Once upon a time, the ants met God and were touched.

Long before then, the ants had searched for God. They had had questions. They had wanted to ask God why it had made them so small and frail. Why it made them crawl, exposed to tramping feets. Why it made their home beneath the ground to feel the world's tremor. Why it made them weak and soft they couldn't fight.

So when the ants first saw a cockroach, they thought it to be their God. They approached it, their eyes watered as lillies and their bellies spread on floor, and asked their questions. Alas, the cockroach declared that it wasn't their God. Like them, he was just being. But the ants wouldn't relent. They continued. The approached the lizard, who didn't say anything except nod until they were convinced that God couldn't be mute; the tortoise who conned them for a while until they figured his tricks; the lion who declared them useless which made them ask amongst themselves why a God would ever make them useless. By the end, they never found God in other animals.

The ants were again convinced they had found God when they first met man. Man was tall and wise and spoke in foreign tongues. Man built structures and objects which marveled the ant. Man was great, they thought. He is God, they said. But man was cruel. They didn't dare near man without getting slammed, without being killed. Their questions were never passed across because even though man spoke diverse tougues, he never understood them, couldn't hear them. Man didn't care for them as a God would. A God that didn't care was not a God. Neither is one that is not kind.

So, for a long time, the ants stopped searching. They stopped asking. They ceased believing.

But on the day ants saw God, they were touched. They had always been wrong. Had searched for God in a wrong image and in wrong bodies. God was like them. Bearing the semblance of their personage. God was a feeling. Stronger than love or hate. It had always been with them, crawled with them, felt the earth tremor with them.

When they asked it their questions, this God answered. It told them it wasn't mute for they could hear its voice and neither was it cunning or considered them useless. It told them to see the strength in their bodies. To never judge it based on the strength of others, to never see it as weakness as that was the first failure of being. Have you only felt your home as a tremor rather than a treasure? It asked. It reminded them they had a purpose. Without them regulating the soil, plant wouldn't grow. Without them, most pollination would be impossible. Without them, most of the world would be unliveable because who else would help retrieve waste and decompose it? God reminded them of their triumphs. They had found gold and diamond and emerald long before man invented spades to till soil. They had kept the world alive.

By the end, the ants discovered this: they had always been a necessary race.