Family Photo Album - our pet space butterfly Charlie

I loved this old space butterfly so much. It was really hard to say goodbye but I suppose that is why you have pets as a spawnling - a microcosm of the joy and heartbreak of knowing and loving and losing that will play out over and over throughout the centuries as you progress through your metamorphs.

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Never overly sentimental even as a second morph spawnling, I dissected Charlie after it passed on to the great nebula beyond. I remember I made an incision on the ventral surface and had just finished peeling back the skin and meat from the abdomen to reveal the honeycomb skeletal structure when I took this snap:

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I mummified the remains after my experiments and in fact I still have the dried out husk to this day!

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All original digital art by moi starting with a collage composed of sections of insect macro photography. Credit to @markangeltrueman for some of the base insect macrophotography (my own insect macro photography used as well). Starfield background CC0 from pixabay.

Original base image collage for reference (some PhotoShop effects used in addition to collaging insect macro photography in the image below):

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