The cricket spent its brief existence attending to practical matters. Finding shelter beneath the porch boards. Interpreting vibrations through its tiny body. Then one summer evening it encountered something entirely outside its inherited understanding. From an open window came the sound of a piano. The notes moved through the warm air in patterns unlike anything in the insect world. They were not warnings. Not mating signals. Not territorial disputes. The cricket paused in wonder. If awe exists among creatures with exoskeletons, this was surely its equivalent.

Night after night the cricket returned. Sometimes the human played scales. Sometimes hesitant melodies. Occasionally the music became turbulent and strange, as though the instrument itself were arguing with invisible forces. The cricket began answering in the only language it possessed. During quiet passages it chirped experimentally. During louder moments it fell silent. In its own mind a collaboration had begun. It imagined that somewhere inside the enormous mammal’s incomprehensible nervous system, its contributions were being noticed and appreciated.

One evening the music stopped abruptly. Footsteps approached the window. The cricket, overcome with courage or perhaps misunderstanding, chirped enthusiastically from the sill. The human looked down. Tired from a long day and distracted by ordinary concerns, he saw only an insect in an inconvenient location. His hand descended quickly with the folded newspaper he had been carrying. The cricket disappeared before it had time to revise its assumptions about artistic partnership.