The centipede was not a centipede, but rather a millipede who could not count very high. In the old days - meaning the time before this story started, which makes the days old only if you are slow at reading these words - the other arthropods would tease the confused millipede. "Oh pardon me," a beetle might say after bumping into the side of the millipede, pretending it had been by accident. "I was waiting for you to pass, and thought I had counted 100 legs having gone by, and yet here you are still coming along with more legs. Are you sure you are a centipede and not two centipedes? No wait, I think you are ten centipedes." The beetle laughed cruelly, then went on his way secretly happy to only have six legs.

On another occasion the millipede came upon what looked to be a large fuzzy caterpillar lying near the road to the campground. "What kind of caterpillar are you?" The millipede asked. "I see you don't have any legs. I am a centipede, but I have extra legs. I wish I could lend you some." A cotton weevil crawled out of the caterpillar. "It only needs one leg," the weevil said, "and its not a caterpillar, its a human's sock. The weevil did some quick math. "If you are really a centipede, then you must have traded in your brain for your extra legs."

There were many other such incidents - more than the millipede could count. But this all came to an end on the night that the scorpion decided to take a moonlight walk. It all came to an end then, it with the exception of this story, which started then.

On that night the scorpion was strolling through the forest, thinking the kinds of things that scorpions usually think on romantic moonlit nights. Its thoughts wandered, until his attention fell on the spots of moonlight that also fell on the forest floor. These bright disks were like the shadows of leaves, only bright rather than dark, as though they were inverted shadows cast by forest spirits with negative mass.

The scorpion heard the trees talking overhead as he passed, their voices creaking as their branches pushed against each other.

"Hey. Step aside, this is my space."

"Stop pushing, the sun isn't even up yet."

"I can see that, but I am playing in the moonlight. Did you notice the pattern of bright dots I am making on the dirt?"

"Oh, that is a nice trick. They look like shadows except brighter, but of course after dark a shadow would have to be bright to be seen. I particularly like how you make that one spot move."

"That spot? I'm not making that one. What is it, can you see? My eyesight isn't good enough to tell from this distance."

"I can't see either. I wish we could kneel to get a closer look. Maybe it is a forest spirit."

Hearing this, the scorpion - being interested in subjects like astrology and forest spirits - decided to investigate what they were talking about. So he sought out this moving piece of moonlight to get a better look. When the scorpion found the spot in question is was creeping across a pile of dead leaves on the back of the millipede.

"What are you doing with that moonlight," the scorpion called out to the millipede. "You should put it back down."

"What moonlight?"

"Don't pretend you don't know. I can clearly see its glow."

The millipede tried to look over its shoulder, but he didn't have any shoulders, so instead he curled into a ball to see what was on its back. "I don't know how that light got there," he said. "I didn't pick it up. I think it has always been there."

"Don't plead innocence. Let that moonlight go."

"But I am innocent."

The scorpion was jealous that the millipede could pick up moonlight while the scorpion himself, despite the size of its claws, could not. The scorpion's romantic mood wad spoiled. "Drop that moonlight or I will do it for you."

"But I don't know how to drop it."

"Fine then." The scorpion stormed over and went to pull off the moonlight, but the light was slippery and he could not get a grip.

"Let go!" The scorpion said.

"I'm not doing anything."

"Then I'll just have to knock it off."

The scorpion grabbed the millipede in its claws and walked over to the nearest tree. He preceded up the trunk, carrying the millipede into the canopy and then out onto a branch.

"Oh now I see," the tree said, "it is a bioluminescent millipede."

"Of course, the other tree said. We should have known that. I had not realized it was that season already. But why did it climb up into your branches?"

"It didn't. A scorpion carried it up here."

"How strange. I thought bioluminescence was a way for millipedes to scare away predators."

The scorpion, being more annoyed than scared, threw the millipede off the side of a branch. "There! That should shake the light loose."

......

There were many ants. As many, it seemed, as there were stars in the sky. So it is no surprise that one of the ants happened to be looking at the stars when the light fell from the sky.

"It's a falling star!" the ant called out to its comrades.

"And it's falling right here in our territory."

The ants were all quite excited to see the star land on the forest floor.

"The queen will be ecstatic!"

The primary purpose of the ants was to seek out gifts to bring to their queen, because the queen was always in need of gifts. The ant colony was packed with stuff that the soldiers had brought: items such as discarded snail shells, animal teeth, and various bits of metal and plastic left behind by humans passing through the forest. Her favorite was a bottle cap, which she presumed to have once been the crown of the queen of a colony of giant ants, who's size merited respect even if they did smell like stale beer. All of these things were completely useless, but greatly valued as they proved the queen's worth. Which is to say that like the coins the soldiers sometimes found, it was indistinguishable whether they had worth because they were wanted, or if they were wanted because they had worth.

Regardless, the soldiers were always searching for things like said coins, as such finds brought a soldier improved standing with the queen. So of course a fallen star was viewed with great excitement, for though it would surely take many soldiers to share the burden of carrying it back to the tunnels, they would soon also share in the queen's praises.

"I thought a star would be bigger, one on the ants said as they stood around the millipede."

The millipede, frightened by its fall from the tree, had curled back into a ball and was still in that round form when the ants found it on the ground.

"What would you know about the size of something that is millions of miles away?"

"What would you about the distance of something so small?"

One ant pointed up at the constellations. "It appears to have fallen from the constellation of Scorpio."

The ants picked up the millipede and gently carried him off. The millipede was happy to feel that he was being taken care of, because the shock of the abuses of the scorpion had left him feeling vulnerable.

"Take it too the queen," shouted the ranks of ants.

So the ants walked across the leaf litter, carrying a star to their queen.

The trees went back to playing in the moonlight, not noticing that each little disk of light they let fall to the ground was a tiny image of the moon. They were also unaware of the fate of the millipede, as the trees were too nearsighted to clearly see the ground. The scorpion also failed to track the fate of the millipede, who was gone by the time the scorpion had climbed down to the base of the tree. Which is good, for if he had caught up with the millipede he would have been drawn into a confusing debate with the ants about whether the moon is a star.

On that same evening, a beetle was out and about. The beetle was shiny and very black, and liked to go out when it was dark to show off that his shell was blacker than even the night. But the problem was that at night the forest was so dark that no one could see the beetle at all, so the beetle tended to hang around the electric lights installed by the humans, which made the night not very dark at all. That evening he eventually came to hang out by the light of a campground restroom.

"What are you doing hanging around bathroom walls. It seems suspicious." A mosquito asked.

"Showing off how dark I am." The beetle replied.

"Dark? I can see the bathroom light reflected in your shiny shell, that is not dark at all."

This embarrassed the beetle so he left. But later he saw another light moving along the forest floor and was drawn to it.

"What is that," he said to the ants once he had caught up with them.

"Its a star!" One ant said, and the other ants cheered after, "a star!"

"A star? It looks like an ordinary millipede." He said, looking closer. "At least a centipede, but probably more."

The ants laughed. "You are just jealous. Look how bright our star is. Were are taking it back to our queen."

As the ant's trophy wasn't even as bright is a bathroom light, the beetle continued on its way. Soon he ran into a moth.

"Hey." The moth said, its voice as soft as the moonlight. "Have you seen a light?"

"I was just down the one in the campground restroom," the beetle said.

"Yeah? I don't know about that place. I always feel like I'm going to get caught there. Too many humans. You probably know that I am a pretty rare moth. For someone special like me there is too much risk of getting collected at places like that. I might look good impaled on a collectors pin, but from a pin it is difficult to sign autographs." The moth said proudly.

"What is that?"

"You wouldn't understand. Its something only we famous insects do."

"Did you know the millipede is famous too? He even has ants that carry him wherever he wants to go. One of the ants told me he is some kind of star."

"Of course I know that the millipede is famous." The moth fibbed. "In fact the millipede and I are close. You know how it is, we famous arthropods end up hanging out together because its hard to relate to the generic genera."

"Really, you know the millipede? How did you meet?"

"Oh, he's in my flying club."

"Flying?"

"Yeah, its a group of us that take flying expeditions around the forest together for fun."

"I don't think the millipede has wings."

"Oh sure he does. His problem isn't that he lacks wings, its that he has more limbs than he can count. If he ever did get around to counting them all he would surely find he has at least a couple wings."

.....

The millipede peeked out from his curled condition and tried to count the ants. He wasn't sure, but they seemed to add up to giving him even more legs than he had before. "Maybe I really am a millipede." He unintentionally said this outloud.

The ants misunderstood where the voice had come from. "No you're not a millipede", said an ant to the ant in front of it, while "no you're not a millipede" said that ant to the one ahead of it in line. And so said similarly and simultaneosly each ant to its predecessor in the procession: "you are an ant like me." Then they went on singing, badly, as they marched:

No you're not a millipede,
you are an ant like me.
For when each foot is counted,
its one sixth of our feet.


There aren't many millipedes,
But there are lots of ants
Though we don't have many feet,
We've quite enough to dance


We are Ants
antan tantan tants
Count us on your toes,
but count on us you can't


Hey to you the stars above,
that fill the night like gnats,
you think that you are many,
but we are more than that


Now your number is one less
While we are now one more
For from the grasp of scorpio
we've stolen one of yours.


We are Ants
an tantan tantants
Count us on your toes,
but count on us you can't


The millipede was understandably annoyed by this song, but otherwise he enjoyed being carried by the ants. "I wonder if I really am a star," he said to himself, this time quietly. "Maybe before, when I thought I was an arthropod I was just dreaming. Can centipedes, or even millipedes, dream? I doubt it, but I bet stars dream." The millipede tried to remember a time before he dreamed he was a millipede but couldn't.

Eventually the millipede noticed that a glow had crept into the sky, and that the other stars had begun to disappear. This worried the millipede, as he though maybe he should do the same. "Where are stars supposed to go during daylight? No one told me this. How can a star know how to behave?" Was there a star orientation seminar that he should have taken? The answer came soon enough, when the ants reached their nest and shoved the millipede into the dark hole. "Aha, so that's where we stars go during the day: under the earth."

"Look what we have brought," said the ants to their queen. "A star!"

"A star? It is so small. All of you soldiers teamed up and the biggest star you could carry is that tiny thing?"

The ants did not want to seem weak. "It looks small, but It is heavy. It is a very dense star," one of them said.

"We believe it to be a neutron star," another ant said. Neither the queen, nor any of of the other ants understood what this meant, so we too can just ignore it.

"Well, its not very bright either, said the queen. In fact it seems dim."

The millipede had had enough. In the short time since entering the nest, he had gone from being celebrated to ridiculed. The ants had called him both heavy and dim… dense in two ways. "Stop calling me fat and stupid" the millipede finally cried. "You are hurting my feelings."

The soldiers jumped back in surprise when their star unrolled into a millipede. But the queen was excited.

"Oh, its the millipede! I had not realized that this was the type of star you meant."

The queen, having heard from a member of the flying club about the millipede's fame, was excited to have him as a guest in her court.

"Welcome millipede. Thank you for visiting us."

"Am I a millipede? When they said I was a star, I believed I was a star. Now that the queen says I am a millipede I think I shall be a millipede. I used to be a centipede, but now i have risen in stature: I am a millipede, and millipedes are so important that they need not count their legs for themselves!" he thought. "Yes I am a millipede" he exclaimed out loud "count my legs and see".

Seeing as how he was a guest of the queen, the worker ants obliged. But it turns out that a worker ant can only count as high as the number one, so each ant could only count one leg, and there was no one around to count how many ants were counting, so though the count was done it amounted to nothing.

It did not matter, though, because from that point forward the millipede was one of the queen's favorite companions. For though it is questionable whether millipedes and ants might actually be friends, it has often been illustrated that power and stupidity are fully compatible.

And no one ever again made fun of the millipede's inability to keep track of how many legs he had.