Caged brain

Out of all the dragonflies in the world, she was the only one that was mechanical. Born in a world of caution paint, alarms and metalwork. Her joints stronger and her legs more functional. She was unknowingly the pinnacle of her kind, though she felt like lake scum. Being free to think and ponder and live among her real-life counterparts was some torture enacted by an unjust creator.

A typical day consisted of her trying to talk to other dragonflies around her. They would respond with a series of buzzes and motions and flaps of their wings. Futility incarnate. Then she would eat. She only ate because she saw others doing it. She never felt hunger or taste and was considerably faster than any insects she would encounter. Lately she would kill a bee or a fly or a beetle and hoist it's corpse around for a while, pretending like it was part of her. This is a new development, as she used to drag them back to her home inside a dead tree and toss them about. She grew tired of it as she does all things. Always thinking of new ways to appease her creator. The one who doesn't ask for appeasement.

Every few days she'll go into her tree and it will get dim. Her body moves against it's will and she goes through certain processes. She touches cold steel, feels warm air, is gripped in a tight chamber, stays still for a very long time, then the process repeats in reverse and her tree home becomes bright again. Sometimes all the middle parts are cut out and it just goes dark then light again with no happenings in between. She used her accursed powers of thought to analyze this situation to no end. It has become the only routine part of her life.

She has outlived every dragonfly she has come in contact with. She has seen them be struck down by larger predators and eaten with gusto. She has been witness to their bodies breaking down and quitting on them. She stands alone atop the spire. An unvirtuous symbol of something unknown. Not wanting attention or treatment but having it forced upon her.

She even tried to break herself before. Flying headlong into trees and bugs and lizards with abandon. Her familiar dark room antics only to wake her up with new parts. Fixed but still capable of thought.
Still broken.

There was a day when things were different. An exercise in patience turned into a differentiation. Refusing to leave her home in her tree, she sat and stared and waited and waited and waited. And waited. And then nothing happened. No darkening, no reawakening. Just waiting. Tons of watching the walls of her tree and staring until she eventually got up and left. Flying in one direction for as far as her body would take her. But wait, why was she slowing down? This had never happened before. She never grew slower or weaker. This time though she was losing altitude and dropping speed. She decided, for the first time ever, to take a rest. And maybe just wait for a little longer. And then the darkness came once more. And it never went away.