"I knew what they wanted," she said. "What's to talk about?"

"Everything," he said. "There's everything to talk about. Love is a carnival! It's an adventure! There should be tenderness in all this, there should be soulfulness! The unexamined light is not worth flashing! A man and woman in sexual union are the very hinge of futurity! They are the opened door to the renewal of life. Flesh in a fertile unity, that is the gate through which all else must pass …"

"You're kind of a cute guy, for a Photinus."

"I keep in shape."

"You came here to mate, not to talk philosophy. Sex is what you wanted, isn't it? Go on, admit that."

"Well, yeah. Of course I wanted it."

"Well, you're not so bad-looking. Suppose that I let you just do it. When you're nice and tired afterward, will you let me devour you without putting up a big fuss about it?"

Vinnie looked her over. She was colossally huge, crazily powerful, treacherous, grisly, and fanged, but she was kind of growing on him. A flash burst out of him, involuntarily lighting the leaf surface.

"We have chemistry," he admitted. "Frankly, I'm tempted."

"Well, what's stopping you?"

He drew a breath. "I've got a counter-proposal. Why don't you let me go? Then, as a reward, I'll send you three or four other Photinus males to make up for the loss of me."

"Would you really do that? Why?"

"I've got my reasons. It just so happens that certain flyers are aesthetically offensive. Those guys are unfit, and they shouldn't be reproducing. Seriously."

"I'm supposed to eat rivals whose work isn't up to your artistic standards?"

"Have you seen those clowns by the bramble pile? Every night they fly those tight little circles …"

She laughed. "You mean them? They're the shallow end of the gene pool! They couldn't tell my sophisticated repartee from some dirty come-on! They're beneath me."