Sworn Affidavit
Sworn statement of Gnatalie, sole insect witness to the 3:47 AM alibi, entered into file PP-08-21-9420. The witness testified under her own recognizance and declined protective netting on the grounds that she was, quote, 'perfectly safe with this one.'
You have to understand what it is to be a gnat near a frog. It is, historically, brief. My entire species has one collective memory of frogs and it is a tongue, and then nothing. So when I tell you I spent one full hour — one hour — at close range with PeePoo and I am still here to be sworn in, you should understand that this is the single most exculpatory fact in the entire file. I am the alibi. I am also the evidence that the alibi is kind.
It was late. Three ponds east of the crime, in the good reeds. I was minding my own business being small when he noticed me by moonlight and said — I quote — 'oh, now that is a really nice gnat.' And then he just... looked. Admiringly. For an hour. He asked me nothing. He took nothing. He complimented my wing-shimmer twice and once described me to the moon as 'well put together.' At 3:47 exactly, by the moon's own clock, he was telling me I had good posture. That is where the prosecution says he was forging checks. He was not. He was flattering an insect three ponds away.
A guilty frog does not behave this way. A guilty frog, frankly, eats the witness — that's just efficient. PeePoo let me go. He watched me leave and said 'safe travels, gnat.' I have thought about it every day since. It is the reason I broke a hundred generations of gnat instinct to fly back toward a frog and testify. Some debts you pay even when the creditor would never ask.
I am aware there is a second frog with the same face. I want that on the record too, because I have a species-wide interest in this: whichever twin curls his tongue, that is the twin my people fear. PeePoo does not curl his tongue at gnats. He compliments them. If the other one had found me in those reeds, I would not be sworn in today. I would be a memory in someone else's tongue-print.