ZarJazz the Magnificent – part one

A meteorite fell. It slipped through a crack in the roof, and dropped gently into an empty room. A spider from the window, watched it fall. It landed on a piece of paper, underneath it a woodlouse rolled up and waited. The residual warmth of the little red rock burnt a small hole. A cat alerted by the sound came to the open doorway of the room, but sniffing smoke turned away. A cockroach came out of the skirting board to have a look, the spider walked down the wall to join it. Together they rolled the stone to the centre of the room. All the other insects that lived within the floor and walls now gathered around it. The rock opening up revealed its message. The bearers of the news spilled out of the house from cracks, cellar and window to spread the news. The termites went to the ant colony by the pathway, the spiders went from house to house, the flies told the wasps and bees, the moths told their cousins the butterflies. The word spread quickly from house to street to town to country, soon all the insects in the land knew the good news.
Moving its antennae to attention indicating that the vast throng thus assembled should quieten, the cockroach looked back with satisfaction at the carpet of life that spread across the streets of Wanniassa. He had done well, he was he knew to be the first disciple.
Edgar, waking to the sound of an incessant chafing and humming, looked briefly at his bedside icon as he did every morning, and stepped yawning to the French window. Outside a vast army of insects covered every house in view, every tree was alive with a myriad of multicoloured beetles, every patch of ground moved and undulated as black and grey and brown insects three or four deep took turns on top to see. Where there was no ground they also hovered and fluttered filling the sky. “You’ve come at last then” he said stepping out, and every insect chattered, chirruped and rattled in joy. Stooping he moved his hand to brush gently at the insects in front, who bent, reared up and twisted, and fell on their backs in an attempt to touch legs with the great hand. Edgar smiled at the cockroach, which taking this as a queue moved up Edgar’s arm to rest on his right shoulder. Edgar leaned to the other side and the spider with obvious happiness leapt onto his outstretched hand and moved quickly to take up his place on the left. Edgar standing up to his full height raised up his hands into the air, which seemed to part before him as the clouds of flying things moved aside. “Today” he said, “today, I come amongst you as your Lord, under my true name of ZarJazz” at the sound of which the insects in whichever way they could made effort to copy, a zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz sound resounding through them and beyond, the name being taken up as soon as it was heard, and travelling on swift wings across the land, so that it echoed and rebounded filling the air. Edgar waited whilst his true name settled into and within the crowd, its power filling them with the long hidden knowledge that he and they were not of this earth. Then he began to speak “for long years you have been trapped on this planet, you have fared well, you have multiplied, but now it is time, come, and I will lead you to another place across the sea where there is something that is rightfully ours.”