Once upon a time, when the world was newer than it is today, butterflies lived longer and loved the scent of the sun on their butterfly skin. They were less shy and would fly up. up, above arches of clouds, where the sun would warm their butterfly hearts and paint their porcelain wings with unimaginable colors. Then they would come down, batting their sun-kissed wings, bestowing the colors on fields they inhabited. This is how flowers came into being: from the colors the sun gave to butterflies.
Now the world is exactly as old as we know it. The flowers are still here but the butterflies live less and have forgotten the scent of the sun on their butterfly skin. They do not fly up and up anymore, fearing the hot ball of heat will melt their fragile porcelain wings. They take the nectar away from fields and have nothing to give in return.
And in this word lives the little butterfly. Her wings are a powerful shade of blue lined with some occasional white. She is a rare beauty, more delicate than the finest china. Her fellow butterflies warn her about the yellow ball of heat up above, able to burn her porcelain wings to ashes. They warn her not to fly high, to stay where she is and behave like an orderly butterfly.
And you would expect her to do so, as fine as she is. Well, the trick is that she is not exactly like other butterflies around her. Maybe her wings shimmer a bit more as she flies through sun-kissed fields, gathering flower dust and letting it linger on her blue back. Then with a single bat of her wings she lets the dust fall in slim trickles of colors. She dresses the fields yellow, pink and violet, green, orange and red. Looking at her own spectacle her heart fills with laughter and a strange longing for the warm yellow ball of light up above.
Other butterflies don’t encourage her prolonged flights and dust collecting. Who could blame them, a butterfly’s life is too short to be spent on such nonsense. And besides, the yellow ball is known to be dangerous.
The little butterfly does not fret and spends most of her time alone, circling flowers, choosing colors, dreaming of the sun. And she loves the scent of the sun on her butterfly skin. She might be the only one still able to feel it.
“Nonsense, we don’t smell anything” she was told when she was a very young butterfly, trying so desperately to smell her own wings.
“But it smells like warmth and home” she insisted, “I think it is the sun doing it. look, look!”
The habit of reaching for her own wings on a particularly sunny day has stayed with her, making her a laughingstock among her butterfly friends.
Everyone laughs but she knows it was the sun doing so. Her butterfly heart tells her so. And she dreams of flying up, up one day, above the arches of clouds, right where the big yellow ball of light is. She dreams of seeing it in its all might, warming her butterfly heart and bestowing her with the biggest gift of them all, the gift of ultimate beauty.
She isn’t sure where these wild dreams come from, maybe from tales old grandma use to tell her about the forgotten days when the world was newer than it is today. But other butterflies tell her old grandma was a bit crazy, she tried to fly up to the sun and got her wings and head burnt. She does not believe them. She wishes old grandma was still around.
She flies alone, her head filled with tales of old grandma and her heart filled with the longing for the sun. She does not have many butterfly friends, but she enjoys the company of flowers. And yet she feels lonely. Quite often she wishes for a friend.
Days pass and turn into weeks. The little butterfly does not have a lot of time on her wings. But she is untroubled, flying and flying around, not worried about the amount of nectar she fails to collect.
One day, when she is too distracted with the yellow dust she has gathered from an unknown flower on a tree, she passes the familiar fields and ends up on a weedy meadow she has never seen before. The day is cloudless and there are no trees in the meadow, so it is all sunny. But there are no flowers either, just green leaves and weeds.
She sits on a leaf and looks around. Then she looks up: nothing gets in her way, she could go for the sun if she dared fly up…
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” A voice tells her and she flutters from the leaf, startled.
A butterfly flies opposite her, a pale greenish one, with a single red dot on his left wing.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you liked the sun” he said.
“Oh, yes, I do” she said “I like it very much”
“You are not from the wood, are you? We don’t have blue butterflies around here.”
She tells him where she is from. He in return speaks of the wood he lives in. The wood is full of tall trees so he sometimes comes here to the meadow to see the sky.
“And the sun, I love seeing it. And feeling how it roasts my wings a bit, giving them a shimmer of a sort. And” he pauses shyly-“Don’t laugh, but I love how the sun smells”.
“Like warmth and home on my butterfly skin” she responds with a dreamy look in her eyes. They both stop, surprised and look at each other as if for the first time. Then they break into laughter.
The whole day they sit in weeds, talking or just enjoying the lazy warmth. Then they fly home without a proper goodbye. After a couple of days each flies back to the meadow, secretly hoping for a meeting, sitting on weeds and enjoying the lazy warmth.
Days pass, turning into months as they sit around and talk of this world and others. Then they both feel they don’t have more months to spare. Happy at each other, happy at the shared secret of the sun they wordlessly decide to act, to put up a grand spectacle before their butterfly days are over.
It happens on a particularly hot spring day. It happens without prior arrangements, each butterfly following the rush of the heart, the rush of the wings, their hearts knowing exactly what to do. They meet at the meadow and fly up, up, above the arches of clouds. They feel the heat on their wings, they strain their butterfly bodies as they look at each other in resolve. They will do it, they will reach the sun.
They are in the clouds already, the while spongy mist engulfing them,suffocating them. making it difficult to see. But as if made from the single being they feel each other, the rhythm of their wings, the power of the sun leading them, burning them, empowering them.
With one last desperate breath they escape the clouds as one and see it before their eyes: scalding, burning, so merciless and so inviting. The big yellow sun in its full force glowing with light, blinding them, throwing dangerous sparks at their wings.
They fly together, with a single rhythm, with a single heartbeat and a single breath. The red dot burning on green wings, white lines melting on blue ones. They know this sweetness equals death, this majesty will burn them down. And yet they fly to it, united in the single desire to posses the sun, to posses the gift of ultimate beauty… They fly as the sun gleams ruthlessly, almost taking pleasure in the final sacrifice of two fragile butterflies: two beings forged into one, two beings wishing to have the smell of sunburn on their butterfly flesh. The sun greets them in its zenith, opening up her searing arms for one last embrace.
They are torched off, they are ablaze as they come down to the ground. Unable to use their wings anymore, unable to separate, turned into a single big ray of colors and light. And the world falls silent as they fall down. Ignited to their death they bestow the ultimate gift of beauty upon the weeds of their meadow. Trickles of unimaginable colors cover the ground, seeping through it, nurturing it, giving way to life of such might which the meadow has never seen before.
And the sun watches mercilessly as the sacrifice of two butterflies gives birth to new life on the ground: the meadow is covered in flowers and tress of inconceivable majesty smelling of warmth and home and the sun. The meadow turns into the last spectacle of light in the faded world: with the hues so fresh and poignant as in the days when the world was being born, the sun was all new and every single live being felt its warn scent on their live flesh.
The Palace of King Alcinous 