I did once say that I was going to explain Mothgirls. The time is now. Although, to warn you: I don't really have a concrete definition. I can tell you how it came about. I was thinking about stuff like Dust (from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials) and Stardust (Neil Gaiman) and how I wanted to create another element close to that to go into my own stories.
So stardust, cosmic dust, angel dust, (there's Dustfinger from Inkheart), magic dust, shiny sparkly shimmery things...but they were all too obvious, too...shiny. I wanted something subtle.
I've always loved the imagery of a moth to a flame. That juxtaposition of attraction and danger; something so delicate and beautiful like a moth dancing around a fiery fatal flame, rebellious and frantic and hypnotic.
And there it was: candledust. The world itself rolls off your tongue softly. The subtle hard 'c', the tumbling 'ndle', ending with the barely substantial 'st'. The word itself conjuring up images that are as fleeting and wispy as, well, as candledust.
And then there were mothgirls - exotic yet subtle, mysterious and strange, they weren't pretty flashy butterfly girls...they were darker, more sublime, made you suppress a shiver creeping down your spine.
Mothgirls and candledust go hand in hand. They're born of it, they live with it, play with it, make love with it, and eventually, die into it.
Derek Walcott - Ruins of a Great House. Line 2, just after the epigraph.
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