(c) The Butterfly [G]

Ryan was… an interesting boy. He had odd ticks and habits that people often turned their noses up at, like sometimes he’d walk around backwards for an entire day, or whenever he’d enter a room he’s stamp his right foot 3 times (never his left). It was just Ryan, just the way he was.

He had an obsession with flight. When he was four his grandmother (“Grammy!”) had flown overseas for a holiday. He squealed and thrashed about in a fit of utter excitement as the plane took off, dragging its tunnel body through the atmosphere. A few people stared in disgust.

It wasn’t only man-made flight that had his tender young mind intrigued. Animals, insects, Angels even. One morning he marched into his mothers bedroom, tiny hands on tiny hips, and grinning ear to ear; “When I grow up I’m going to be an Angel.”

Spring was only a few months away. Spring was his favorite season. The ever-changing metamorphosis of blooming buds that his mother religiously planted each year tantalized his hungry eyes. Colors distracted his thoughts – deep aubergines, ruby reds, emerald greens. The garden was his mental paintbox. Floral scents attacked his nose and wreaked havoc with his allergies, giving him a hell of a runny nose. He didn’t mind, it was worth putting up with the sniffles for a few weeks, just so he could sit outside in the suns rays, sitting on the soft luscious lawn with his legs crossed and wait.

Wait for the butterfly.

You can learn a lot from watching a butterfly; their unusual habitual dipping and weaving into the same series of flowers each visit. Sitting in silence, apart from the hum of the nature around him, Ryan’s body was lifted with an overwhelming urge to follow today’s visiting butterfly. It was big; as big as his palm, and it was flecked with chunks of orange across its middle. Over tree stumps, through bushes, around the pointy roses, he clambered, fumbling around as if her were trapped in the dark. Giggles fell from his pink lips as he tried desperately to catch the butterfly.

And he did. His fingers wrapped around its frail and meek body with such unintentional force that the tiny life in Ryan’s hands was crushed instantly. He unraveled his bony fingers to unveil the ugly mess resting on his hand. Where the orange splotches sat brightly, they had been bent and broken and mixed in with the feathery mess of wings. The thin body of the butterfly lay bowed and distorted, twitching angrily with its last life. Ryan could hear it squealing, he was sure of it.

He rushed inside, feet pounding hard on the gravel, his heart pounding hard in his chest; arms outstretched in front of him so as not to disturb the corpse of the butterfly.

“Muuuum!” he wailed, tears prickling his sunburned cheeks.

Irked by Ryan’s cry, that sounded like he was in pain, his mother raced into the kitchen, confronted with Ryan, standing on the lino floor, sobs shaking his tiny body, the ever-apparent wings of a butterfly dangling between his fingertips.

“What? What’s wrong Ryan?”

He presented his cupped hand, and the tumble of lifelessness was all that was in them.

“Fix it,” he sobbed.

“What?”

“Fix it. Make it fly again, mummy,” he stamped his foot. His mother ventured closer to him, kneeling at his feet and taking his shoulder sin her hands.

“Sweetie, I can’t,” she whispered.

“Why not?” suddenly his questioning made his youth so perceptible.

“Because, Ry, it’s dead.”

“B-but butterflies don’t die.”

She laughed a warm airy chuckle, “Everything dies.” Ryan looked dumbfounded.

“Everything?” his lower lip quivered.

“Everything,” she concluded.

“Even you?”

“Even me,” at this Ryan began to roar. Tears were streaming down his face and the butterfly was being crushed into his mother’s shirt as he clung to her chest, refusing to let go. Big wet soggy tears drenched her cotton shirt.

“I won’t die for a long while though,” she chuckled again. She held him at arms length and kissed his forehead.

“Okay,” he sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“Come on, honey, lets go wash your hands.”

“Mum?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not going to die,” he grinned.

“And why is that?”

“Because, Angels live forever.”