(11/16@11/15) The loneliness, the weirdness, the apartness. When the little ant thought of how he often felt now, as a captive among the black ants, he couldn’t help but think that it was so much worse before, back in his home colony among the red ants, his own kind, so to speak. There he was supposed to fit in, but didn’t, while here he was not meant to fit in, so every little glimmer of victory, every little glimpse of even a moment of connection with what was going on here or of having some measure of control over his own life was a precious little victory, a jewel, a delicious moment to be savored and remembered. The black ants were impersonal, too, or so it had seemed at first and so continued to seem for the most part. He had often, nearly always, felt that his fellow red ants were deliberately trying to trip him up, to not let him win, and it was always after some long course that he would be slapped down.
His fellow ants always seemed to have it in for him. The black ants were more detached, more playing fair by a set of rules, more beholden to the rules of fair play. As he grew more able to understand their customs and their ways, however, the more they came to resemble the red ants, he found. It was very odd. The better he got at dealing with the black ants, the more difficult they became to deal with. He was at first delighted at how they would completely ignore him, no matter what he did. His mad behavior, his deviancy, which was such a source of strife and worry in the red ant colony, were suddenly of no consequence or concern.
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