, almost immediately feeling my strength return.

I cut a wide semi-circle into the leaf, carefully rotating my body as I went and replenishing my calories with the plant’s sugary water whenever I tired. After my final incision, I triumphantly held the leaf fragment, roughly ten times my own weight, over my head.

“You did it perfectly!” Ada cried, rubbing her antennae against mine with affection.

“Hardly.” Sedan scoffed, “She was much too slow and forgot to stridulate.”

“Oh no, I totally forgot to stridulate!” I had been so concentrated on cutting the leaf I had forgotten to send the customary vibrations meant to direct other ants to my leaf and aid in cutting speed. “I’m so ashamed!” All that practice and I still forgot!

“Hey, why are you stomping on her anthill? It’s her first time foraging.”

However, Sedan was no longer listening—her eyes were drawn to a different scene, on the ground below. The path home had been blocked off by a dense, relentless river of black legs, with the occasional grotesque white head ominously skittering past.

“By the queen, it’s the Eciton burchelli!” Sedan growled, and immediately began crawling down the plant.

Ada and I followed her down the plant and through the crowd of tense members of our colony. Along the edges of the column of Eciton, there were guards posted at regular intervals, their mandibles primed to strike at any leafcutter that came near. My sisters, too, seemed to be ready for a skirmish to break out.

Sedan stormed up towards one of the Eciton. “What do you think you lot are doing? Your little legs are in the way of our foraging trail.”

“And we are sooooooo sorry,” the Eciton guard spat, “for getting in the way of your mushroom planting,”

Sedan lunged forward, her large mandibles snapping at the smaller army ant’s legs, who just barely backed out of range. The guard’s gaster bent into the air to point towards Sedan.

“You don’t want to get into a war with us. Why don’t you get back to pruning trees?”

“Just because our species have a nonaggression pact doesn’t mean I can’t bite a few of your legs off,” Sedan snarled. “You and your colony better scurry away real quick, or you won’t be able to when—”

“Has anyone told you your threats go on way too long? I only live for a few days, you know?” As the last of the Eciton swarm skittered past us, the guard left as well, leaving me with a very angry Sedan, and a much too happy Ada.

With a sharp glare, Sedan turned to us. “You’re lucky they were Eciton burchelli and not Nomamyrmex. Those guys, you attack on sight, you hear me?” Then she crawled away, joining the line of ants returning home.

With a sigh, I said,

“Let’s get this leaf back to the nest.”

The column of returning foragers steadily advanced along the black soil, following the path of pheromones back to the nest. There, some of the nest worker ants like me collected their leaves, pulled them into a cavern near the entrance, and began to process them.

“Jenna! We’re back.” I turned to find Ada and Anna skittering towards me. Anna was carrying a large, neatly cut leaf in her mandibles, while Ada was lounging atop of it, obviously slacking off. As they neared me, Ada hopped off the leaf and excitedly approached me.

“You won’t believe what happened. We ran into a colony of Eciton!”

“Eciton? They aren’t supposed to come near our territory. Anyone get hurt?”

“Nah, nobody got hurt, but Sedan almost got into a skirmish with one of their soldiers.”

“What’d she look like? The Eciton soldier.”

“She was a little pale-faced prick with creepy long hooks for mandibles.”

“Quite the monster, huh? Be careful out there Anna, it’s nothing but brutes and savages outside the nest,” I remarked as Anna laid down her leaf beside me. At once, several of my fellow processor ants gathered and we began to take bites out of it, breaking it down into smaller chunks within our mouths.

Ada continued her rambling, happy she now had a larger audience. “Yup, brutes and savages, all of them. I had to fight off a phorid fly that tried to come after Anna!”

Anna shuddered. “I have the worst luck. Army ants and phorid flies on my first foraging expedition.”

“So that was why you were sitting atop Anna's leaf!” I exclaimed. “I thought you were just being lazy!”

“Me, lazy?” She laughed. “Nooo waaay!”

“Those buggers are messed up,“ added an ant across from me. “Not sure if y’all know Abby, but a phorid fly got its eggs on her. Nobody knew...till she had fly babies crawlin’ out her head.”

“And that’s why grooming is important!” chimed another ant.

“Which Abby was that? I know, like, fourteen,” Ada asked.

As the conversation took a turn, I finished processing a piece of leaf into a nice, mulchy bolus. Though it was not specifically my job to do so, I decided to bring it down to the fungus gardens myself. The odours reminiscent of my childhood and the adorable larvae feeding upon the fungus always warmed my dorsal aorta. After a quick farewell to Anna and Ada, I crawled through the labyrinthine chambers of the nest, squirming by and occasionally climbing over other ants as I made my way deeper and deeper, until I reached a large, grand cavern. Taking up almost the entire cavern was an enormous, gray, skeletal mass—a fungus called Leucoagaricus gongylophorus. Small alcoves and caves of irregular shapes and sizes made up the surface of the structure, and within each, piles of translucent, pale larvae and pupae were attended by the petite nurse ants.

I began to climb up to the top of the great structure. While I would love to watch the adorable young feed gorge themselves on the fungus swellings, I had to bring the leaf bolus to the gardeners. On the top of the fungus mound, thousands of gardeners were busy at work growing new fungus from pieces that they had ripped off the main structure.

“You have substrate for me, I assume?” asked Gabby as I approached her. “Spit it out here.” She gestured with her antennae towards a spot in front of her.

I placed the processed leaf matter where she indicated. “I see you’re curt as ever, Gabby.”

She made no response, instead focusing on fertilizing the substrate with her...um...the point is, she fertilized the substrate. Then, she swiftly picked up a small piece of fungus and set it down on the growing medium.

“What are you gawking at, young lady?” She glared at me coldly. “Scurry along now.” She made a shooing motion with her antennae.

“Don’t be like that, Gabby! How’s the fungus growing?”

“Well…” After a moment, she spoke reluctantly. “It’s been doing quite well. Too well, in fact. It’s growing faster than the pruners can remove the old fungus, so we’ll be out of space in this cavern soon. Oh, and the taste has been improving as well. It must be a new kind of leaf that the foragers are bringing in, because the swellings have been bursting with flav—”

Simultaneously, our antennae straightened out. We both caught the abrupt change in the nearby pheromones, followed by panicked stridulations from our left. A distress call.

“Ugh, not again!” Gabby groaned. We quickly made our way to the source of the stridulations, where I could see that a great many ants had already gathered.

“What’s the commotion?” Gabby demanded.

“Looks like Escovopsis,” someone answered.

“Help us remove the infected part,” another said.

Gabby and I pushed through the crowd to find an abnormally large circular patch of yellow-reddish coloured fungus. That was most definitely the work of Escovopsis.

“The infected area is almost six ants in diameter...how did we not catch this earlier!?” I asked incredulously, as Gabby bit fiercely into the fungus, aiding the other gardeners in carving out the infected patch. Murmurs rippled through the onlookers.

“This has got to have been here for a while now…”

“What if there are other patches that we’ve missed?”

Gabby’s bites were becoming steadier, with less ferocity than when she began. She had ripped out a good amount of the infected fungus, which she handed off to nearby ants for disposal. The side conversations continued.

“Are the antibiotics not working? I never know what the guys on my cuticle are up to.”

“You should talk to them, they’re quite nice.”

Sis, Pseudonocardia can’t speak.”

“Sure they can. I had a chat with my Pseudonocardia yesterday. They’re pumping out Escovopsis growth inhibitors as usual.”

I turned to the delusional ant. “Last I checked, you were a leafcutter ant, not a crazy ant. Now’s not the time to be joking around.”

“No, I’m seri—”

But I didn’t hear the rest of her objection, because at that moment, I noticed that Gabby was standing silent and still. Very, very still.

To be continued.