In the jungle, during one night in each month, the moths did not come to lanterns; through the black reaches of the outer night, so it was said, they flew toward the full moon.

So it was said. He could not recall where he had heard it, or from whom; it had been somewhere on the rivers of Brazil. He had never watched the lanterns at the time of the full moon; when he remembered it was always the dark of the moon or beyond the tropics. Yet the idea of the moths in the high darkness, straining upward, filled him with longing, and at these times he would know that he had not found what he was looking for, nor come closer to discovering what it was.