When it was clean, he still felt a wholly unreasonable sense of humiliation. It was not clearly thought out, of course. Burl feared huge insects too much to hate them. But that small creatures should fasten upon him produced a completely irrational feeling of outrage. For the first time in very many years or centuries a human being upon the forgotten planet felt that he had been insulted. His dignity had been assailed. Burl raged.
But as he raged, a triumphant shout came from nearby. Jon and Dor were returning from their foraging, loaded down with edible mushroom. They, also, had taken a step upward toward the natural dignity of men. They had so far forgotten their terror as to shout in exultation at their find of food. Up to now, Burl had been the only man daring to shout. Now there were two others.
In his overwrought state this was also enraging. The result of hurt vanity on two counts was jealousy, and the result of jealousy was a crazy foolhardiness. Burl ground his teeth and insanely resolved to do something so magnificent, so tremendous, so utterly breathtaking that there could be no possible imitation by anybody else. His thinking was not especially clear. Part of his motivation had been provided by the oil-beetle larvae. He glared about him at the deepening dusk, seeking some exploit, some glamorous feat, to perform immediately, even in the night.
It was late dusk and the reddened clouds overhead were deepening steadily toward black. Dark shadows hung everywhere. The clay cliff cut off all vision to one side, but elsewhere Burl could see outward until the graying haze blotted out the horizon. Here and there, bees droned homeward to hive or burrow. Sometimes a slender, graceful wasp passed overhead, its wings invisible by the swiftness of their vibration.
A few butterflies lingered hungrily in the distance, seeking the few things they could still feast upon. No moth had wakened yet to the night. The cloud-bank grew more sombre. The haze seemed to close in and shrink the world that Burl could see.
He watched, raging, for the sight that would provide him with the triumph to end all triumphs among his followers. The soft, down-reaching fingers of the night touched here and there and the day ended at those spots. Then, from the heart of the deep redness to the west a flying creature came. It was a beautiful thing--a yellow emperor butterfly--flapping eastward with great sail-like velvet wings that seemed black against the sunset. Burl saw it sweep across the incredible sky, alight delicately, and disappear behind a mass of toadstools clustered so thickly they seemed nearly a hillock and not a mass of growing things.