the enemy

[Afternoon. Outside. The air is full of, whaddyacallem, dust motes. And poplar spore and warm slanting beams of sun with wedges of soft shade between. 'S nice. Palinode and Schmutzie are taking a walk to somewhere or other.]

Schmutzie: Have you seen all the cabbage moths flying around today? [It's true. There's a crazy explosion of the little things this summer. You can't walk a block without a dozen or more fluttering by.]

Palinode: Cabbage moths and wasps.

Schmutzie: Flying around.

Palinode: They're at war.

Schmutzie: What? No they're not.

Palinode: Absolutely. You see all the cabbage moths and wasps out, right? They're at war with each other.

Schmutzie: No. That doesn't make any sense.

Palinode: War doesn't make sense, and yet they still fight.

Schmutzie: You can't just say there's a lot of one thing and a lot of another thing and say they're at war with each other. "Oh look, there's a lot of trees and people, they must be at war".

Palinode: Trees can't fight. They just stand there while we attack.

Schmutzie: That's not exactly warfare.

Palinode: All they do is wave their limbs a bit and fall over.

Schmutzie: You suck.

Palinode: Considering how wussy trees are, you'd think we'd have won already.

Schmutzie: All done listening now.

Palinode: I mean, we've got axes and flamethrowers and farmers and everything. And yet our forests are still overrun with the enemy.