Butterflies

The butterflies have returned. They flit from here to there and wander through the forest. They rest for a moment in the blossoms, basking in the fragrance surrounding them, before returning to their business.

"Where have you been for so  long?" I ask the them, and they tell me their stories.



The butterflies tell of their astonishment. Once, they were caterpillars, doomed to slide along the ground and eat the dust of the earth. They mourned for their relation to the cursed snake and longed for something better. They ate and they ate and they ate and they wandered through the forest wondering if they could ever change. They knew there was something better, but they didn't know how to reach it.

Then, in an act of despair, they spun a cage around themselves. For months they had prepared and studied, and now they spun webs, preparing to leave the face of the earth forever.

As darkness closed in around them, they gave up hope of a better resurrection. For so long they had wandered the earth in despair. When they looked up they saw my brothers and I standing over them. They saw the birds and the budding trees. They saw the winter had gone and left them behind. They hid from the snakes and tried to be different. They tried to be better. But how can a caterpillar change its very being?

The caterpillars fell asleep believing they would never wake up.

But then there was a new day. Something felt different, but the caterpillars couldn't tell what it was. These cages they had formed seemed to have shrunk until they could no longer breathe. They pushed against the hardened silk and heard it crack.

As they crawled out, they looked around and tried to understand why the light was different. What were those colors they now saw? Why did the top of the trees look so much closer? And then they noticed their wings.