orchidveil.net
lyrical trance & dark mythic/transgressive fiction by lilimist
the butterfly vow by lilimist
A romantic creation myth about a butterfly who wakes up from her cocoon too late and a star who falls to earth to save her.
{ first written & released by Vixen Phillips in 2004 }
Spiralling skyward in dizzying arcs, she tested both her wings, her tiny arms and feet, then, alighting upon the branch of a slumbering tree, shyly she began to suckle the last traces of sticky stardust from her sparkling body. Having never quite known the warmth of the sun, her innocence protected her from the cold settling in, but she could not help wonder, as her jade eyes surveyed the white landscape before her, just why the world was so quiet, and what had become of the remainder of her kin.
“Hello?” she ventured cautiously, surprise flicking her head over heels off the branch as her own sweet voice echoed straight back at her, again and again, thrice more again, before gradually fading.
Landing rather unceremoniously on her bottom in a patch of ice by the now frozen stream, she lay there a moment, surveying the sky, whose deep slate clouds would occasionally part to reveal a distant twinkling. Encouraged by this albeit remote sign of life, she got back to her feet immediately, shaking off the shards of frost and examining her wings in its reflective scatterings. After a moment of confusion, in which she slowly realized it was only her own self she was seeing, and not one of her siblings cruelly trapped within, she took a shy moment to admire herself, for it may be true there was never a flower on this earth whose colour or pattern revealed itself as more delicate or lovely. Briefly, she allowed herself to watch herself dance, at first hesitant, then more and more willing. With a ballerina’s grace she curved and curtsied, soared and pirouetted, and then, feeling a little foolish, took her rest away from the stream. And, whilst catching her breath, she began to ponder quietly:
“In my self am I seeing these colours and sights for the first time, and yet, these gifts are already open to my memory. Lights and loves and angels did dwell here, I know this, though I know not how such knowledge should be. And I know…” Here she paused a moment, with a sad little sigh, turning around and around to confirm no other either existent or approaching. “I know, if only once upon a time, there were others just like me. In my mind I can yet see them dancing. In my heart, I feel…” And she was forced to choke back a sob, as the reality of this empty world began to make itself cold hard fact, joys drowning beneath waves of sorrow, the hopes to give and be given to fading into a grey mist of loneliness, memories of warmth for the first time arising only to tremble in the winds reaching out their tentative claws from the west. “In my heart, I feel… so lonely. Am I truly the only one left? Why should that be?”
Yet as it did not occur to her to surrender to sorrow without certainty, she soon found herself instead murmuring a tune that also dwelt deep in her memory. Though she did not know this song was only meant for twilight hours, and that no other had given it such a voice since the nightingale, she felt its hope, and the words gave her comfort, and soon she had almost forgotten again the very meaning of the word ‘lonely’. So she danced, and fluttered, and sang, until exhaustion brought her to her knees, and she slept where she lay, and the clouds passed aside, and a full moon smiled upon her and the star, who was barely aware that he was crying.
For he had broken the unspoken rule of all his kind: he had fallen in love with this little butterfly lady.
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The Butterfly Vow by lilimist Page 7 of 16 writing
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