“I don’t see any movement.” Ray adjusts Taedan’s macroscope and inspects the black dots in a petri dish. “Are you sure they’re mites?”

“They’re mites, alright,” says Taedan. “We should give them a little more time.” He folds his rangy legs at the ankle and rests his bony elbows on his knees.

Taedan had meticulously combed through Ray’s discovered feather, collecting dust, mites, and other remnants onto a piece of parchment. Ray had watched him funnel the parchment, depositing the debris onto the petri dish. Much to her dismay, Taedan pulverized her prized feather with a mortar and pestle, mixing it with chick -pea broth until it was a thin gruel before adding it to the dish. He explained to Ray that the feather; the tiny bit of dried blood at the tip, the cartilage in the rib could provide nutrients to revive the mites. Something about the way he moved made her think of the Praying Mantis from the Visual Dictionary.

Ray bites at her lip. “You destroyed my feather for nothing.”

“Let me take a look,” says Marla. She furrows her brow over the microscope for several minutes before Trumble takes his turn. A comfortable sense of symmetry, or at least balance, envelopes the scientists as they check each other’s observations and add their own.

“I didn’t notice the nits before,” says Trumble peering at the other three observers over the eyepiece of the macroscope. A grin ribbons up one side of his face.

Marla and Taedan nearly tip their stools to the floor in their excitement.

“What are nits?” says Ray.

Trumble holds the macroscope steady as he slips off his stool and beckons with one hand to Ray. “Slowly, I don’t want to lose the place.”

Marla and Taedan pour over their notes, looking for what they know isn’t there.

Ray climbs onto the stool before replacing his hands with hers. “What does a nit look like?”

“You could mistake it for a grain of sand,” says Trumble. “Yet, it is so round and perfect, it could not possibly be sand.”

“No one made mention of nits or anything that looked like spheres.” Marla voice is pessimistically hopeful.

“They are very tiny.” Trumble holds presses his forefinger and thumb together, leaving a hair’s breadth between his nails. “Next to invisible.”

“I see them. I see them.” Ray’s excitement shouts down on the Petri dish and quivers the macroscope out of focus, before she stops still. “What are nits, anyways.”

“It you’re right, which is a big if, nits are tiny mite eggs.” Marla chugs out an excited laugh, taking her turn at the macroscope.

“We have an even better chance of reviving the little critters from an egg.” Taedan dances bandy-legged from the his side of the bench, his notebook and pencil his partners in the dance, looking less like a Praying Mantis and more like a Daddy-Long-Legs.

“Any life that has adapted and survived is a good sign,” Taedan whispers in Ray’s ear. He picks her up and dances her across the room, his notebook wedged between them.

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