(no subject)
I would love if anyone could give me a hand with this:
Flight of the Butterfly
by Anastasia Zamkinos
The Common Blue Butterfly is one of the smallest yet fastest butterflies in the world, but they are not always the striking blue one might presume. The more vibrant males only appear blue due to the refraction of light off of infinitely minuscule scales; all Common Blue Butterflies have spotted undersides reminiscent of a sprinkler captured in a blacklight. The females of the Polyommatus Icarus species are a far less lurid brown, and that is just what Andie liked about them.
The centerpiece of her rather extensive collection was a seemingly unimpressive ¾ inch female Common Blue. Perhaps this particular butterfly appealed to Andie so much because she had caught it in Europe, a seeming world away from her home in Tucson, or perhaps because it was so much more commonplace than she could ever hope to be. Perhaps she loved it best because it denied the prescriptions of its own name.
Her collection of insects was comprised entirely of butterflies, and all of her butterflies were female-- she detested the obtrusive cockiness of the males' bright patterns. Her Common Blue, on the other hand, was perfect: brilliant ephemeral blues were kept in check by splashes of mottled oranges and earthly browns strangely similar to lichen. Andie surveyed her entire collection of 53 butterflies from her bed, lying with her ankle propped against her knee. She absentmindedly twirled her foot, savoring the crisp thumping of joints cracking juxtaposed against the dampened grating of her teeth gnawing on a few strands of her hair. She idly braided another chunk of her hair as she pondered the various intricacies of the butterfly wing; her fingers glided through her unkempt mane, possessed by the fancy of each butterfly on her wall breaking free from their pine display cases, bursting into breath and life to light upon and suck the nectar from the wildflowers Andie had once doodled on her walls, tickling her room ever so gently into immortal brightness and unprecedented light...
But even dreams must die chimed her rational mind. She could feel the flowers wilting back into mere lead sketches and shards of glass catapulting back into place, dragging across her skin as they rushed to imprison the butterflies once again and to prevent Andie's own escape. She could almost hear the snap of a wing breaking under the plop of her smallest tear.
The knock on her door saved her, though it is impossible to know from exactly what it was that Andie was saved.
“What's new, Honeydew? Rise and shine! Up and at 'em! Seven in the mornin' and you're still clear to take the world by surprise!” Seth jumped onto her bed , shaking her out of her insomniac delusions. She frowned and turned to her side, desperate for some sleep...
“I haven't slept, motherfucker!”
“Now is that a way to greet the guy taking you to breakfast? I could poison you if you aren't careful, ya know.”
She turned over, her interest caught by the word 'breakfast' Her eye cracked open for an instant before she slammed it shut with a grimace and draped her elbow over her eyes.
“It is when he's wearing that bright of a shirt,” she grinned, pushing her palm into the neon blue cotton that covered his stomach and arching her back like a yogi poised in Twisted Child's Pose. She rolled out of bed and rubbed her eyes, grabbed her bag, and slipped into her Tevas, then stood in the doorway with one thumb under the strap of her bag and the other hand on her hip.
“Are you coming or not?”
He smiled and followed her to his bright red Jeep, and they sped into the morning sun serenaded by vibrant metal music that churned Andie's stomach and made her head feel as though it were a sphere trapped in a triangular box. Soon enough the wind blowing through her hair undid the braids she had been so unconscious of making.
After about an hour Seth pulled onto a dirt road, spitting gravel into the dried grass and boulders. A cardinal shot out from an outcropping of boulders, frightened by the sound of the car. Andie's mind wandered, interrupted only by the occasional exceptional pit in the road.
Three years of friendship and we still don't know exactly where we stand. Hell, we don't even know where we want to stand with each other. Maybe I'm just... Oh, is that a swallowtail?!
“STOP THE JEEP!” she screamed, throwing half of her body out of the car to follow the general direction of the bewildered swaying flight of dusty yellow and black wings. She popped open the Jeep door as its tires squealed to a halt and ran after the butterfly, her spare hand groping through her bag to resurface with a cleaned out jam jar. She stalked the swallowtail low to the dried grass, waiting until it alighted on a desert marigold. After a few suspended moments, she snapped the jar around the butterfly, catching a few petals along with her prize. She grabbed a swiss army knife out of her bag and rapid fired a hole into the lid with a resounding metallic 'pipop!' The swallowtail beat its wings against its confines. Andie watched it fighting against the walls of the jar and decided it wasn't for her, after all: it was a male. She flicked the knife shut and dropped it back into her pocket.
She trotted back to the car and unceremoniously thrust the jar at Seth. He hesitantly took the jar, not knowing what to do with it.
“It's for you,” she stated, “Just pop it in the freezer when you get home and it'll be good to go. Oh, and you'll need to find a case for it.”
“For me?”
“Yeah, that's what I said, isn't it?” she muttered.
He twisted off the lid and the swallowtail burst out and twirled around on discreet air currents that wove the desert sun into the hills.
“Hey!”
“It's happier this way,” he said with a smile, and to that she was silent. He shifted gears before putting his hand on hers and driving into the distance where the sun had yet to shine.
She had contemplated his hands before, but never in such a context. What did he intend in touching her hand? Did he mean to restrain her? To relieve her? To quiet her or to comfort her?
After an hour of Andie brooding and Seth offroading, she finally quieted her thoughts and he finally pulled the keys from the ignition. The ground was a rich brown, trees cast a a degree of shade typically unfamiliar to the desert, and squirrels played hide and seek in ancient braided roots. Andie sighed, taken by an awe she couldn't attribute to any one cause. Lest Seth think she was losing her edge, she crossed her legs and plopped her feet up onto the dash.
“So you said something about breakfast?”
He smiled and replied, “You can be a real pig, you know that?”
“Hey, you promised me food!”
He reached into the back seat of the car and pulled up a bright blue mini-cooler, handing her a grapefruit, a small carton of milk, and a travel size Grape Nuts. She quirked her eyebrow when she saw the cereal, and he grinned, reached in his pocket, and tossed her some raisins.
“I'd never forget the raisins!”
“Damn straight,” she chided as she rooted through the cooler for a spoon and prepared her cereal. They ate to a chorus of crunching, and then sat in heavy and sated silence. Her mind began to wander. This quiet is oddly comforting. There's a certain intimacy implied by being so content with a conversation comprised entirely of chewing.
Seth reached once again behind the front seats. This time he brought out a sketchbook with a pencil clipped into the spiral binding, and he started doodling. Andie loved to watch him draw, to see his hands moving as if in fluid flight. The dull colors of granite and lead comforted her and lulled her into a sense of brotherhood with the paper. She loved to see the point of a pencil spurting out trails that bended into caricatures and witty cartoons, abstract philosophies, and riddled dreams.
“Don't look,” he urged, “This is another part of the surprise.”
Rather than what her usual obstinateness would decree, she faced forward and twirled her ankles, adding the snap of her joint to the sounds of nature. After many minutes of useless thoughts that aren't worth the time it would take to recount them, he blew the eraser shreds off the paper and turned the sketchbook to face Andie.
The gyrations of his hand had drafted a Jeep surrounded by butterflies, with a swallowtail nestled in the hair of a beautiful woman with her hair streaming behind her. As her eyes took in the adoration of the sketch, her spine decided to switch the message of shock to a command to move. Her hand drifted up to his cheek. She had never seen herself as that beautiful before.
Andie hadn't looked in a mirror for a few days-- when she fell into her thoughtful states of mind, she abandoned aesthetics. She couldn't remember exactly what she looked like, and to view such a splendid creature set free in a drawing, in such ecstasy and comfort and beauty... And to have that picture be drawn to represent Andie? She was overwhelmed. But it wasn't amorous thoughts that drowned her sense of reason. Andie knew that she should feel lucky, should feel warm and even a bit euphoric, but instead she found herself watching the shadow the notebook made on her thigh.
What can she be thinking? Does she like it? Does she know what I mean? Oh, what can she be thinking? Why is her hand on my cheek? What does she mean? Thus ran Seth's thoughts, like a scratched Europop CD, until Andie blushed, cleared her throat, pulled her feet down from the dash, and replaced her palm stiffly in her lap.
“I think you should take me home now.”
That night she stared into her reflection, analyzing the crook in her nose and the lonely freckle beneath her left eye (or the right, as her reflection would have it). She payed particular attention, for the first time in her life, to the curve and color of her mouth: subtle bends like those of a butterfly wing, soft reds and pinks like the dusty desert sunset. She frowned and stuck out her tongue, pushing the antique hand mirror into her bed cover. What was he thinking? She shoved the brass mirror off the bed and away from her, sending it to smash against the wall in a cascade of tiny glimmering tears. She noted that the shards of mirror now could have been of anything at all. Were it not for the mirror's frame lying beneath a dent in the adobe, the shards were unidentifiable; they may as well have been teacup fragments. The shattered reflections of her butterflies lay scattered on the floor, and Andie couldn't help but assume that this was how it felt to have a wing pulled off.
He, on the other hand, sat in his bathroom, as many men do when trying their best to be ingenious, and stared into the mirror. Am I that unbearable? he wondered, begging his own eyes for an answer or a validation. He pulled off the offending blue shirt and cast it into the corner, making a note never to wear something that bright around Andie again... He flipped through his sketch book and tore out every picture of her, every abstract of a butterfly, and every doodle he had made while thinking of her. After an hour he was left with two pages and a garbage can filled with crumpled sketch paper and tissues that he blamed, naturally, on pollen allergies. At least now I know where I stand.
Andie was slightly more confused than he, but she was incubating a new thought. Why had she needed to categorize Seth, along with the rest of her life? Why did she keep herself trapped by rationality? She felt her room breathing (a queer feeling indeed). The moon shining through her window caught the wing of the Common Blue in such a manner that Andie thought she saw its wings beating, and once again she could almost feel the brush of a thousand butterfly wings across her body. She picked up a shard of her broken mirror and looked into her own eye, the same bright shade of blue as the wings of the male Common Blue Butterfly, and the same shade as Seth's shirt.
She dug around in her nighttable drawer until her fingertips caught the small object they had been searching for: the sparkling blue butterfly hairclip Seth had given her one day, “just because.” She wove her hair into a braid and fastened the clip onto the end. The moonlight that shined off of the plastic butterfly spotlighted Andie's butterfly collection... But it seemed somehow different. She wanted them to fly, not to be tacked to a wall or trapped in a box.
Her hand moved, for the second time that day spontaneously, to the phone. Andie dialed the same number she had dialed dozens upon dozens of times before, but this time her spirit felt lighter. Her butterfly-wing lips curled upward into flight when she heard his voice on the other end of the line murmur hopefully, “Andie?”
She, equally hopeful, whispered to him, “Dreams never die, do they?”
Flight of the Butterfly
by Anastasia Zamkinos
The Common Blue Butterfly is one of the smallest yet fastest butterflies in the world, but they are not always the striking blue one might presume. The more vibrant males only appear blue due to the refraction of light off of infinitely minuscule scales; all Common Blue Butterflies have spotted undersides reminiscent of a sprinkler captured in a blacklight. The females of the Polyommatus Icarus species are a far less lurid brown, and that is just what Andie liked about them.
The centerpiece of her rather extensive collection was a seemingly unimpressive ¾ inch female Common Blue. Perhaps this particular butterfly appealed to Andie so much because she had caught it in Europe, a seeming world away from her home in Tucson, or perhaps because it was so much more commonplace than she could ever hope to be. Perhaps she loved it best because it denied the prescriptions of its own name.
Her collection of insects was comprised entirely of butterflies, and all of her butterflies were female-- she detested the obtrusive cockiness of the males' bright patterns. Her Common Blue, on the other hand, was perfect: brilliant ephemeral blues were kept in check by splashes of mottled oranges and earthly browns strangely similar to lichen. Andie surveyed her entire collection of 53 butterflies from her bed, lying with her ankle propped against her knee. She absentmindedly twirled her foot, savoring the crisp thumping of joints cracking juxtaposed against the dampened grating of her teeth gnawing on a few strands of her hair. She idly braided another chunk of her hair as she pondered the various intricacies of the butterfly wing; her fingers glided through her unkempt mane, possessed by the fancy of each butterfly on her wall breaking free from their pine display cases, bursting into breath and life to light upon and suck the nectar from the wildflowers Andie had once doodled on her walls, tickling her room ever so gently into immortal brightness and unprecedented light...
But even dreams must die chimed her rational mind. She could feel the flowers wilting back into mere lead sketches and shards of glass catapulting back into place, dragging across her skin as they rushed to imprison the butterflies once again and to prevent Andie's own escape. She could almost hear the snap of a wing breaking under the plop of her smallest tear.
The knock on her door saved her, though it is impossible to know from exactly what it was that Andie was saved.
“What's new, Honeydew? Rise and shine! Up and at 'em! Seven in the mornin' and you're still clear to take the world by surprise!” Seth jumped onto her bed , shaking her out of her insomniac delusions. She frowned and turned to her side, desperate for some sleep...
“I haven't slept, motherfucker!”
“Now is that a way to greet the guy taking you to breakfast? I could poison you if you aren't careful, ya know.”
She turned over, her interest caught by the word 'breakfast' Her eye cracked open for an instant before she slammed it shut with a grimace and draped her elbow over her eyes.
“It is when he's wearing that bright of a shirt,” she grinned, pushing her palm into the neon blue cotton that covered his stomach and arching her back like a yogi poised in Twisted Child's Pose. She rolled out of bed and rubbed her eyes, grabbed her bag, and slipped into her Tevas, then stood in the doorway with one thumb under the strap of her bag and the other hand on her hip.
“Are you coming or not?”
He smiled and followed her to his bright red Jeep, and they sped into the morning sun serenaded by vibrant metal music that churned Andie's stomach and made her head feel as though it were a sphere trapped in a triangular box. Soon enough the wind blowing through her hair undid the braids she had been so unconscious of making.
After about an hour Seth pulled onto a dirt road, spitting gravel into the dried grass and boulders. A cardinal shot out from an outcropping of boulders, frightened by the sound of the car. Andie's mind wandered, interrupted only by the occasional exceptional pit in the road.
Three years of friendship and we still don't know exactly where we stand. Hell, we don't even know where we want to stand with each other. Maybe I'm just... Oh, is that a swallowtail?!
“STOP THE JEEP!” she screamed, throwing half of her body out of the car to follow the general direction of the bewildered swaying flight of dusty yellow and black wings. She popped open the Jeep door as its tires squealed to a halt and ran after the butterfly, her spare hand groping through her bag to resurface with a cleaned out jam jar. She stalked the swallowtail low to the dried grass, waiting until it alighted on a desert marigold. After a few suspended moments, she snapped the jar around the butterfly, catching a few petals along with her prize. She grabbed a swiss army knife out of her bag and rapid fired a hole into the lid with a resounding metallic 'pipop!' The swallowtail beat its wings against its confines. Andie watched it fighting against the walls of the jar and decided it wasn't for her, after all: it was a male. She flicked the knife shut and dropped it back into her pocket.
She trotted back to the car and unceremoniously thrust the jar at Seth. He hesitantly took the jar, not knowing what to do with it.
“It's for you,” she stated, “Just pop it in the freezer when you get home and it'll be good to go. Oh, and you'll need to find a case for it.”
“For me?”
“Yeah, that's what I said, isn't it?” she muttered.
He twisted off the lid and the swallowtail burst out and twirled around on discreet air currents that wove the desert sun into the hills.
“Hey!”
“It's happier this way,” he said with a smile, and to that she was silent. He shifted gears before putting his hand on hers and driving into the distance where the sun had yet to shine.
She had contemplated his hands before, but never in such a context. What did he intend in touching her hand? Did he mean to restrain her? To relieve her? To quiet her or to comfort her?
After an hour of Andie brooding and Seth offroading, she finally quieted her thoughts and he finally pulled the keys from the ignition. The ground was a rich brown, trees cast a a degree of shade typically unfamiliar to the desert, and squirrels played hide and seek in ancient braided roots. Andie sighed, taken by an awe she couldn't attribute to any one cause. Lest Seth think she was losing her edge, she crossed her legs and plopped her feet up onto the dash.
“So you said something about breakfast?”
He smiled and replied, “You can be a real pig, you know that?”
“Hey, you promised me food!”
He reached into the back seat of the car and pulled up a bright blue mini-cooler, handing her a grapefruit, a small carton of milk, and a travel size Grape Nuts. She quirked her eyebrow when she saw the cereal, and he grinned, reached in his pocket, and tossed her some raisins.
“I'd never forget the raisins!”
“Damn straight,” she chided as she rooted through the cooler for a spoon and prepared her cereal. They ate to a chorus of crunching, and then sat in heavy and sated silence. Her mind began to wander. This quiet is oddly comforting. There's a certain intimacy implied by being so content with a conversation comprised entirely of chewing.
Seth reached once again behind the front seats. This time he brought out a sketchbook with a pencil clipped into the spiral binding, and he started doodling. Andie loved to watch him draw, to see his hands moving as if in fluid flight. The dull colors of granite and lead comforted her and lulled her into a sense of brotherhood with the paper. She loved to see the point of a pencil spurting out trails that bended into caricatures and witty cartoons, abstract philosophies, and riddled dreams.
“Don't look,” he urged, “This is another part of the surprise.”
Rather than what her usual obstinateness would decree, she faced forward and twirled her ankles, adding the snap of her joint to the sounds of nature. After many minutes of useless thoughts that aren't worth the time it would take to recount them, he blew the eraser shreds off the paper and turned the sketchbook to face Andie.
The gyrations of his hand had drafted a Jeep surrounded by butterflies, with a swallowtail nestled in the hair of a beautiful woman with her hair streaming behind her. As her eyes took in the adoration of the sketch, her spine decided to switch the message of shock to a command to move. Her hand drifted up to his cheek. She had never seen herself as that beautiful before.
Andie hadn't looked in a mirror for a few days-- when she fell into her thoughtful states of mind, she abandoned aesthetics. She couldn't remember exactly what she looked like, and to view such a splendid creature set free in a drawing, in such ecstasy and comfort and beauty... And to have that picture be drawn to represent Andie? She was overwhelmed. But it wasn't amorous thoughts that drowned her sense of reason. Andie knew that she should feel lucky, should feel warm and even a bit euphoric, but instead she found herself watching the shadow the notebook made on her thigh.
What can she be thinking? Does she like it? Does she know what I mean? Oh, what can she be thinking? Why is her hand on my cheek? What does she mean? Thus ran Seth's thoughts, like a scratched Europop CD, until Andie blushed, cleared her throat, pulled her feet down from the dash, and replaced her palm stiffly in her lap.
“I think you should take me home now.”
That night she stared into her reflection, analyzing the crook in her nose and the lonely freckle beneath her left eye (or the right, as her reflection would have it). She payed particular attention, for the first time in her life, to the curve and color of her mouth: subtle bends like those of a butterfly wing, soft reds and pinks like the dusty desert sunset. She frowned and stuck out her tongue, pushing the antique hand mirror into her bed cover. What was he thinking? She shoved the brass mirror off the bed and away from her, sending it to smash against the wall in a cascade of tiny glimmering tears. She noted that the shards of mirror now could have been of anything at all. Were it not for the mirror's frame lying beneath a dent in the adobe, the shards were unidentifiable; they may as well have been teacup fragments. The shattered reflections of her butterflies lay scattered on the floor, and Andie couldn't help but assume that this was how it felt to have a wing pulled off.
He, on the other hand, sat in his bathroom, as many men do when trying their best to be ingenious, and stared into the mirror. Am I that unbearable? he wondered, begging his own eyes for an answer or a validation. He pulled off the offending blue shirt and cast it into the corner, making a note never to wear something that bright around Andie again... He flipped through his sketch book and tore out every picture of her, every abstract of a butterfly, and every doodle he had made while thinking of her. After an hour he was left with two pages and a garbage can filled with crumpled sketch paper and tissues that he blamed, naturally, on pollen allergies. At least now I know where I stand.
Andie was slightly more confused than he, but she was incubating a new thought. Why had she needed to categorize Seth, along with the rest of her life? Why did she keep herself trapped by rationality? She felt her room breathing (a queer feeling indeed). The moon shining through her window caught the wing of the Common Blue in such a manner that Andie thought she saw its wings beating, and once again she could almost feel the brush of a thousand butterfly wings across her body. She picked up a shard of her broken mirror and looked into her own eye, the same bright shade of blue as the wings of the male Common Blue Butterfly, and the same shade as Seth's shirt.
She dug around in her nighttable drawer until her fingertips caught the small object they had been searching for: the sparkling blue butterfly hairclip Seth had given her one day, “just because.” She wove her hair into a braid and fastened the clip onto the end. The moonlight that shined off of the plastic butterfly spotlighted Andie's butterfly collection... But it seemed somehow different. She wanted them to fly, not to be tacked to a wall or trapped in a box.
Her hand moved, for the second time that day spontaneously, to the phone. Andie dialed the same number she had dialed dozens upon dozens of times before, but this time her spirit felt lighter. Her butterfly-wing lips curled upward into flight when she heard his voice on the other end of the line murmur hopefully, “Andie?”
She, equally hopeful, whispered to him, “Dreams never die, do they?”